Self Portrait - Vessel

Superfine merino, hand felted, stitched.

makin' stuff

a birthday gift

and a work in progress

Felt

Every day for the last week I've been driving into town to check the post box to see if my parcel has arrived. Finally yesterday it did. I ordered 3 new books from Doubleday (apparently I have to buy books to honour my commitment!) As I mentioned before, Peta told me of the India Flint and Toyoko Sugiwaka book Felt, which excited me so much, I rushed home that very day and ordered it. Now I have to admit, I'm not normally very excited by 'how-to' craft books; but this book is just so beautifully excecuted and the projects are simply lush! Already today I've been making felt balls with my new wool from Treetops Colour Harmonies (which arrived in the post just 2 days after I ordered! Well done guys.)

And, now (three days after initially starting this post) I discover I have another book from the same series from Murdoch Books: Paper

more christmas decorations...


This little guy is hand beaded and embroidered. A slow and time consuming technique, but a relaxing one.

the bird motif seems to be a very popular one, and one that I normally avoid. But it seemed appropriate for christmas.

I decided to steer away from felt for this one. Ideally I'd like to be using more vintage fabrics, but my stash is a little depleted. So vintage silk wings (one of my favouritest fabrics courtesy of mel) teamed here with striped cotton that was originally intented to become 3/4 pants for miss bella. Not finished yet, but I mainly wanted to test out the hand applique stitch that I recently saw demonstated on a daytime quilting show (very sad, I know..but these nanna's have a lot of skills to teach!)

I have a bunch of ideas fliting around in my head, so hopefully there will be loads more to come.