water soluble

The "House Challenge" 

is coming to an end.

Last Monday Sara sent the last pdf

with instruction and suggestions.

The houses of everybody are far from finished

but that is okay,

we will have many more weeks to continue.

On the 20th of March

random couples will be picked by Sara

and we'll make some small item

for the house of the other person of the couple :

a small fun swap,

just like at the end of the other challenges !

These are the three walls of my house.

I incorporated the roof :

the green walls end in green leaf-like points.

I also found my coloured wire,

thick and thin.

The wings of the butterfly

have very thin blue wire attached to the front side

and now she has long antennae 

(with a bead at the end)

These are the walls since yesterday.

There are some more inhabitants now :

... a (sleeping) cocoon and the known "doorman"

... two new baby caterpillars ...

Making the butterfly wings with

water soluble

was sooooo much fun

that I had to do some more with that funny stuff today.

I have two varieties of the water soluble "fabric"

One is kind of plastic-like,

the other one is thicker and looks more like interfacing

only DON'T touch it with wet hands, or sneeze :

it will shrivel away !!!

First I have a piece of  water soluble

(big enough to fit in a plastic embroidery hoop

that one is thin, so it will easily go under the presser foot of the machine )

then I use some tulle or polyester sheer

with lots of threads and snippets underneath.

Then comes the "free stitching" :

you have to be sure that all the snippets are connected by stitch.

When you are satisfied with your end product

you can pin your work on a thick cellular polystyrene

and rinse out the water soluble !

(using little water leaves a lot of "glue" in your work and makes it stiff, 

using a lot (and rub some) leaves your work a lot softer !)

 A new idea taking shape

Held up against the light

you better see the waste threads I used for this one

*

Just have to show this gorgeous Amaryllis  :

two stems with four flowers each !!!

And last week we had another mandala evening

(Isis & Osiris)