Before I forget. This month's recipe on the calendar is Lardy Cake - not the most figure conscious thing you can eat. My Grandmother often offered a slice with a cup of tea, but the word "lard" usually put me off. After making this I realised this was a big mistake. The recipe was provided by my Mum because I couldn't originally find my Grandmothers version, popular recipes were often cropped in various sources, and we suspect she knew the recipe by heart.
Canvaswork, that is. I didn't mind it when it was asked for - it gave me a break from the wallhanging which was all machine stitching. This is a bit 70's but I wanted to stick to a palette of orange and turquoise and was too lazy to use anything other than tapestry wool. 
Things have been a little quiet recently. There is a reason for this. I have been working hard to get something finished......... the end is nigh.
Whilst munching my lunchtime salad I was reading my blogroll for the day and found this prompt generator from Sharon B's in a minute ago blog. I clicked on it for it a bit and this one appealed to me: "Write a Haiku about what you see out of the window". Its obvious from this blog that I am not the world's greatest wordsmith, nevertheless I got a little advice and then came up with this:
Little blue car
Towed by yellow van,
Around the car park
Bascially there is an AA van in the car park next to my building, with the AA man attempting to fix a blue mini (old style). Ironically enough it was parked next another blue mini (new style). The van towed the car away (orginally 3rd line was "Off to be mended") but then it came back around now they are just sitting there again. I really must get out more....on that note better go for my lunchtime walk.
p.s. does blue count as my kigo?
Silk viscose satin applique-ed onto a double layer of silk organza. Further embellised with machine wrapped cords and stitching on soluble fabric.
A few burning experiments. Nylon Organza leaves bonded onto acrylic felt. Acrylic felt bonded on to acyrlic felt. All the shapes were "cut" from the cloth by a soldering iron. Some of the felt was stitched beforehand with preprogrammed patterns on my Brother sewing machine. I used a Madeira Rayon thread so had to snip the thread on the leaf cutting line as this thread does not melt. The bonding was completed by fuseing with a soldering iron.
As I have decided to use natural silk and silk/viscose fabrics I will have to find another method to cut the leaves out crisply.
Silk viscose velvet, dyed wth fibre reactive dyes and embossed. Free machine stitching combined with pre-programmed stitch patterns.
Silk viscose velvet on dyed silk organza. I wanted to try a faux devore effect and did this by applique of velvet shapes onto organza. The silk organza is nice and stiff so this was quite straightforward to do this without hooping. As the organza is easily marked tear away stabiliser could be used for the final section.
With a very boring job. The dyeing and devoré-ing has been done, even chopped some of it up to compose some of my pieces, but today I have commited needle and thread with a bit of cord making. I need quite a few metres of gold zig-zagged cord, I guess about 12 metres at least, to provide my border. The inner core of the cord is cotton string and 26 gauge wire. The cord is wrapped in light gold metallic machine embroidery thread. The wrapping is done by dropping the feed dogs on my machine, setting the zig-zag width to the highest setting, stitch length zero and sewing away. The string and wire need to be held together under tension, positioning under the darning foot is helped by taping sections of drinking straw either side of the foot.
Space dyed devore. The devore was created by stamping fibre etch with one of the stamps I made from my design work. The results were interesting but stasrted to think about other ways of stencilling. This was backed with felt and thin quilt batting. The free machine embroidery was not the most inspired...
Pleating and burning with synthetic organza. This is okay but for the main wallhanging I am going to use sik viscose velvet and use embossing and stitch.
Quilting on Polyester satin. This goes back to some of the shape player I did earlier in the year. I used this sample to play about with stitch patterns. After looking at all my samples, decided I like the scope to be more innovative with colour when dyeing natural fibres so have decided to continue with applique but use cut out velvet and organza.
Devoré velvet, space dyed with Arty’s One Fibre Reactive dyes, free machine embroidery quilting over felt and thin quilt batting. All the devoré was achieved by using fiber-etch, the tumble drier and lots of elbow grease.
This is built up with 3 components onto a backing of felt. For the finished wallhanging I will add a layer of thin quilt batting to give it the same weight as its companion sections. Top: devoré velvet, space dyed with free machine embroidery. Bottom: ruched spaced dyed velvet. Middle: a layer of free machine embroidery on soluble fabric overlaid to link the two pieces.
