Climbing Rose

I wanted to do some applique, but didn't want to start a new project. Then I remembered a 12 inch block I made many years ago. It's called Climbing Rose and it was part of a series of rose patterns by Leta Brazell. At the time I needed to practice some applique leaves for another project and this was the perfect block for it. Now I printed the other patterns too, so I can make a quilt with 4-6 blocks.

Elephant

Last week I finished this cute little elephant. It's a pattern from the book Amigurumi World by Ana Paula Rimoli. I knitted a long shawl for him.

Inchie Sunday 20

The whipped wheel and French knots are embroidered with Stef Francis perle 5. The backstitch border is stitched with 2 threads of stranded DMC. I added the embroidery to the cardstock with double sided sticky tape, but made a mistake when I cut it!

Strawberry cupcake

For this ATC I made a combination of trapunto and embroidery. Instead of quilting the cupcake, I embroidered it in Portuguese stemstitch. Then I stuffed it from the back and added the French knots and leaves in woven picot. The stem is a padded satin stitch. There's a bigger photo of this ATC at my Flickr-page. This is the second ATC I made for Janet for the July swap at Stitchin Fingers. Unfortunately it's gone astray again!!!

Red thread challenge

This week's zentangle challenge at I am the diva is a guest post by Chris from Tangled Up in Art. The challenge was to create a traditional black and white tangle tile with a single red "thread" running through it. When I read the word "thread", I immediately thought embroidery and that's what I did. After tangling my tile I embroidered the string in Portuguese stemstitch with red DMC 80.

Een stem van papier

. . . is the Dutch title of the old library book I'm altering. In English the title would be 'A paper voice'. I already wrote about the altered page with Punzel here. On these 2 pages I made rubbings with crayons and some gesso pages from my studio journal. Then I ironed them with a piece of baking paper to set the colours.

This is a little detail of the right page.

Here I ironed some fusible webbing to the pages. Then I added blue and yellow watercolour paint.

This page is my interpretation of Suz's experiment with leaves and watercolour paint. My red/orange background was completely dry when I added the leaves. I just closed the book and put some rubber bands around it to keep the leaves on the page while the green watercolour paint was drying. The next day I painted the edges of the leaves in black watercolour paint and removed them.

I'm going to add more other things to these pages when I finished the backgrounds of the remaining pages.

TAST fabric book cover

This is the front side of my cover. The pattern is one of Sharon's Friday freebies. I used backstitch, stemstitch, open chain stitch and raised close herringbone. Now I have to sew all pages to the cover to finish my fabric book.

If you missed the first TAST challenges, there's a new one next year. You can join here.

Autumn ATC's again

Last week I recieved these pretty ATC's for an Autumn ATC swap.

I wrote about the ATC's I made for this swap here.

Inchie Sunday 19

The snowflake is a pattern from my book 'Kerstkaarten borduren op papier' by Erica Fortgens. The thread is a Madeira metallic.

Music tape doily

It was fun to crochet with an old music tape again. I already wrote about my music tape basket here. This time I made a small doily, it's about 15 cm or 6 inch.

Open chain stitch

I finally decided which fabric to use for the cover of my TAST fabric book. On the front I'm stitching one of Sharon's Friday Freebies. First I wanted to use the stitches of this challenge for the cover too, but it didn't work. So I tried another stitch that was new to me, the open chain stitch also known as square chain stitch. The other line is a stem stitch. Sharon is thinking about a rerun of the TAST challenge, read all about it on her blog.

Zentangle Mosaic Inchies ATC

This was a fun ATC swap. First I had to cut a few inchies from a watercolour experiment and glue 6 of them on an ATC. Then it was time to draw some tangles on it. I used the inchies from my crayon experiment. It was the same sheet as I used for my inchies Resist & Waves and Resist & Paradox. On this ATC I used Mooka. Here's the pretty ATC Joan made for me.

Surprise in my mailbox

There was a link party on Deze is ook leuk! to celebrate the 1000th post. I thought it was fun to share the link to my music tape basket. Last Friday I saw I was the lucky winner of Hermine's package! Yesterday it arrived in my mailbox. Inside there were some cute stamps . . .

. . . and some pretty ribbon. I think I'm going to use the blue one in my next CQ project.

There were some nice paper flowers,

a small piece of canvas, some pretty clips . . .

. . . and paper buttons.

Hermine made this lovely needle felted heart . . .

. . . and a gorgeous needle felted postcard!

Thanks, Hermine!

Inchie Sunday 18

This inchie was a scrap of a glue and watercolour experiment. I cut some flowers with a paper punch and glued some eyes on it.

Zentangled J

This week another missing letter for my zentangled ATC alphabet arrived. This is the J that I made for Kathy . . . . . . and this is the J Caiti made for me.

My alphabet is nearly complete, only one more letter!

Gorse Fairies finished!

Today I made the last stitches on my Gorse Fairies! It's finally finished after almost 30 years. I introduced this embroidery on my blog in January 2010. It was also the last goal for this year, so I can start thinking about a new project . . . or finally finish my TAST fabric book!

Knitted Christmas ball

I knitted my first Christmas ball designed by Arne & Carlos. I used the pattern in the latest issue of 'Handwerken Zonder Grenzen' and knitting yarn from my stash. It's slightly bigger than a tennis ball. It's knitted on 5 needles. It was the first time I tried this and I didn't knit the snowflake pattern. I'll try that next time.

Punzel

I was finally brave enough to try the new zentangle Punzel for challenge 45 at I am the diva. The last few weeks I've been painting backgrounds with watercolour paint in an old book. I used one of them as the background for Punzel. This was my first attempt at this zentangle, I need to practice a little more!

I hope to share a few more pages of my altered book soon.

Inchie Sunday 17

Last Friday I saw this stitch here and thought it would be great to use on an inchie. I found the instructions for it in "The Embroidery Stitch Bible". I used DMC broder special for the Norwich stitch and DMC Jewell effects for the running stitches.

Autumn ATC's

These are the ATC's I made for an autumn ATC swap. First I made the background on a piece of watercolour paper. I drew some leaves and other lines with glue and let it dry. Then I added some watercolour paint. The idea for this technique came from Suz.

Then I cut the background in ATC size and had some partly leaves on 3 of them.

I added some stamped leaves . . .

. . . and some ink to the edges.

With a scrap from the background I made this apple inchie.

Pocketz!

Until this week I kept my zentangle tiles in an old diskette box.

I was the lucky winner of the Pocketz pages of zentangle challenge 44 at I am the diva, so my tiles moved from the box to my new pages.

They look much better this way!

Music tape basket

I experimented with an old music tape and a crochet hook. The result is a pretty small basket.