Book inspired doodling

I bought this book secondhand from Amazon earlier in the year after seeing it on a friend's Instagram. It's full of fabulous images off wedding dresses and accompanying paraphernalia and interesting facts about weddings through the three centuries covered by the book. 

It was the wedding dress on the front cover that attracted me, with its rouleau loop leaves and stuffed silk berries and I wanted to recreate that in some way. However, I've not done anything about that yet, but I have been using some of the images to create some doodles that I can translate into embroidery patterns or to doodle on fabric with in the future.

Here's what I've done, so far, with the image from the book first.

Now, I know my doodles aren't perfect and they might change hugely before they ended up on fabric in anyway. But I find that a collection of doodles, and any other type of sample, are fantastic to look through when you're looking for some inspiration. 

I still doodle straight onto the page, when I have an idea. I find it's always best to get these things down on paper before they disappear!

I'd highly recommend, if you don't already have one, having a little notebook to doodle in. Even if you don't use them for anything, they could still spark an idea for something else.

I'll be back on Sunday.

TTFN
Louise

Christmas cards

I've been doing a lot of doodling this year, so I thought I'd try my hand at doodling some Christmas cards. These are the three designs I drawn so far. I was hoping to share photos of the finished cards featuring the first two designs today, but, I manage to sell those I've made up so far before I could photograph them! I'm making more today and I'll remember to take photos before they leave my desk!

The cards are £2.50 each (for an A6 size) or three for £6. If you're interested in buying any you can contact me via elsiemayandbertha@virginmedia.com for further information.

TTFN
Louise

Pen and stitch

Apologies for the creases in the above piece it's not been damp-stretched yet. This a fine cotton hanky that I've doodled some stylised honeysuckle flowers on. I've also added a little pocket, also made from fine cotton, that I've also doodled on. 

There's buttonhole lace, a bit of running stitch, a couple of french knots and a bullion loop on  the pocket. I've started to add running stitch on the background of the cloth. I'm using machine embroidery thread for this to keep the lightness and delicacy  of the fabric. It's going to take a little while though.

These last two photos are of a paper piece that'll go in my ledger -hand drawn honeysuckle in different colours. The centres of the flowers are pinpicks.  This'll be paired with a fabric piece, reflecting this drawn one.

There'll be more doodling on fabric and paper. 

TTFN 

Works in progress (wips)

My pile of wips is quite big. These are some of the things I am working on at the moment.

This is a pocket being attached with chain stitch. The pocket has drawn and embroidered petals. 

The top image is of stylised honeysuckle flowers drawn on paper with pin pricked centres. The bottom one is the same,  except it's drawn on broderie anglais? I'll be adding french knots for the centres on here. They'll be mounted in my ledger when finished. 

This is a vintage hanky, with more drawn stylised honeysuckle flowers. I've added a pocket that's edged with buttonhole lace. I'm in the process of adding kantha stitches (lots and lots of running stitches) across the hanky covering everything that's not drawn on. It's going to take some time,  but it's really relaxing.

This is going to be a little pouch. It'll be folded in half, where you can see the crease, with the image of peonies on the front and the boat made out of broderie anglais. 

This is what I've been working on today. More doodling on white spotted fabric. The cutwork circle has a ruched pocket lined with lace inserted into it. I'm in three process of adding bullion loops around the outside of the pocket.

There's more, but these are the one's I'm doing something to at present. 

TTFN 
Louise 

Reinventing the page 5 - design sheets 1 and 3

Although the course has now ended, there's still so many things that I can relating both to what I've learnt and the designs I've created. 

I've bought myself an A3 ledger (a bargain from Wilko at £4, it's not very thick paper, but it's perfect to mount my work on to and has a lovely texture), and have started to mount my design sheets into it.

The photos below are of design sheet 1 and the pictures that I used for inspiration.

The picture below is of a section of design sheet 1 in different colours.

I've started a third design sheet, which is based around two circular books that have been mounted directly onto the ledger page. Further work will be done by adding doodles straight onto the ledger page too.

The last three images above are of a blank circular book (they're really easy to make, you just need to cut out your 'pages' in card or paper then sewing them together down the centre, and you have a book!). At the moment, I have only doodles on the front cover of the book and the half circle on the page.

The book in these last images has been made from card that has had the multicolour version of a section of design sheet 1 (see the 5th image from the top of the page) printed onto it.  That means that this books has a mixture of blank and patterned pages.

I'll keep adding doodles to the pages in both of these books until they're full, and they'll be a collection of inspirational images that I can peek at when I've not an idea of what to do!

TTFN
Louise

Reinventing the page 3 - design sheet 2

I've used these three images as inspiration for my second design sheet. Below are the rough drafts for the shapes I wanted to use. I've used different colours to see which would work best for the final sheet.

I made some templates to make reproducing these design elements easier.

The pictures that follow are of my first go with these shapes.

I used a black fine liner, a yellow glitter gel pen and a gold Sharpie. Apart from the next to last photo you can't really see the sheen on the gold in the flower heads. You also can't see the glitter of the yellow gel pen.

The colours I've used have given this a 60s/70s vibe, which wasn't what I intended originally. I was hoping for it to be more 50s in style like the pictures I used for inspiration. But I do like it though.

I am going to have another go using different colours to see what changes they might make.

TTFN
Louise