stitching things together

Late last night I started stitching this little piece.
Black linen (a tea towel) with white-ish silk thread.
Sashiko style stitches.

I was thinking of my Cumulus Purses from years ago as I formed it.
Stitching by hand - the whole piece.

Oh golly. How can come thread and fabric stitched together make me feel so full and happy.

I plan this year to do more of What Makes Me Happy.
And thread and yarn do so make me happy.

Will you join in, in making happy xxx

I would like to organise some making creating gathering events - stitching friendship / making happy / eating delicious afternoon tea. Would you be interested in joining in, coming along, bringing your friends, making new friends. Creative Gatherings - an idea I'm working on with my neighbour.

stitching blue

I am still enjoying working and playing with blues.
Blue on white.
Blue on black hemp - oh the texture still gets me, love it so.
I'm about to start on some natural linen and see where that takes me.

Wouldn't it be lovely to turn those dried shriveled pansies into a dye colour. Alas I think it wouldn't keep or stay too long on fabric. Wonderful for looking at and enjoying as is.

I'm also working with my blue/purple plant dyed yarn. So much of it still left; though I have more to dye in the coming weeks. {I am considering having it available at my upcoming market stalls, what do you think about that?}.

When I shared this white piece on Instagram (are on over there? I'm @petalplum if you want to follow), I was thinking about the braille pieces on Lisa Solomon's musings page. Oh I do love the way she leaves her thread tails hanging; good for an artwork, not so practical for the end uses I plan for these stitched pieces. I'll cut them off eventually, but am enjoying looking and playing with them for now.

*please excuse the wonky look of the blog. I am trying to find spare moments to update and change it, along with working on the Hey Maker! blog and new Big Cartel page.

stitch still life

i stitched these little pieces up this morning.
cleared away the mess on our table and set myself up with some thread, a needle and these scraps of hemp / organic cotton (which do look like linen, don't they).
vague notions on Shibori stitches - though of course, nothing at all like the intricate reality of Shibori. perhaps one day - maybe never. maybe will always be my inerpretation. i think that's ok. actually, maybe that's better.

these two little pieces had a quick photo shoot and then into the jars of dye outside. i had intended on having a cabbage purple, but it had turned brown (i put a rock in it to weight some other fabric down, and it must have had it's own colouring in it! ah well - red cabbage is on the shopping list). they both went in the rusty / eucalytpus leaf solution. a deep dark intense grey. we'll have to wait a few days to see if the stitches worked their magic, as i've imagined or not.....

i'm hoping next week may be a bit less busy (though i doubt it!). perhaps some more stitching and dye experiments.
mind you - i just love the look of rough stitches on raw folded.pleated.tucked.manipulated fabric

what will you be doing this weekend?

{ps - i forgot it thursday, which means it's creative spaces play day}. 

something practical this time

I got this lovely lovely yarn on Friday, at a local op-shop (thrift store). It really was a lucky find - I'd gone to get cash from the machine, and when I came back to pay, the lady was putting it out for sale.  I said how much, she said '.....oh, $4?'. Yes yes!

A whole bag of yarn balls. 7 full + 2 with only a little bit already gone. 60% wool with 40% nylon - though it feels really soft and woolly. It's in the most delicious dove grey colour. Someone bought it a long time ago from Coles for about 0.75c, they still have the labels and price stickers.

I've been thinking I needed to start on a lovely blanket - so that's what I did. But then, lying beside the fire last night, Sam mentioned that we really do need some big floor cushions. So - this became a crochet floor cushion (still in the works). I'm planning it big, as big as I can go with the yarn I have. Perhaps I'll get two?

There's no pattern. I just started out as I know how - crochet in the round. And then I added five little corner tab bits (with double stitches and chain rows), to form a pentagon shape. It's just evolving as I work each new row. Changing stitches as I feel like it. I did say at some point today that I was already a little bored with it (after all this tiny rock crochet, this really is a big project for me) - but changing stitches helps to keep me going. And it really is quite yummy yarn. Soft and so easy to work. It's crocheting up quite quickly. And the whole family is taking interest in it, which really does help.

