buttonhole

Stitching is still "hot"

It's so easy to take with you :

a cloth

a needle (or two)

some threads

and scissors

...

on the boat,

in a waiting room,

at the Alpaca knitting group

(no ... they didn't mind !)

I did some really small pieces

with mostly ONE kind of stitch

buttonhole stitch

Cotton (in fact for crochet), embroidery floss, rayon and silk

on shot cotton (with a piece of felt at the back)

10 x 10 cm

Initially I did one like this in reds

on white cotton with a ragged edge,

but stitching on the edge

on not easy then !

So for the blue one I took a bigger piece of fabric

but still a 10 x 10 piece of felt.

A nearby trip last week

through a foggy landscape

resulted in this gray and white

feather stitch piece.

TAST week 5

The front side of my cushion cover

is growing more than the backside :

too many narrow lines.

Week 5 is the feather stitch

but before that I made a twig with leaves,

twisted chain stitch and fly stitches close together.

Then I made the Portugese stem stitch

around the edges and today some feather stitches at last

The Portugese stem stitch looks a bit lumpy,

because you wind the thread two times around the stitch

I also have now an overall plan

for the colour scheme.

(ha : guess what :

the whole rainbow)

wordless Wednesday

19 - 1 - 19 ... T A S T

The year had a quiet start :

I love that

after all the hussle and bussle of December.

Now January halfway gone ...

I am making sketches again for new pictures,

forming ideas of  "stories" ...

painting them will take a while.

But

I started something else :

T A S T 

No, not "task", though it is,

but Take A Stitch Tuesday.

I found this accidentally

and it reminded of my try two years back :

something similar but abandoned very soon.

Let's see what this year brings ...

An old IKEA cushion cover I found

(the back is almost totally white)

A thread-nest with odds and ends of other

stitching projects

The start of  T A S T  at the back side of the coverlet.

Me, I was stitching on Thursday

and catching up the first three weeks :

chain stitch, fly stitch and buttonhole stitch

(with variations if you want to)

All familiar to me so time to play !

(I hope it's allowed to stitch on other days too ?

at least I did !)

Start at the front ...

(HA, someone in the TAST - community

is using the very same coverlet ...)

enjoy !

Holidays give many opportunities.

You can spend them with family

with friends

with the cat / the dog

or alone

("home alone" can be sooo good,

though there still is that movie

they show almost every year about this time ... )

You can party

you can cook / eat some extravagant dinner

or just look what's in the fridge

...

Everyone can choose (I hope)

what suites her or him best.

The main thing is :

  ENJOY  

(these last few weeks I've enjoyed another

online felting class

made quite a few felted birds,

and made some special presents

that will be unwrapped in two days)

But

in case you are one of the many people

who have to WORK right now

then I hope you catch some

  happy time  

later !

king or fisher ?

It might become a mild

addiction

.....

Soon after making the very first bird

I started to use a felting needle :

not too much,

but just to make sure I start off with the right shape.

That way I'm able to follow more closely

the colour pattern on the bird.

King or Fisher ???

We don't hardly ever see them here, kingfishers.

They are quite rare

Years ago I saw a bright blue flash

from a branch near the water behind our garden

and knew what it must have been right away !

(never seen one since)

(no harm done)

(hmmmm ... sure lóóks like an addiction)

one bird in the hand ...

Like last year

I'm participating in an online felting class

of Corinna Nitschmann.

Though I don't have a lot of time

to do some big felting right now,

but there's the possibility to save these lessons for later

(like the wrist warmers and the skirt)

But the little birds that adorned a felted vessel

were sooooooooo CUTE

I had to try them right away !

A tiny bit of wool

lukewarm water, soap

and nimble hands

do the trick.

A small great tit was the result !

And because it's such fun ...

(a blue tit without a picture)

a wren

and a tail tit.

Always love it when in winter these little ones

come foraging in a group !

Maybe I even make one of these special visitors in felt !

(ring-necked parakeets are more and more common here)