"Take a Chance" Embroidery & TAST

I have had another very productive long weekend away at our proposed new home site, and my sofa currently looks like this with loads of different house plans and ideas that we are "trying on" for size. I've got to make sure I can fit everyone and everything in. 

It's a very exciting time (but I'm sure it will get more stressful the closer we get to the actual build). At the moment we are in designing mode, and I'm in my element there.

Wahooo......... I have actually managed to get some TAST stitches done on my 

CHANCE Embroidery this week.

The pale pink at the bottom is the Bullion Buttonhole Stitch.

(sorry the pic is a bit blurred)

Some Buttonhole Wheels in a variegated pink/green thread.

This next one is a funny little stitch called the Crested Chain Stitch.

It is meant to have a nice braided effect when worked evenly, but my 'roll of the DICE' called for "irregular stitch", and so I ended up with a happy frilly looking thing. I love how I don't have control over what I stitch on this project. I get so many lovely surprises along the way.

And here is another TAST stitch called Slipped Detached Chain Stitch.

(I think it looks like a row of palm trees on a desert island)

And a photo of the whole of this Chance piece so far, with "roll of the dice" telling me to use: lace, wool, braiding, irregular stitch, couching, and some other things as well that are yet to be applied to this piece.

Ok, back to the drawing board for me now.

Happy Stitching

My Free Form Embroidery of CHANCE Project Update

Just a little bit more stitching (and playing) done on my CHANCE project.

Random choices made by the throw of the dice.

You may have seen the purple stitched circle before, as that was a previous CHANCE stitching. This weeks throws of the dice asked for "circle", "applique", "zig-zag", "ribbon embellishment", and "the number 3" amongst other things. 

This is what has randomly happened so far:

This is not finished yet. Lots more randome 'stuff' to happen yet.

If you missed how this project started I will recap a little bit here (to remind myself too).

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(Recap)

This project is called: "An Embroidery of CHANCE"

My 2013 TAST EMBROIDERY project commences with 3 DICE and a coin-toss

(or is 'die' the correct plural for dice?) 

It will be a true Embroidery of Chance and I am expecting to have a lot of fun along the way.

And to quote my previous post about this project -

CHANCE will determine every aspect of embroidery.
I will take whatever TAST stitch occurs each week - that is the first RANDOM aspect to happen that I have no control over.
And then.......every placement, every thread, every fiber, every stitch, every characteristic, every style - will be taken by chance, and will be innovative, fresh and contemporary.

This project will be FREE FORM embroidery. No plan, no design, no barriers, no idea what is coming up next.

There is also NO finished item planned. The stitching IS the project. '

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(end of recap)

Hope everyone is having a great week.

Happy Stitching

International FreeForm Fiberart Guild Challenge 2013

 The International FreeForm Fiberart Guild 

.

 2013 Challenge Exhibition has 

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 GONE LIVE 

I have created the exhibition book for this year's challenge.

Fun or what!!!

This year our challenge was to create a FreeForm Fiberart work on the theme of

MOTHER EARTH.

46 participants from the Yahoo group IFFFG took part and their fiberart work is included in the book and the online gallery.

Once again, I have thoroughly enjoyed working with this very talented group of fiber artists.

Here is the link to the book MOTHER EARTH.

ALL profits from the sale of the book go the charity (or charities) voted by the members of the Guild. This years charity has not been decided yet. I'll let you know as soon as we have made a decision.

Here are some photos of my fiberart piece for the challenge.

And my description for this piece in the exhibition is as follows:

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Beltane - a Gaelic May Day Festival, celebrates Mother Earth in full bloom.

It is a time when Mother Earth is fertile and abundant, half way between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice.

My free form piece applauds the flowers that Mother Earth brings forth. The fiery reds and oranges that I have used are symbolic of the fires that were lit in the rituals of the Celtic festival. The fires were deemed to have protective powers and were used to protect the cattle and crops, and also to encourage new growth from Mother Earth.

  

Techniques used: Free form crochet, hyperbolic crochet, stitching, plaiting, needle-felting, and fused felting.

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Happy Stitching

Retirement Plans (but not much stitching)

Well, it seems like it's been absolutely ages since I've posted, but it has only been about two weeks.

Things are getting a bit frantic here as we explore all the options available to us in doing a 'new build' home in the Central Hawkes Bay area (with a view of the Ruahine Mountain Range).

We spent most of last week there again. It's about a six hour journey to get there, so we try to get as much as possible sorted while we are there.

Bare block site visits take priority, as we need to get the land in our possession first, but we also need to know what prices everything else will be so that we can get everything we want on our block within our budget.

The bare block, or blocks, we are looking at don't even have a formed road, so that is an extra cost that we weren't originally budgeting for, and then we need water tanks etc. and there is some buried waste that we have to get a bio survey done for. It all adds extra $$$.