I was using orange embroidery thread as corner markers (oh, I do need to get me some stitch markers, don't I!). The orange was a perfect pop against the grey (especially on this overcast, rainy day). And then, a quick look in my tiny stash bag to discover some orange yarn for the occasional row or two.

It's sure to be ready in time for next Winter - I know myself too well. I get a great start on things, and then go now-where with it. Here's to a finished cushion before the 'lying in front of our fire season' is over!

 and this last one, taken by candle light, and the extra light of a torch. It's hard holding a heavy torch in one hand, and taking a photo with the other hand. I've realised (or thought about it) this week, that we have been living here for 15months now - with no electricity....... 

Crochet by candlelight seems to have become my life!

stitching :: planned mistakes

I have two slow stitching projects on the go at the moment.
I'm calling them 'slow' for two reasons :: firstly they are taking me time to pick them up between stitching days and get working on them, secondly because I am working by hand on them both.

Crochet, of course, is always by hand (rather than machine) - but I think it's the process which which I'm working it, that's making it feel slower and more by hand than usual, for me. This is the piece* that I started last year, sometime. I took it with me to the Brisbane school pick-up and drop-offs, standing there waiting and stitching row upon row upon row. Straight rows, one after the other. Occasional double crochet added, but mainly single crochet stitch after stitch. I got bored with it. I love the organic wool. I love the feel, and the colours. But I got bored stitching row after row and wondering when (if) it would ever get to a suitable size to be called a blanket - rather than a big scarf. So I unraveled it. All three+ balls of it - the kids helped me to pull and then wind it all up into one big ball.
Now I am stitching in the round. It started as a spiral, then morphed into circles. It's meant to have stepping ups to the next row - but generally it doesn't. So there's a lot of mistakes. But that doesn't matter to me. It's happening. Enjoyably. Fairly quickly - slowly or not at all at some times. Of course it won't be ready for this Winter - but that's okay. Perhaps next Winter we'll have it in our new house, to snuggle under in a new room, on a new couch (or some sort of thing to sit on, depending on funds at the end of building!).

Hand stitching these pieces together is fun. Giving me the freedom to allow myself to stitch loose and big and not at all in any sense of 'perfection'. At the moment I've lost the needle somewhere within a pile of fabric, but next week (or even this afternoon) I'll find it again and pick it up and start stitching some more. These warm flannel fabrics are lovely to work with, and easy to imagine joining the crochet blanket next year in that new house of ours - despite the fact the colours won't match at all. All I did was cut the big squares (don't know the sizes, as my tape measure is packed somewhere in a box, with the spare sewing needles and extra threads) into quarters, and now am stitching them back together in different colour variations. I'm working on all reds / pinks together, all yellowy / orangey / pinks and then the blues / greens together. Once they're working into bigger squares of block colours, I'll arrange it again and see how the colours + patterns work together. I'm doing it without thinking too much, or more to the point, without overthinking it (Something I do too much, too often). It won't be perfect - but that's good. I'm aiming for not perfect. I'm even assuming and planning for the fact that I'll probably have to do repair work on my wonky, loose stitching at some stage (perhaps even in it's first year of use).

Planned mistakes, letting things evolve as they happen - stitch by stitch, row by row (either crochet wool or stitched cotton fabric). That's a good thing to do sometimes. Letting my hands work slowly, happily bit by bit by bit by moments at a time......

{I'll find the pieces I'm working on, along with the camera, and the correct sunshine lighting, and the spare moment - possibly with or without little hands in the frame - and show you the actual stitches that are happening. Rather than the before shots - before it was unraveled, and before it was cut}

*Looking back on that blog post, and seeing the drawn plans for our home. How lovely - of course, there have been at least a half dozen or more reinterpretations of the ideas since then. But always, always, with a room of my own.