It’s been a while…..

  I guess it's been a while since I updated the blog. I just seem to get so busy making things that I forget to add new posts to the blog.


In May I acquired a new tool, a Silhouette Cameo, and have done a bit of playing with it, though not as much as I thought I would, I guess I just do too many things.
I use it to cut out layers of paper and glue them together to make things. Here are a couple of pictures of the things I have made.

This chair I thought was going to be 1/12 scale for a dollhouse, but it is not really in scale. So I gave it as a decoration to my neighbour. She has several real ones in her front yard. It is a design from the Silhouette America design store.



 
The next thing is dollhouse sized, it is made of several layers of heavy paper (watercolour paper), with the decorations being 2 layers of poster board. Then it was stained with gel stain. This was a lot of fun to make. The design was done by Kitty de Leeuw, she send me the file to use with my Cameo. 
Now of course there is a new and better machine out, the Curio, that does fabulous embossing, so that you no longer have to fiddle with tiny little pieces of poster board to make it look like woodcarving. But that machine is going to have to wait a while before I acquire it. Maybe I'll give it to myself for Christmas. In the meantime, I am going to have to find more time to make a few other things, several people have shared cutting files on Facebook, and I am going to have to try some of them. And then I guess I'll have to build some room boxes to display them in.....





I have done a tiny bit of knitting,  I have now actually finished the dresses I showed in a previous post, added the ribbons and buttons, and have it actually on a doll now, I have also made a third one, which was also a test knit for Helena Bleeker.








This last one is one of the baby dresses by Helena Bleeker, the doll is about the right size for the cradle above. It is knit with YLI silk 100 on 0.7mm needles.













I have done some more quilting too, I finally finished the half round window coverings for the living room. They are done in stained glass appliqué.
I have the ones for the bedroom done too, no picture yet, since I do have to add a couple of strips to the sides of the bottom quilts, they somehow ended up not being quite wide enough. The half round tops are done, Once I get the bottom ones ixed I will take some pictures.




Oh, and I have also finished a wall hanging tapestry for a future dollhouse/room box. It is designed by Annelies de Kort, based on an actual tapestry in the Burell collection.   It is stitched on 60 count silk gauze with 2 strands of Piper’s silk floss. This floss is not the easiest thread to stitch with, it catches on the slightest roughness. I love stitching with most silk threads, but not this one. Even so, I am busy doing a second one, designed by the same person, also based on a Burell tapestry, of The Last Supper. I’ll post pictures of it when I have a bit more to show for it. 
I am planning on doing several more tapestries, so maybe sometime in the future I will build a gallery type of room box to display them in.But other than the second one mentioned above, the rest will likely be done with Silk Mill threads, as they are much easier to stitch with. the ones I am planning are the 5 Lady and Unicorn tapestries, don’t know if I’ll ever make all 5 of them, they are pretty big, and I do way too many other things…But I have the patterns, I have the gauze, and am collecting the threads needed.

Hopefully I’ll post more often in the future, but don’t count on it, I can’t guarantee that…..it takes time to make posts,and I’d rather be working on my hobbies.

It’s growing!

I have been sewing quite a few hexies to my big quilt….see how it is growing:


I am having a lot of fun adding hexies. They are soooo easy when you use Inklingo. You just print the cutting and stitching lines onto freezer paper backed fabric with an ordinary inkjet printer, and then you have the option of either using your rotary cutter and ruler, or scissors to cut the pieces, and then you can either hand piece or machine piece.
I really like hand piecing, never thought I would, but it is so relaxing sitting in your easy chair, and you can watch/listen to the TV while stitching, or take it outside and sit in the backyard to stitch.
This quilt is being made with 1 inch per side hexagons, but there are sizes available.
I have become so addicted to stitching hexies, that I have started another quilt using them, This time I am using the half inch per side ones. I am trying to reproduce a quilt done in the late 1930’s early 1940’s by Albert Small. Here you can read about him: Story of Albert Small. If you scroll down the page and click on the continue link, you can see pictures of his quilts. The one I am doing is the first one listed. His is done in 0.25 inch per side hexagons, but I wasn’t quite ready to go that small yet, so I am doing it in 0.5 inch ones.