The site itself is gorgeous, and I would really like to live there.

So you will, I hope, forgive me for not getting much stitching done at the moment.

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.

Stitching and Travelling

Sorry I was missing last week. We were *on the road* again.

Hawkes Bay is a fabulous place. We are actually thinking about buying a property there.

Mountains, forests, wide rivers, seas, beaches, gorges, and scenic views wherever you look.

I will be uploading more pics of our travels on my 'other' blog soon.

Last of the Summer Wine

Anyway, here are some pics of the stitching I've been doing. Some random, and some not quite so random pieces. Nothing more on my Mandala Quilt though.

This is my Art Quilt Wall Hanging

Can you see the NZ influence?

Here are the random stitching stuff

So that's me for this week.

Happy Stitching

I Deviate from my Path

I have spent a lot of time this week editing photos and creating my new

Travel & Adventure-Blog.

...Last Of The Summer Wine...

Tony and I are in our early retirement years and we are having a ball travelling around NZ on days out and holidays vacations

There will be lots more posts to come on Last of the Summer Wine. 

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It has been a bit of a weird week on the stitching front.

I was leaping ahead with my Crazy Mandala Quilt last week, and I was happy that I knew exactly what the next step was going to be........ but..... (there is always a 'but')...

....... I chose to pick up a completely different project to work on.

This is a U.F.O. that I started about eight or nine years ago.

This project sits in a satchel near my front door. It is my QSK, or, Quilter's Survival Kit, and is ready with all the necessary sewing items in the satchel for me to grab on my way out of the door for when I need a quick and easy sewing project to take with me......on appointments etc.

As it has been quite a while since I have needed to grab my QSK, I decided I would like to stitch a bit more on it.

I love the 3-D optical illusion. A whole new dimension.

I have completed 4 of these 'Building Block' shapes this week. 

The Building Blocks are not joined together yet as I wait until I have about 50 or more before sorting out the block placements so that I can get the colour gradations in the right positions.

I am very pleased that I laid these blocks out today for the photos above, because I discovered that I had stitched two blocks together the wrong way round on my last session.

Time to 'un-sew' those trouble-makers.

Happy Stitching

CQJP 2013 Mandala Quilt Update

 CQJP 2013 Mandala Quilt Update 

Sub-titled - - Let Me Tell You A Story

So this is how the story starts.

Centre-Circle wants to dress up to go to a party.

So Centre-Circle asks for a smart black suit, 

and Centre-Circle gets a smart black 'suit'.

But then the others started getting very jealous because Centre-Circle looks so smart in his new black suit.

The others think that they look 'under-dressed' compared to him.

So they beg for a smart black suit each 

.....and, one-by-one they get 'dressed' up in their smart black suits too.

And happiness, once again, started to return to the Circles.

Until, eventually, laughter overtook them all, and the dancing began.

And the Party of the Circles was THE  place to be.

Happy Stitching

Let the 'party' jokes, 

and 'circle' jokes, 

and 'dancing' jokes 

                            begin.........................

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CQJP 2013 progress

I've been away....... did you miss me?

We had a great time in the Hawkes Bay area. The sun shone (most of the time), the beaches were mind-blowing (as always), the Motel was 4**** awesome, the scenery was beautiful, and the wineries were, well.... full of wine, lol. Delicious.

I'm creating another blog as our "Travel-Adventure-Blog" so that this Free Form Stitching blog stays mostly on topic here, and so that family and friends will be able to follow our adventures without getting caught up in my stitching projects. I will let you know the web address of that as soon as I have uploaded these latest photos.

On topic again now.

CQJP latest work.

Nine more of the smaller circles that surround the larger circle in the middle. That now makes 12 all together.

That's my lot for this week.

Now to catch up with all that I've missed while away.

Happy Stitching

Round and around I go

I've been going round and round in circles this week, and this is what I have achieved........

All the above will be going on my Crazy Mandala Quilt.

I've also been working on an UFO. A lacy crochet tunic that I started making in Nov 2011. I think it got put on the back burner when I heard about the Crazy Quilt Journal Project (CQJP).

This pic is the beginning of a front piece before I started working on it. This week I have finished the two front panels and I'm about a quarter of the way up the back.

Tony and I are off on another adventure tomorrow, and we'll be gone for 6-8 days, so I'll probably not be around for a post here next week.
We are going to the Art Deco centre of New Zealand.... Napier, and the surrounding countryside of the Hawkes Bay area, which just happens to be the heart of NZ wine making country.
I have a feeling we are about to have a good adventure.
I'm sure I will get totally absorbed (not just with the wine) and inspired by the creative era of Art Deco.
Hopefully I will have a few tales to tell you on my return.
Watch this space.


Happy Stitching