Friday 16 March 2012

Take some hexagons...

Before Christmas I spotted these card hexagons in a craft shop.  They immediately reminded me of the very little sewing I was taught at secondary school when we made a small patchwork purse.  I bought them on impulse and then had a think about how to use them.  I have a bit of a thing about bumble bees and I've wanted to make some bee themed textile art for ages.  So, naturally, hexagons = honeycomb!


I chose cotton in lovely bright oranges & yellows and really enjoyed using the techniques I learned in about 1982 - and hadn't used since!



I made two flowers by needlefelting all kinds of interesting fibres to a piece of felt, stitching it into a flower shape and adding seed beads to the centre. 


The bees themselves were fiddly to do.  Firstly the brushed cotton black stripes were stitched on to the yellow fabric.  Then I stitched the bees to the background, trapping some shimmering wings in place and using a little stuffing to pad each bee out.  I like the visible stitches around the bees - I think they add to their bumbly fuzziness!



This piece involved a lot of hand stitching, although I used my machine to sew the patchwork and greenery on to the black background.  Et voila...


Thursday 1 March 2012

Hearts

Wet felting is great fun and you can create the most beautiful things, but I find all the rubbing really hard on my hands (what a wimp!) so I don't play around with it very often.  I have, however, come to the conclusion that felt is the most wonderful fabric on the planet - it is versatile, so easy to sew with and, best of all, it doesn't fray!  Simple sheets of machine made felt have made a great backing fabric for these hearts.

In a perfect world I'd be backing these with beautiful Harris Tweed, but I looked at the cost and it would mean a fair an investment on my part and a higher retail price to pass on to my customers.


I've made a few hanging hearts with three dimensional, fluffy animals.


Here's another use for those old maps I keep talking about!  
The trees are nice and fluffy, made from gorgeously soft silk laps.


And here are a couple of boats for all you sea lovers!