Creative again

This little lady is not finished yet and not really dressed up (the answer is: yes, I always had this nose :-)

She is needle felted and as this is my second attempt on it I like the outcome.
This is a really astonishing and fascinating technique!
But I had to decide between working in my garden and stop the weed from taking over or continue with felting so I did take the garden option when the rain  finally decided to stop.
Inbetween I tried that triangle biscornue but that's something I'll have to think about for a while. There was a link for a tutorial of a 15 sided biscornue on Sharon Boggon's site Pintangle so I thought this would be the right thing to train my fingers and I finished it today.
I love to embroider but I'm not the regular stitching type :-) So I did 15 small crazy quilt blocks and put them together with all the stitches I could think of at the moment. When I showed it to my nextdoor neighbour (she's always very excited about the new things I did create) she said what I had in mind without putting it in exact words: there is so much to look at! You turn it over and there's something different and another twist and you discover some tiny details - like going for a stroll.
Maybe even pillows could be made this way - using quilt blocks and sewing them together - the same thing only larger. I'll try that some day.

Now I know why funerals are so important - they give you the chance to bring something to an end that isn't over without. It's the "moment in time" that is the place for tears, memories, maybe fury (why this one had to go) and you can let it off and leave it there. Of course you take sadness with you but something is finished and the scar starts healing - slowly. I also noticed that it is very relieving to let go, to cry and not to hold onto yourself because it's the right thing to do in the right place at the right time.

Here comes the 15 sided biscornue:

the only thing I'm doubting are the red buttons - size and colour. But those were the only ones I could find at the moment and it will be no problem to replace them if I run over "the perfect one".

Mourning and Biscornues

It took me quite a while to get on safe ground after my friend Erika died on April 29. In some aspect this left me falling into pieces even it always was in the back of my head that there was this possibility. After it happened I seemed to circle around my personal loss - repeating lots of feelings I had eight years ago when my husband died - especially being the one who is left over. And (which is the difference to those days) I'm not in charge of anything to do, just assist the funeral tomorrow. So maybe this is one of the reasons I didn't even try to keep myself together and almost drowned in sadness - assisted by a weather someone called "winter, very poorly painted pink" because actually it's spring and supposed to be warm and sunny and flowery all over the place.
So I had lots of time to spend and happened to stumble over the word "biscornu"
which I never heard before. Searching the internet I did find out and here's my very personal result. The first one is made of two embroidered crazy quilt blocks, the second one two pieces of embroidered fabric. Making this one I tried to do a piece of raised lace (the star in the middle) and felt adventurous again. It looks pretty coarse compared to those fine white elegant samples of real lace since I used No. 5 pearl cotton but I do love it. Another "first time"!

Now then - there's some unexpected sun outside so I better get going. But one of these days I'll try to find out if a bicornue can be done with an evensided triangle. Enjoy your day!

Metamorphosis

Today I went shopping with my friend Barbara and her daughter at a small art and pottery fair nearby (same procedure as every year, yes) and we found someone who made very interesting jewellery out of old silver cutlery – rings, bracelets or pendants. I was so fascinated that I decided to skip the felted hat and go for a ring and a bracelet. The ring used to be a spoon and the bracelet a fork with two prongs. So pretty in my eyes!!! And a lot to think about where the old life of both took place!

Alter Ego

Every second since I discovered Monique Lemieux 's Story Teller in the photo section at Stitchin' Fingers I was determined to try this myself - just on my level, of course. There's a good tutorial on the http://www.owning-alpaca.com site on needle felting that I used as I never had done any felting before. Today came the material I had ordered somewhere else and I couldn't help starting right away. (After taking my cat tho the vet.) Of course my fingers have some holes now they didn't have before but I so happy with the head I created. She will get her body tomorrow so she won't have to sit on that neck of the wine bottle for too long :-) What a wonderful day!!

Stitching along

This time I really wonder where this will end. I did a little doodling and had the other eye with kind of a nose which will hopefully transform into something like a fragment of a face. In Sharon's stitch dictionary I found detached buttonhole stitch and want to try it for the cheekbones. There's the vision of a skin like surface in my mind and I want at least to give it a try (though I'm drifting away from just plain buttonhole, but I'm exploring).

 Left:
Using my window as a light box.




And I'm having fun!

A little bit of Buttonhole

Having a nice day between garden and thinking about second week of TAST. And suddenly there it was - the idea of an eye using this stitch after first trying a combination of the new stitch from TAST 2010 and buttonhole stitch (I do love boullion knots, too) which didn't really satisfy me.

This is how far I got today (had an invitation for supper :-) and I'll have to figure out how to continue.

The eye is simple buttonhole at the lids, two buttonhole wheels inside one another for the iris and berwick stitch plus different rows of buttonhole stitch on top of it for the eyebrow. I feel very adventurous!!

TAST1 - Herringbone Stitch

Here are the results of my first try on Take A Stitch on Tuesday (TAST1) which is re-run at Stitchin Fingers. I had an unbelievable amount of fun and joy doing it and spent hours just sitting and stitching - just couldn't stop. My furry compagnons probably think I'm crazy :-) Here comes:

The psychedelic Dandelion

 with details.
My favorite stitch is the french knot - I still remember my mother working on a tablecloth for Christmas with a little singing angel on it. And the curly hair was done in french knots - looked so lovely!!

Still on the go

While nothing breathtaking happened at my house I did continue to quilt - fighting the pretty long winter outside. I thought of looking for old tile patterns and translating them into my very versatile EQ6 program and it worked out fine.
Right now I don't start big projects, a pillow case is just fine. So here's the "chain of evolution":

1. Computerized version2. Fabric start

3. Top finished and embroidered
4. Details

I had an absolutely great time doing this. And spring is outside!!

Back to quilting

For a change (actually running short in money for bigger deals) I started quilting again with the stock of fabric that is within my reach and not stashed away. (Sewing machine back and working.) And for this time I did a rather traditional pillow case designed with EQ6 and added a lot of hand embroidery having a very good time with it. Noticed no black and white checkerboard this time :-)
Looks like a little piece of art.
Maybe this will take me over the odd feeling of having taken the wrong descision. Who knows anyway what future really will bring?
Temperatures are rising (kind of) and this morning birds were singing and I had the feeling of spring when I went for a walk with my dog.
I'm just waiting for the next thing to happen. No time to rush.

Looking for my roots

Believe it or not - I finally started an activity that was on my "when-I'm-retired-I-will....."list - looking for ancestors. Way back in 1974 my mother bought the local Ortssippenbuch that lists all the families and persons with their ancestors mainly written down in the parish-register. Seems my forfathers (and mothers) from my maternal side all came from this village. It was easy but time consuming to get them together in my family tree and this side of the family can be traced back to at least 1530!!
Since my father came from a village nearby I had to look there for the other half of my roots and YES I was successful, too. Luckily they had that same kind of book at the municipal office and I was allowed to take copies. This part of my family seems to have been long time resident, too, so I found ancestors back to 15 hundred something also. The interim result from today is 289 persons in 125 families and I'm not done yet!
Somehow this is like a large net unfolding. Very interesting!!