Monday Project - Christmas Dishcloths

I got out my Christmas dishtowels on Friday - they make my kitchen look so festive!  Except .... the dishcloths.  They're blue and yellow and purple - not Christmasy.  So this weekend I've been a busy knitter!  And yes - I'm still just knitting dishcloths. 

These are the same pattern I wrote about here with a couple of changes.  I now make them bigger - cast on 54 stitches and make 11 or 13 stripes, depending on how large you like your dishcloths to be.  I used Knit Picks Cotlin in Sprout, Pomegranate, and Swan.

And I think one of my New Year's goals should be to branch out in my knitting!  Maybe a scarf ....

Happy Creating!  Deborah

Friday Inspiration - Sharon McCartney

Much of my inspiration comes from nature, so I'm always excited when I find fiber art created by artists who share this interest!  I recently discovered Massachusetts artist Sharon McCartney and love her work.  You know you're going to love an artist when her statement begins with Rachel Carson's quote, "One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, 'What if I had never seen this before?  What if I knew I would never see it again?'"

One of the things I really enjoy about Sharon's work is that feeling of catching a glimpse of a moment in nature - a patch of the forest or a few rocks.  It's the type of art you can keep looking at and keep seeing in new ways.

Spell Collection, mixed media

Her Stone Pillows draw me in!  There are just so many rich layers!  I like how the pillows seem to make the "ordinary" gathered materials seem more precious, more special.

Songs I Used to Sing, mixed media

The Ground Truths series is amazing!  Each is a small piece of ground - a little vignette.  Again the layers of texturing are so rich.

Be sure to stop by her site and look at all of her work - she also has some great banners and artist books!

Happy Creating!  Deborah

Wednesday Sewing - Holly Leaf Art Coasters

I decided to try some Christmas color themed ice dyeing and had a couple pieces turn out really well!  The colors in these fabrics reminded me of Christmas greenery, so I decided to sew up a set of holly leaf coasters.  I made them basically the same as I did the Leaf Art Coasters in this past post - there are a few differences I'll tell you about.  And if you like the leaves but don't have time to make them yourself, I made a couple of extra sets and have them up on my store!

Materials:
*fabric that has a variety of greens - I used ice dyeing to make my own with Procion fiber reactive dyes forest green, dark green, and yucca green with a couple spots of fire red added in.  If you don't want to dye your own fabric, batiks would look nice.
*small amount of red fabric - I used a felted wool fabric I had
*Steam-a-Seam II Lite
*Iron on felt
*sewing thread - I used a mossy green, red, black, and silver
*patterns found here

1.  Cut two holly leaf pieces from green fabric and one from iron on felt.  Cut about 1/4 inch more off of the felt.  Iron Steam-a-Seam onto the wrong side of red fabric and cut one berry piece from it.  Iron to fuse felt to wrong side of one of the holly leaf pieces.  Remove backing from berry piece and iron to attach to right side of the other holly leaf piece.

2.  Pin two holly leaf pieces together.

3.  With a small zigzag stitch, sew along the edges of the holly leaf.  Trim any rough edges.

4.  Thread sketch an outline around the leaf and berries and along vein lines with different colors of thread.  See the original leaf coaster post for more instructions.  I first used black thread, then green on the leaf and red on the berries, and ended with silver over everything.

Happy Creating!  Deborah

Monday Project - Textured Fabric Bookmarks

One of my favorite things to do is to texture fabric by adding embroidery and beading.  I'd love to do this to a piece that's big enough to make something like a blouse with, however ..... reality and time constraints mean I texture pieces the size of items like bookmarks!  For this one I used a Christmas fabric - lots of them work really well with this technique.

Materials:
*small piece of fabric
* small piece of felt
*embroidery floss - for this bookmark I used DMC's special effects in copper and silver colors
*size 12 perle embroidery thread (you won't need this if you attach the fabric to its felt backing with the sewing machine)
*seed beads
*pinking shears

1.  Cut a 2 1/2 by 7 inch piece of fabric.

2.  Embroidery parts of the fabric that will stand out.  You can embroidery around the outlines of everything, but for this piece I thought it would look best to outline the moon and stars.

3.  Iron under each edge of fabric about 1/4 inch.  Look at your fabric's pattern and determine where beads would add texture.  Sometimes this can be using beads to outline motifs - for my fabric it seems perfect to use the beads to accent the circles on the trees.  If you use seed beads, the bookmark will still be thin enough to use in a book.

4.  Pin fabric to a 2 1/2 by 7 inch piece of felt that you've cut with pinking shears.  If you have beads near the edge, you'll have to hand sew the fabric to the felt.  I used a large running stitch to do this.  If you don't have beads near the edge, you can do this with a sewing machine.

Here's another bookmark I'm working on - I'm planning on outlining all the foliage with copper thread and then adding in a clear seed bead here and there.

Happy Creating!  Deborah