Velvet Christmas decorations with a bit of added bling

These decorations are quite glamourous, even though I say so myself! They're made from velvet which has script printed onto it that I have decorated each side of the decoration with guipure lace, beads, a glass diamond, and vintage mother of pearl buttons. I added a little stuffing to give the decorations some body.

You can use these decorations on your Christmas tree etc, but I also use them to decorate Christmas presents, so the recipient gets a lovely looking gift and an extra present in one!

I've completely hand-stitched these and due to the print of the velvet each one is slightly different. I used a broken necklace for the glass diamonds and the beads from my stash of, mostly broken, jewellery. My favourite charity shop now saves me any broken jewellery rather then binning it now too!

If you'd like these decorations, I have a couple sets of two for sale in my Etsy store.

I'll be back again on Saturday.

TTFN
Louise

Christmas decorations with a bit of bling

Christmas starts a bit earlier if you make stuff to sell as you need to be ready when people want to start their Christmas shopping. As about half of my time is going to be spent on making christmasy themed items, you will be seeing more posts like this one, but I will be sharing lots of non-christmas stuff with you.

These double-sided decorations are made from velvet printed with calligraphy. I've use vintage gems, pearls and buttons, along with some new guipure lace and satin striped ribbon, and they're hand-stitched with silk thread. I'm currently building a stock of items for the Seagrass Gallery before I add decorations to my online stores, but if you see something you fancy just contact me and I'll see what I can do.

See you on Sunday.

TTFN
Louise

Grey and silver bling pillow

I made this pillow for my sister's birthday in June. These first pictures were taken when the finished embroidered pillow top was on the damp-stretching board.

I started with a patchwork of fabrics and decorated each of the seams in one way or another.  I  used glass beads, buttons, pearls, pieces of jewellery, ric rac, lace, crocheted flowers and gimp as well as a selection of different embroidery threads.

The photos below are of the completed pillow.

The fabric with the leaves forms a pocket, with the opening at the top.

The beaded button in the middle of this photo has been tied on once the pillow was stuffed.

I backed the pillow with the same leaf fabric that I used to make the pocket in the top right-hand corner of the pillow.

TTFN
Louise

More work on the bling cloth

Now all of the christmas making has finished I've been able to get back to my current works in progress, such as my bling cloth. I've added another leather bump, edged in buttonhole lace, beads, and silver cord, along with chain stitch, buttonhole lace, wrapped thread, and french knots.

I'm going to concentrate on finishing this so it can be damp stretched and I can turn it into a pouch for my broderie anglais lace and fabric. My jury service is going to last longer than I expected so I won't have as much time to work on this, and other projects as usual. I hope to blog about twice a week though, if I've enough to share with you.

TTFN

Bling cloth - more blingyness

More work has been carried out on this piece. I've added another leather bump, beads, lots of buttonhole lace, bullion loops and french knots, some sequin waste (a piece of foil that is left after sequins have been stamped out from it), another silvered velvet patch and a metal and crystal button.

There's still plenty of the cloth to cover, though!

TTFN
Louise

My first post on the bling cloth is here.

The bling cloth

I should have shared this with you before now (though if you follow me on Instagram or Flickr you would have seen pictures of my bling cloth) so this will appear that the embroidery happened really quickly. It didn't, I started this at the beginning of October.

The idea of the bling cloth is something else that has come from simply stitch five and was started by Karen because she fancied a bit of work using bling - i.e. beads, leather, gimp, silk tissue. If you've followed Karen for a while, you would have seen how this approach is a big change from her usual modus operandi.

To start mine I machine embroidered strips of lace, metallic tissue, voile fabric and ribbon to a piece of vintage cotton.

Then the embellishment started. Where fabrics are joined there's buttonhole lace and pekinese stitch edging. There's lines of french knots, bumps of leather edged with chain stitch, or buttonhole stitch and beads. Silver cord couched in squiggles. Large beads caught down with blanket stitch wrapped threads, glass beads and patches of velvet and a good few bullion loops.

When it's finished, I'll turn this clock into a pouch to store my broderie anglais in. It's not going to something that just sits on a shelf because it's too precious. Though it's going to take a bit of time before it reaches the time to do that. I'm really enjoying working on it. Especially against the hankies, which are light and feathery, this has weight and a depth of embroidery that's just lovely to work with.

You'll definitely be seeing more of this!

TTFN
Louise