Simply Stitch 4 (SS4)

I've started a creative journey via Karen Ruane's Simply Stitch 4. Those of us who are doing her course will follow Karen's journey, and take part in our own, to create with fabric and stitch, starting with a theme of swaddling and wrapping.

My first doodles.

One of the things we're starting with is creating a background surface. This was my initial sketch.

This was my final piece. A mixture of paint, pencil and pearlescent liquid on handmade Italian paper.

These are copies of the above copied onto, from left to right, ordinary A4 paper, thick sketching paper and photographic paper. These will be used, in one form or another, to create pages for my SS4 journal.

I'm going to be using pink and green so I've been through my fabric stash to find anything pink in cotton, silk and linen.

They'll be more soon.

TTFN

Louise

Journalistic part two

My second new journal is for embroidery. It'll contain info on, pictures of and samples of different types of embroidery and embroidery stitches. Again the pages will have bits of decoration on them. I've also left some blank spaces on the pages I've created so far, so that further pictures or samples can be added in the future.

So far I've created pages on Sashiko embroidery, a Japanese form of embroidery, and crazy quilting, which is a form of patchwork that is heavily embellished with embroidery and appliqué.

The front and back cover of my embroidery journal.

Sashiko pages.

 Crazy quilting pages (there aren't any samples on these pages yet).

Next time I'll introduce you to my 2014 journal.

TTFN
Louise

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Journalistic part one

Journaling or scrapbooking hadn't been very high on my crafting radar until last year, when I started my journal cum scrapbook (My first post about this is available here.).

I didn't add that much to the journal cum scrapbook towards the end of last  year as I was doing quite a bit of Christmas present making. This year I'm stepping back from selling (not that I was selling much!) by reducing what's on my website and I'm closing my Folksy store.This will mean I don't have to spend so much time looking after my website and give me more time to make things that aren't just to sell.

I will also be spending my time creating some new journals (I'll still be adding to my original journal periodically). The journal I've done most work on so far is my daily mini journal.

My Mum and Dad gave me the journal for my birthday last year. On Instagram and Facebook I have seen a number of people creating something, e.g. a photo, journal entry, a piece of art on a daily basis. So, when I received this little journal, I decided that, starting on the 1st January I would make an entry into it every day. 

My mini journal

I canvassed my various Facebook and Instagram mates about what the theme for the entries could be about and I decided that the entries be based around what I may have been doing or feeling that day.

This isn't really a writing journal as the entries are mainly paper and/or fabric collage, with a couple of pencil drawings thrown in.

Here's what I've done so far.

I'll tell you about my other journals next time.

TTFN
Louise

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The start of 2014

Well, it has been a while since I was last here! Since then We've had Christmas and started a new year. I hope that everyone  had a good a Christmas as they could and have started the New Year well.

We had a good Christmas, moving between various meals at each other's houses and lovely quiet days at home. Making-wise I still had a needle in my hand on Christmas day morning, but everything was finished when it came to present opening time! Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of everything I made, but here's some of the Christmas cards I made.

One of the first things that I have made in 2014 is this calendar for my Mum. Apologies for the poor photos, it's been so dark here I had to use artificial light when I took them, making everything look a bit yellow.

I'm going to make myself one of these, so I have a calendar in my workroom and to use in new journal I want to create. I'm going to be spending more time working with paper this year and I'll be creating a couple of journals. I already have a mini one on the go. I'll tell you more about that next time (though you can see what I've done, so far, on my instagram feed.

TTFN
Louise

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