Weekend Hotch Potch

This is a bit of a hotch potch post as I am having that sort of a weekend! I had trouble focusing yesterday - I kept getting distracted from whatever I was doing and then I found that I couldn't raise the feed dogs on my sewing machine so then I got seriously distracted trying to see what the problem was! Needless to say I wasted a lot of time and will need to get professional help. Of course, now that I can only do sewing with the dogs down, all I want to do needs them up! I had an early start today (well early for a Sunday) as Joseph had to be at the airport by 7am so I should be able to achieve a lot more today hopefully.

The small canvas board at the top of this post is one I made over Easter using some new napkins and my favourite calligraphy stamp (Alphabetique) - it is just a light stamping to peep through the napkin layer. I've used Dimensional Magic selectively to add a bit of interest and to emphasize the glass jar.

This is an ATC I finished off yesterday by doing some beading - it has hot fix Angelina fibres adhered to a fabric base but then I have lightly painted them with Lumiere paints (as I had overheated them and lost a lot of the beautiful Angelina colour!) - I am quite pleased with the result and will probably paint more just because I like the effect - it isn't as shiny and "in your face" as the angelina. The heart is a free form heart drawn with Plexi glue and then foiled.

These are a set of inchies I have made for Anne Lugherini who approached me about an inchie trade. I really do enjoy inchies, especially fabric ones! I have started using my vast collection of dimensional fabric paints for embellishments on these as they are a great way of adding some colour in a very small space. Feels good to be putting those paints to use!

These are some new napkins that Annie Laing has swapped with me - I especially love the black and white ones but they are all really pretty. Might get around to using some this afternoon - Annie has made some great fabric paper with hers as you can see on her blog, very tempting and it is a lovely sunny autumn day here so a good outdoor activity.

Some muslin I dyed last week using Adirondack Color Washes in Butterscotch and Terracotta with some walnut ink sprayed as well! These don't have to be heat set as they aren't for washable items. I used my ice cream container technique - put a bit of water in the bottom, throw in a selection of smallish pieces of fabric, randomly spray with colours, scrunch, move around a bit and then leave scrunched up in the container to dry. Rediscover the container a week or so later (by tripping over it) and discover that they worked out perfectly with plenty of colour graduation.

And another lot (this one includes cheesecloth and some very old cording I discovered in my sewing basket from a cheesecloth dress I wore about 25 years ago!) - colours are Adirondack stream, wild plum and denim.

This lovely surprise package of vintage paper and sewing ephemera arrived last week from the wonderful Keron Lee - look at that lovely strip of old hook and eyes. Thanks so much Keron!