Not all of the pieces in the picture are sewn together yet, and some do need pressing  It is very addictive stitching these small ones, they are so fast to stitch, only take about 4 or 5 stitches per seam.
Of course, after a while I had to see if I could stitch the 0.25 inch ones, and have done a couple of rosettes:
The 2 on the right are 1/4 inch ones, the tiny one on the left is 3/16 inch. There is not an Inklingo collection available for that size, but I printed the 1/4 inch one at 75%, on a couple of very small pieces of fabric fused to a larger piece of freezer paper. Now I am tempted to print some at 50%, just to see if I can stitch it. The 3/16 one took about 2 stitches, so I think the 1/8 inch ones would take just one stitch per seam….

And then, of course, I could not leave well enough alone Since I started reading about all these people doing the La Passacaglia quilt by Willyne Hammerstein, and then I found that Linda Franz had done an Inklingo collection, I just had to start that one too:
You can purchase the book and/or shape collection here:



Hopefully I will post more often, and the next time I may include some more of my mini’s, somehow I have to insert some time for mini knitting….

Finally back to posting

It has been quite a while since I posted to this blog. Life got in the way, and so did death. I lost my husband of 43 years suddenly to cancer December 2014, which really put me off my hobbies… I am starting to get on with life again, though there is still a lot of time involved with getting things straightened out.

Here are some of the pictures of things I have been working on in the last little while. First some dollhouse sized knitting, which were test knits for Helena Bleeker of http://www.helena-petitefashions.co.uk/. The knitting is done, but on some I still need to add some silk ribbon and beads for buttons. The outfits are all for sale, email me at yarnshop at shaw.ca for more information. It is only the outfits that are for sale, the dolls are not included, since they will be needed for future pictures.

 

This is Betsy, a cute little dress and panties for a 2 inch baby doll,

 

This is Margot, a dress, slip and bloomers for a 3 inch child doll.

 

This is Marigold, a dress and bloomers for a 4 inch doll. Still needs silk ribbon at the waist and sleeves, and some buttons for the back opening. The reason this one is not displayed on a doll is because right at the moment I don’t have a 4 inch child doll. The bloomers normally would not be showing, it is just to show them in the picture.

 

Here are a few of the quilting things I am working on. Yes I work on lots of different things, I get quickly bored with what I am working on, so I change to another project. Most of them are totally different techniques, which makes it easier on my hands as well. With arthritis, it is better to keep changing the way you use your hands.

 

This is the hexagon quilt I am working on. it is being hand pieced, since I can’t stand wasting time on doing English Paper Piecing. I use Inklingo to print the cutting and stitching lines onto the back of fabric. It makes life soooo much easier, since you don’t have to do any basting onto paper, your stitches won’t be on the front, and you don’t have to spend time taking out the basting and taking out the paper again. And it is a lot more accurate, since you have a stitching line to stitch on, so even if you are a bit off with cutting, you still have a very accurate line and match points for stitching. This will eventually be a queen sized quilt for the spare bedroom.

 

Here is another being stitched with Inklingo, though this is being stitched on the machine. This pattern is called Rose Star. I still have a few more of the large hexagons and half hexagons to make, and then it will turn into a window quilt for my living room. I already have one window quilt top done, and another is being hand stitched. These I will show next time.

 

 

This is one of the window quilts for the bedroom. It has been machine embroidered, all it needs is the backing, binding and stitching around the sashings. It is one of three that are almost done. It is really about time I got these finished, since the mini blinds are now over 20 years old, and are starting to disintegrate.

 

 

I will post more things like the mini stitching and maybe some of my regular sized knitting in the next post. I think this is enough for right now……