I don't have a large wardrobe of dresses but I love those I have. Ripping a hole in one is a disaster, and that is what I did. It is made of a light cotton voile and I must have snagged it on something. I repaired it by backing the hole with a plain fabric and machining this in place.
Up close the repair looks messy but it gets lost in the folds. I might get a couple more years out of this one.
Sure pays to know how to sew.
No work in progress at the moment.
My cleaning lady has decided to take a full time job and I haven't been able to find anyone to replace her. So, here I am doing my own cleaning. The problem is that when I have come to do the job I find lots of thing that she has missed doing for ages. Like moving the furniture and cleaning under and behind things. So this has turned into a major project. And this is one of the warmest times of year. I don't think I will get everything done in just one week somehow or other!
The next room to take apart is my sewing room and I have pulled out the old book cover I was working on. I am going to applique birds to go onto the design but I have to stitch them first.
I have now finished the portrait I was stitching for the on-line workshop with Suzie Vikery and have found that her method is quicker than how I was stitching portraits before. There is room for lots of different methods and I am adding this one to my box of tricks.
As I am still struggling with my health issues I decided to sign up for a year of classes with this group. It will take me out of my comfort zone and take my mind off all the other things. So here comes 12 new projects!!
BUT, I just opened the first class and it is one that I did over 20 years ago with Dijanne Cevall. In fact I had a lino print that I used in a book cover, that is still to be finished. But I know I used one of her lino blocks to print this, I didn't make my own.
I now have trouble with arthritis so I'm not looking forward to doing lino cuts but I have kept some of my blocks from back then.
Her work has moved on since then so I better make another block, or at least try.
I selected sonnet No 3 as the inspiration for this months piece of work.
This is how I 'feel' when I look at the photos of myself and my son Guy when he survived his reaction to penicillin as a babe.
Look in your glass
Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear’d womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime:
So thou through windows of thine age shall see
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember’d not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
I repurposed an old piece of embroidery I found in an Op shop. Some of the leaves on the branch were started but I choose my own colours and finish them and added the wreath and the quotation. Looking at it now I see I was also influenced by the Marjory Allingham books written in the 1930's that I was reading at the same time as stitching this piece. The colours and style are certainly 1930's.
I still have no idea what I will stitch for February!
There is so much talk about Artificial Intelligence I decided to have a try at using it. I have an free account with CAVNA so have started with that.
The process is simple, you just type in some words describing what you want and up pops a design.
I put in 'fierce tiger' for this one and I think I could make it into an embroidery.
But these others are just too complicated for me.
I think I need to do some more research.
Stitchers around the world make up quite a community and a friend in my patchwork group has a friend in Denmark who is also a stitcher. We were all nomads in the mining camps back in the 70's, wives of engineers and chemists who worked on these developments. I lent my friend some of my candelwicking design books and these were sent to Denmark for her friend to stitch.
Her take on candlewicking was different. She did the traditional stitch around the design but added a filling stitch in coloured thread, much like the stitching of traditional pieces from the 1800's Scandinavian folk tradition. The finished piece was stunning. Now this same friend has adopted this approach to a Sashiko panel. This blending of stitching traditions comes up with something quite different.
Like fusion foods this is fusion stitching.
I have finished my first Shakespeare Sonnets piece for January but I need a frame for it so it will keep until next week. So now I am looking at what I will stitch for February and have to admit I am not making a lot of headway. I have had a nasty infection since Xmas and that does cloud the mind. (That's my excuse anyway.)
But I am working an a portrait as part of the Suzie Vikery online workshop I have taken part it.
Still a lot to do on this one and I may toss it out and start again.
I have started some small embroideries that I will eventually make into greeting cards. The are counted thread work and just enough to keep the mind engaged and concentrating whilst stitching.
And then I sleep.
I think I have now read every one of the Marjory Allingham's Albert Campion books .
I know there are some others that her husband, who was also a writter, finished after her death, and others that were written by Ripley and I may read these in the future, but for now I can say I have finished this series.
The last one I read was "The mind readers" , published in the 1960's, and it is curious to read what was seen as acceptable back then. (And I was a young women in the late 60's!). These books could almost be classed as a record of social mores over this period and they paint a vivid picture of society and London and it's surrounds over this period. I was in London in the early 1970's so there is a lot that was familiar to me but the period between the late 1900s through the 40's was an eye opener. I have to admit I like her writting better than Agatha Christie and have a feeling that her books will make a come back in popularity at some point.
Now, onto my next book.
Here is something to decorate your pool. I know my grand daughters would love it.
Not for me. I keep my eyes peeled for sharks on my morning swim in the bay. I see birds diving or fish jumping and I'm out of the water in a flash. We have had a lot of rain which brings the sharks in. This ones name is Bob!
I am enjoying this portrait class with Suzie Vikery. The idea is not to over think the process, just look for the essence not the detail.
This is my progress to day 3.