Feb
20
Filed Under (Fibre and textile crafts, Quilting/Patchwork, Sewing) by jennyk on 20-02-2010

Today I went to my first guild meeting since last summer, so I didn’t have time to make much, just these swap cards using fabric scraps left over from recent sewing swaps:

The talk today was on the history of dyeing.  Tomorrow, the speaker will be teaching a workshop using Procion MX dyes, so my samples from that should be my Thing-a-Day.

Feb
19

Here are the last 2 blocks, for 2 different partners this time.  BTW, all the blocks really are square – the problem is my photography, not my cutting skills.

Feb
17

Yesterday’s blocks …

Feb
16

I am in two swaps for string quilt blocks, one for blocks with the strips parallel to two sides and the other for random diagonal strips.  Both require us to send one block each to four partners, and three of my partners are the same for both swaps.   The swaps are receiver’s choice of colours, but two of my partners chose similar colour schemes, so I worked on their blocks together yesterday.  It was too late to take a photo of their four blocks when I finished, so I took it today.

Feb
10
Filed Under (Bookbinding, Fibre and textile crafts) by jennyk on 10-02-2010

I’ve made the smaller mini-journal which I mentioned yesterday. It’s 1″ by 1″ (the minimum size for the swap), with 5 2-sheet signatures.

Feb
10
Filed Under (Bookbinding, Fibre and textile crafts) by jennyk on 10-02-2010

Another small journal, this time for the swap-bot “The Coptic Stitch” group “Size Challenge #1″ swap.  The journals must be no bigger than 3″ in either direction.  This one is 3″ by 2.3″.  I’m going to make a much smaller one for my partner, but that will be too small to be usable, so I thought it would be nice to make her one that is only just inside the size limit too.

This book has 5 signatures, each 5 sheets of 90gsm paper.  The cover is a Japanese paper called Ukigumo, which is waterproof and can be heat-fused to the background surface.  The spine is Tyvek lined with mull fabric.  The sewing thread is Gutermanns Sulky Cotton 12.  The inside papers for the covers were cut from a Rococo chocolate bar wrapper.

  

Feb
05
Filed Under (Bookbinding, Fibre and textile crafts) by jennyk on 05-02-2010

Well, I did almost finish this yesterday, but the last stage was the Coptic binding, and I decided I needed to wait for the glue smell from the covers to go away before I tackled that.

This journal is for a Colour Challenge swap in the swap-bot Coptic Stitch group (which covers all handbinding of books, not just Coptic stitch).  This time, the colour is red, so this journal has my favourite red ginburi momigami paper on the cover (very textured, with flecks of gold and silver foil), red lokta paper for the inner cover and red 18/3 linen for sewing.

The cover boards are covered with white Tyvek, which gives slight texture and sheen as well as being durable, with 3 colours of the ginburi momigami paper.  The  journal has 9 signatures, each with 4 sheets of 130gsm A4 short-grain book paper, and the whole book is 6″ by 8.5″ by about 0.8″.

It will be up to the new owner to decide which is the front and which is the back, but I prefer it as in the first picture.  You can click on the pictures for bigger images which show the textures better.

 

 

 

Feb
02
Filed Under (Fibre and textile crafts, Quilting/Patchwork, Sewing) by jennyk on 02-02-2010

I have signed up  for the Unofficial-Thing-a-Day 2010 challenge.  This is (as it says) an unofficial version of the original Thing-a-Day 2010 challenge.  A group of friends aren’t happy with the official challenge this year so we have set up our own version.  The idea is to try to create something each day through February.  Most of us don’t expect to achieve that, but we hope the challenge will push us to create more than we would have done without it.  If it works well, we may try to keep it up, perhaps in a modified form, throughout 2010.

My eagle-eyed readers will no doubt have spotted that it is now just past 2am UK time on February 2nd and this is my first posted ‘creation’.  I could use the excuse that my scanner refused to co-operate and delayed this post (which is true), or I could say that it is still February 1st on the UTAD blog, but the truth is, I didn’t finish until after midnight.  Oh well, I am sure it won’t be the last time during UTAD that I will post late.

So, late but still my first UTAD entry, and a very small one at that, I present to you a small sewn swap card, using fabric scraps (as usual, click to see a larger photo) …

small sewn card #1

Jan
13
Filed Under (Fibre and textile crafts) by jennyk on 13-01-2010

craft storage

Some of us on swap-bot have been discussing craft rooms and how to organise them, so here is a photo of a tiny part of my craft supplies.  Admire the perfection of the organisation …

If I ever get it all properly organised, I may post pictures of that, but don’t hold your breath.

Jan
03
Filed Under (Fibre and textile crafts) by jennyk on 03-01-2010

Spurred on by the example of some of my friends on swap-bot, I’m trying to resurrect this blog again. I’ve done a bit of experimenting with the picture placement on an earlier post and, while I can’t say I’ve cracked it, I seem to be doing better than I was, so I think I’m going to keep the blog here and try to post fairly regularly.

[Yes, I've written that before, but ...]

Just to get it (re-)started, and since it is still technically within the 12 Days of Christmas, here are pictures of some ornaments I made for Christmas 2009  These ones were for some swappers whose partners hadn’t sent to them, but I also made some for friends.

felt Christmas ornaments

They are made from felt padded with cotton batting and embellished with gold sequin waste, gold thread and gold beads.  The tree is 2.5″ (6.5cm) tall, and the red hexagon is 2.15″ (5.5cm) across.  They were inspired by an article by Karen Wise in Stitch magazine, issue 61.