Felt and pheasant

Featured above is the finished tonal piece that I made for the Tonal Challenge on the previous post. This piece is the size of a postcard and is made purely from needle made felt on an embellisher. These challenges are part of the Challenge Site that I run, anyone can join just by clicking on the Challenge button to the left of this post.

Shown below is the weather we have been having in Kent recently, this was almost like a blizzard at some points. The Uk has predicted A Winter Storm later today and early tomorrow. What a contrast it is compared to the awful situation in Australia. My heartfelt wishes go out to all those who found themselves in the path or such terrifying fires. I will wish for rain and cooler weather for Australia and hope that the situation soon passes.



The picture below is another brooch that I made recently to give to the very kind person who gave me such wonderful Embroidery Magazines. Thanks again Patricia.

I thought that you might like to see what opportunists we have visiting our garden this winter. This pheasant decided that he was just as entitled to the fall from our bird table, infact at times he thought it fun to chase away the blackbirds, cheeky thing, it's such a good thing our dog wasn't out there!

A wonderful trade and a lucky find!

I've been such a lucky thing this week, I was approached by Lisa to make a trade, she does the most amazing ATC's often using old photos (ephemera.) I was rather cheeky when she asked me what I would like to choose, I asked her if she could make me something special for my Grand daughter who has recently auditioned in the first part of the process for the Royal Ballet School. For those of you who haven't heard about my talented little Grand daughter, she was a Champion Acro Gymnast winning a bronze for her country last year at the age of 11. She has now changed her direction and is doing extremely well training as a dancer and hopes to go very far indeed.
As she works so very hard at what she does I wanted to send her something special so Lisa very kindly agreed to make me an Atc themed to Ballet. She sent me two! beautiful cards and my Grand daughter is just so thrilled and these little cards will be going in frames to go on her wall.

They are simple wonderful images, they remind me of Degas' work, what do you think?

Here is my lucky find, I subscribe to the local Freecycle groups and I just happened to be reading through the offered goods and look what I came across, over 100 Embroiderer's Guild Magazines, for Nothing! There are three decades here, it's an amazing addition to my library and they were being offered by a very nice lady not 15 miles from here and her name is Patricia, well, of course she is a very nice lady with that name, no seriously I was over the moon. These sites where you can recycle like this are marvellous, you imagine if I tried to buy all these. If these sites were not available they might have ended up thrown away, now isn't that an awful thought. Very soon I am going to be having a clear out and I will be advertising a lot of Machine knitting wool and scraps of fabric to freecycle, so hopefully some knitter might be just as pleased with their find. If you are reading this Patricia thanks again.

The last two images are the gifts that I have sent to Lisa, if you are reading this Lisa and you haven't got your parcel yet, don't look if you want a surprise, lol. Lisa wanted a landscape ATC which I have made inspired by a local view. I have also become quite happy making little fabric brooches and there is one below, made from felt and fabric beads and embroidery. Hope Lisa likes them.

Next post will be the February Challenge get ready for some work on Tone.

Best wishes Tricia x

A day at the beach and some challenge swaps.

Everyone needs a break now and then, I've had my Daughter and my very talented Grand Daughter staying with me. Some of you may remember my telling you that this little girl is an acro gymnast. She has worked so hard in her little life, we are all so proud of her. She is already a British Champion and she is only 11 years old. That's not all, she qualified this year to go to the Worlds Competition which is being held in Scotland and she will be on the British Team competing with athlete's from all over the world, I can't say that she gets her suppleness from me but she is very artistic when she is performing her moves. Well, we had a real fun day at the beach, and when she saw the trampolines, well, it had to be done.


When I got home I found this on the door mat. Sue one of our textile challengers had not only sent me this beautiful brooch for the brooch swap but also some really special treats. A beautiful hand made card. An absolutely amazing little envelope made from hand made paper and finished wonderfully with a bead fastener. Enclosed in the envelope I found the brooch and a really special key ring. I don't know how Sue knew but my favourite ceramic is blue and white, I collect willow pattern so I adore this key ring. Thank you so much Sue.

Here is my little brooch. It is hand made felt and embroidered with my own hand spun/dyed silk with couched hand spun/dyed mohair with beads added to the design. Well, after my little break I should be refreshed for some more work. back soon......

Miniature Art, buttons and brooches

The Image above shows the size of these brooches next to a £2 coin.

I've been working very hard due to the inspiration I have been given by Helen, it was something she said about my Celtic wallhangings which made me realise that an opportunity had been staring me in the face.

Well, to cut a long story short, I was about to make some of my felt buttons and then I decided to make some brooches too, the latter being with a Celtic theme/flavour. Some have got miniture landscape pictures in them, the others are purely decorative motifs that I have been studying for some time. There is a wealth of inspiration in Celtic Art.

I also decided to try some thread painting and this time I managed to do exactly what I wanted to do. I bought some little tubes of microwave dyes called Quick Colour. I only bought the primaries and it is so simple to get the effect. You don't need many drops to dye some thread so it works great to get the variegated thread that I have been trying to get for some time. Here are some of the examples: the picture does not do it justice but believe me the colour combination I acheived was just so rewarding.

Well back to the brooches:

I am obviously happier with some of these than others but each one is very different either in colour or design.

Here are a few of the other more decorative brooches:

I am now sewing a backing on to each of these brooches with a brooch pin included like this:

The last of the pictures I am placing on here today show my felt buttons, these are great fun as you can see and are useful for knitted jackets but can also be used as an ornament to a textile piece of any description. They often remind me of sweets, depending on the colours I use. Each button is secured with an embroidery method I invented myself based upon a minute cord made on the fingers which is attached to the back so that attaching them to the textile piece is made simpler.

I will probably be putting some of these items for sale on etsy once I have finished them all. I hope that you have enjoyed looking at these as much as I have making them.