U.F.O. & Black Hole Discoveries

Well it's ALL GO here at Lewis Acres.

Tony and I have decided to sell our farm and retire to Hawkes Bay.

I have oodles of cupboards here packed to the brim with MY *stuff*, and I need to empty them all before we can put the house on the market. 

So this week I have been slowly working my way through ONE cupboard, lol. (I think it's going to be a long job).

Anyway, I have discovered so many *treasures* in just this one cupboard.

It has been so much fun coming across these U.F.O.'s that were relegated to the dark depths of  the black hole that appeared in the cupboard.

As I have't done ANY stitching at all this week (because of sorting and packing) I thought I had better share 'something' with you, so here are some of the treasures from my "black hole".

I can vaguely remember starting this x-stitch for mum and dad about 15 or more years ago. It was supposed to be an anniversary card, but it didn't get finished. Shame on me.

And this stitch sampler  never got past the letter 'L'. 

I think it was meant to be my own name there, and I started in the middle of my name to get the spacing right for the other letters.

And this, rather creased, 4-panel embroidery, was meant to be a cushion.

It seems I was reasonably ok with stitching satin stitch and French Knots all those years ago, but not so good with the other stitches. I've practiced a LOT since then, lol.

The Vintage Crinoline Lady embroidered table cloth was started by my mum and her sister Doris when Aunt Doris was living with us for a few years when I was just a little girl. They never finished it. There is a crinoline lady in each corner, and only this one is stitched (minus her head, arm and flowers).

One of the un-stitched corner designs.

The next pic is my own hand dyed fabric, quilted with a gold metallic thread meandering pattern.

And then, in the cupboard black hole, I found this paper-foundation-pieced mini quilt that I made about 12 years ago. It's good to let it see the light of day again. I may put it to good use now as a bedside table mat or coffee table mat.

Love the backing fabric. Wish I had some more of that.

It was fun to "re-discover" these things.

I wonder what else is hiding in the black hole.

A mixture of sewing projects

 Embroidery of Chance 

I started with a velvet square in a dusky pink colour.

 Added random wool tops with needle-felting just to add a bit of colour to start with.

Then, using the TAST stitches and a dice roll #5 for which box of threads I will use.

A coin toss gives me Regular or Irregular stitching.

Other rolls of the dice give me - Design Shape, Line Design, and Decoration or Embellishments for the whole piece.

Knotted Feather Stitch - Irregular, curved

Inverted Feather Stitch - Regular, haphazard

Raised Herringbone Band - Regular, triangle, vertical

The CHANCE part is working out fine so far. I think I might change the way the threads are randomly chosen though as I wasn't too pleased with the bright green on the back of the raised herringbone band. The best way to get a cohesive colourway would probably be to choose perhaps a dozen or so threads that would actually look good on the background, and then have the dice choose which one to use next.

I will PLAY with that idea on the next roll of the dice.

 Ear Ear Project 

The soft spongy ear-pads on my headphones disintegrated two weeks ago and it's a bit painful trying to use them without the soft pad, so here is my solution to that problem.

I am very pleased with the result. Rather snazzy I think.

 My Mum's Steam Engine Cross Stitch 

Here are the photo's of the large cross-stitch project that my mum started but had to give up on due to failing eye-sight.

As mentioned on a previous post, I shall be finishing the last 3 carriages in her memory.

The whole thing when finished is 1.6 metres long (yes, over one and a half metres) and about 200mm high.

That is quite a large cross stitch panel.

I'm not sure when I will have time this year, but it is on my TO-DO list.

 Learning Lace Making 

This is the treasured lace-making equipment I have.

All of this was my mums, and I have inherited quite a few of her books on the subject as well.

The domed cushion for pinning the projects.

Her best bobbins in her custom made case for them.

A collection of her other bobbins in another case she made.

A few of her special pyrography bobbins.

And a pair of very special bobbins in a box.

Well that's it for this week's show-and-tell.

Hope you enjoyed the eye-candy.

Happy Stitching

TAST week 21 - AND.......

TAST Butterfly Chain

The yellow and orange colours seem to be a popular choice with many this week. 

I was going for a rustic look while using this stitch, hence the patches. I think it works good as an applique stitch like this.

And then I used it on ribbon with a variegated thread.

And........

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do....

My 'other' stitched project for this week was - a Cross Stitch Biscornu pin cushion. Just because I want one (and I have been secretly envious of Angela's Biscornu since she showed us a pic of her workdesk).

The aida is 28ct.

I adapted a basic one-colour chart, and added extra 'bits' to it here and there for this cross stitch piece and made it 'mine'.

I wanted a jewel-like colour scheme to brighten the coffee table next to where I sit and stitch.

At the last local quilt group meeting, we had a chap called Milton, from near Hamilton, come and show us his fabrics. My main focus was on teals and blues for the next part of my CQ project, but I fell in love with this fabric and had to have it too.

Here is a tip to choosing which colours to use for your projects.

Find a fabric in the colours that you like or want, then match your threads (or any embellishments) with the colours in the fabric, and voila, you have a perfect colour scheme for your project.

I use that technique in many of my projects and often the item doesn't actually need the original fabric to be used in the make-up of it, just use the colour scheme. The hard work has already been done for you by the fabric manufacturing companies, haha, I like that.

You can see here that I did use the fabric for the bottom of the Biscornu, but I could easily have used a plain fabric or more of the aida instead.

I shall enjoy using this.

Would you like to see my latest stash purchases, as stated in the above mentioned local quilt group meeting with Milton bringing his mobile shop to us.

(Gotta love the batiks)

The three yellowy fabrics in the middle of the bottom row are for another project, not the current CQ.

The bottom row here is what I bought at the group meeting, and the top row is what I bought the next day from my local quilt shop when I felt guilty that I had purchased all the other stuff from someone else. Go figure the ethics of that one!

So that was MY WEEK.

Happy Stitching