Chookshed Challenge

 My August challenge #9 is now complete and I am very happy with how it has turned out. My little sketchbook now feels much more booklike and is lovely to hold. Here are the pictures.

Here is the link to how I made the little book back in 2017 and I am now going to make an effort to finish working into the unfinished pages. Very happy to have this finally done.

September's challenge is #3 and that is this sashiko project. I am not sure why I bought this kit, other than that it was on sale, and have been putting off making it up for a while. But I am going to get it done now and maybe it will come in handy as a Christmas present!

Good luck everyone with your #3's.

Thank you to Deana for organising our challenge - you can see what others are working on here.

The end of August

 And it has, as is usual with all months it seems, come around far too quickly. September 1st tomorrow, the first day of autumn although I must say the mornings recently have already had an autumnal edge to them. We have had rain over the last few days - very welcome rain - and no doubt the grass will be greening up again soon.

I don't seem to have much to share with you today sadly. But it is the end of the month and so the end of another Stitch Journal section. I have not covered much ground this month but the Hundertwasser section is quite intense.

The next section is going to be fun - you can just see the start of it in the picture above. The linen I am working on is a strip cut from a rectangle that was originally a bag - 18" x 18" - with a fold over flap. I am thinking it was originally a nightdress case. The flap was heavily embroidered with whitework flowers and it is these that I am going to be embellishing in September.

Chookshed Challenge

I have made progress this week and am now ready to construct the book cover.

I started the week with this

added gold paint

then enjoyed embellishing with thread and beads

Now I need to add a lining - which requires the machine, so I will need to be in the mood to drag it out from it's hidey hole! Definitely one day this week! Looking forward now to seeing which challenge comes up for September.

Both socks have made progress and are past the heel and on the home straight. Pics next week.

And that is it from me. Hope you all have a good week.

FNWFs August and Chookshed Challenge

 Many thanks to Cheryll for organising our Friday again - you can see who else took part here.

I spent Friday visiting Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham, a 3 1/4 hour coach trip which meant I spent more time on the coach than at the show, but it was worth it!

I have lots of photographs to share but will do that in a separate post.

On the way there, once on the motorway, I was able to get on with some knitting and did most of what you see here. Too tired to knit on the way back - I read instead.

The first sock was finished earlier in the week.

No Stitch Journal on Friday, I had to catch up on Saturday - here is my last week.

And the whole of July

This months Chookshed Challenge number is #7 which for me is to make a cover for this little sketchbook.

You can read about how I made this book back in 2017 here. Since then I have been working, on and off, into the pages with a mostly butterfly and middle eastern theme.

I plan to take some of the shapes and patterns from the pages and use them on the cover - but need to get my thinking cap on!

Finally some purchases from FOQ starting with some blue fabrics to use with the yellow hexies I worked on for the Chookshed Challenge back in January.

A Sue Hawkins kit - my thread cutter is always getting lost so hopefully this will help me keep track of it.

a selection of threads

some vintage bits

and some lovely eco dyed fabric.

If you are still with me then thank you! And I will see you soon with some FOQ pictures.

FNWF's - a very late July report!

Late afternoon last Wednesday (4th) a terrific storm came up our valley bringing with it very strong winds, hail plus some much needed rain. Here it is coming towards us.

The storm passed, we had a few blips of the power but for no length of time and when we went to bed later that night all was well. However, next morning, no internet and we have been without it until today (Thursday12th). First of all we were told it would be back the same day, then it would be back by 6pm Monday and then that it would be back by 6pm Friday. So at least it is a day earlier than the last prediction. You can imagine how many messages and blog posts are queued up waiting to be read!

Anyway, back to Friday. Before the internet went down I had watched a DMTV video entitled 'Stencilled Iris' which involved stencilling onto fabric with Markal (Shiva) paintsticks through freezer paper. It looked like a great technique so I decided that would be my project for the afternoon. I have a print block of an Imperial Pink flower that I made some years ago and knew that would make a perfect stencil. So I traced the design onto freezer paper and cut it out carefully so that I had both the negative and positive images intact. I used a small square of fabric to trial my design with the flower shape and ironed on the freezer paper shape.

 

I then used a gold paintstick on the freezer paper

 

and pulled the colour with my finger onto the fabric

 

The freezer paper lifts off easily to leave the negative of the flower shape

Magic! I love it. You can reuse the freezer paper shape as many times as you like until it runs out of stick (protect your iron with some non stick parchment!) I added an Antique White flower to my gold one.

 

 

I remembered that I had used the print block of this flower in my hand made sketchbook so decided to add a stencil to the book using a turquoise paintstick. I have also glued the used stencil onto another page in the book and they are both now waiting to be worked into.

 

 



 

 

On a larger piece of fabric I tried out my other freezer paper shape, again using gold.

 

 

And then that was it for my afternoon. Since then I decided that the larger piece of fabric would be enough to make a book wrap for my handmade sketchbook and so I continued stencilling onto it. It is now layered up and ready to embellish with stitch.

 

 

I have worked one each of the stencils into my current journal and played around with a gold pen.

 

 

I was able to find my original sketchbook pages which included photographs of the pinks which was very useful.

 

 

I must get some more seeds for these and grow them next year as they were such lively flowers - I nicknamed them 'dancing pinks' at the time.

 

I am off to catch up on some more emails and blog posts - more news from here over the weekend I hope.