Free Machine Stitching

These small pieces of stitching are part of my wall hanging "The Road to my House".  

My free machine stitching was a bit of a challenge but I am reasonably pleased with them.  The next step is to embroider and embellish them.

My wall hanging is finished (at last).

The backing fabric is black and I have decorated it with some twigs, leaves and small gum nuts from our garden.

Before I put it on the backing I damped stretched it.  The picture shows it pinned to the cork board ready for spraying with water.

I was a little concerned that some of the colour in the threads might run but all was well.

This is to hang in our lounge room.

I am pleased to see it finished because I have been distracted by other things lately

Sunday evening stitching

It is Sunday evening and while we watch the Rugby cup final I have been finishing off some of my buttons.  

We have had a lovely sunny and warm day today.  One of my daughters and her husband came for morning tea and while the men talked my daughter and I took their dogs for a lovely walk.  The spring gardens in our neighborhood are in full bloom and the air is full of beautiful aromas.  There is nothing quite like the smell of the eucalyptus trees when it is hot and dry.

Our next door neighbours have returned from their holiday in the uk.  I am not sure how they did it: they took their five year old daughter and 1 year old twin girls and managed to visit family and friends in Wales and the South of England as well as time in London, Disneyland in France and a few days in Spain.  


They are as unhappy about the screen as we are which is good.  I am sure we will be able to work out a solution!

Back to the stitching.  I am finding these buttons and brooches are really fun and give plenty of scope for creativity.  I think they would look great on a scarf or clipped to a bag. 

I hope everyone is looking forward to a busy and happy week.

neighbours

What is our world coming to?

This is the side view of the back of the house next door. They have had several rooms added to their home to accomodate their growing family. On the back is a lovely decking with room for the children to play and to eat outdoors. We have always been able to see them coming and going and we chat when we have time. The new building regulations require that a "privacy screen" is built to block them from looking at us and us at them!!!!! There is a similar treatment at the front of the property too. Goodness, heaven forbid we would ever "see" each other. We are so accustomed to pop over to the fence line for a quick chat or a wave of the hand as we come and go. Now we will have to knock on each other's front door.

Apart from all of that it looks so ugly. No I am not happy about this.

Our neighbours will be home from the UK tonight and I so look forward to them coming home.

my first button

This is my first button.  I am very pleased with it.

This second pic is of the damp stretching of the piece before constructing the button.

I am amazed at the difference this step makes to the finished item.

stitching

I am doing an inline course with Karen Raune and this is what I am working on.  It will be a button when it is finished.   We are doing french knots, bullions, needleweaving and other stitches to make buttons or broaches. 

and another beach

We have been up to Tweed Heads for a few days to visit Mike's dad and to soak up a little warm weather.

One of the things I had forgotten was that the Jacarandas would be in bloom.  The one pictured is in the back garden of a house near my father-in-law's house and as the plane takes off over that area we can see this tree from the air.  So beautiful.

The pictures in the collage are of Greenmount Beach at Coolangatta (Queensland) which is by far my favourite place to have a swim.  The water was 21degrees which is  a lot warmer than down here: the locals thought I was mad to want to go in at that temperature but it is so lovely with the surf crashing around.

Later in the evening we had heavy rain and lots of thunder:  further north the storm was much worse with quite a lot of damage I think.

We are home again with our warm socks on and the central heating warming us up.  

I have been doing a lot of stitching so will show you the results in the next day or so.

another day another picture

Morning walk

books and branches

I have almost finished my wall hanging.  I don't think I have ever done more "unstitching" on a project before.  A matter of an overdose of ideas.  

I have been troubled by the number of empty and misshapen branches but of course this is a normal part of the native trees that surround us. 

Today I picked up some books I bought on line.

These are not your regular hard back books.




 

They were advertised as "display novels" and as you can see the page are blank.

Now these suit me quite well while I wait for my new reading glasses but they offer such possibilities for creativity.  I bought 15 white covered books and 4 black covered books for $20.  What a bargain!!!!  

If you had these books what would you do with them?

something old and something new

I made this tiny pin cushion while babysitting the little girls next door.

It had to be something that I could carry in my handbag and pick up and put down whenever I had a minute or two.

The edging is not finished yet:  I have to wait till my new reading glasses arrive (about another 10 days) 

so that I can see the stitches!

I made this bookmark using aida cloth and silk ribbons, threads and beads.  I cannot remember when I made it but it was several years ago.


 

 It includes crystals to add sparkle.

I do love silk ribbons.  They are so lovely to work with.

My Grandsons

I

It is the second week of the school holidays and my three grandsons have come to stay for a few days.  This evening we went out for dinner and stopped at the beach on the way home to see the sun set.  It was so relaxing and now they are settling down to sleep on the lounge room floor and couches.  

The weather will be good tomorrow so we will probably be exploring the rock pools again. 

gifts in the mail, recycling & a dilemna

Today I have been thinking about the way we consume so much "stuff".

Some of it gives us great pleaure:  the pic on the left shows the lovely parcel I received from Jennie. http://jennie61.blogspot.com/

These little treasures will form part of the wall hanging I am doing with Carole Burangar.
http://kiwicarole.blogspot.com/
The next pic is of some of the materials I will use for the wall hanging.  I am pleased to know that much of what I shall be using will be recycled materials and that everything I need is already in my stash.

T

 Carole suggested we use old linen and tea dye it.  However I have some doileys I have dyed for just such a project.  I also have some old lace hankies which will fit the bill perfectly.

Some of these look too good to use but they are stained or torn so it seems like a good way of using them up.





Now to the dilemna.

We want to buy a new television with access to the internet etc.  We have just 2 televisions in our house: one in the lounge/living room and one downstairs in the work room/guest area.  The one upstairs is 10 years old and the one downstairs was passed on to us by our eldest daughter.
Both of these sets work.  They are good.  We do however want a larger and more modern set.


What do we do with the one set we want to replace? If we take it to the local waste disposal centre it will be shipped off by some company: probably to some third world country where it will be pulled apart by some poor people without any care for their welfare.


The charity shops will not accept old tvs.


What to do?