TAST 11 and Tiger Cushion

The stitch this week for Take a Stitch Tuesday is 'whipped wheel' which I know as 'spider's web' but it is also known as 'ribbed wheel' and there are other names too. I could barely fit two names on the label.

 [click on images to enlarge]

I have used scraps, leftovers from a previous work which are two small appliques of vintage fabrics with machine and hand embroidery. I've stitched them onto the velvet [upcycled curtains] background with running stitch and further embellished with beads. I have stitched the wheels in various sizes and it appears I worked them a little differently too. My version mainly has eight spikes, some worked as one cross stitch over another and some like the beaded one below which has eight individual spikes. For that one I threaded the beads onto each spoke, not the same number on each spike though which made the web quite difficult to stitch and looks untidy after the whipping had been done. [the beads did look more orangey in the bottle, they look quite pinky on the fabric]

For the beaded wheel below I stitched the centre bead before I started whipping, but stitched on the rest after the whipping.

Another knitted motif from my old stash. This one was going to be a jumper but it never got finished. Rather than include it in one of the blankets I decided to make a cushion with it. The back of the cushion is the same fabric I used on the TAST challenge above [upcycled curtain]. Some of the blankets can be seen in past posts here or on flickr here

Animal and Bird Collages

Collages - these include found images of animals and either watercolour background or brush pen backgrounds.

Rainbow Collages

The challenge this week at Take a Word is green so I thought I would show my green collage. 

I have done a series of collages using the colours of the rainbow- blue, green, red, orange, yellow, violet, indigo plus an extra pink one.

These are small collages, just 4"x4" and are made from art work, painted papers, found papers, printed art work etc

Blue

Red

Yellow

Violet

Orange

Indigo

 Pink

Ski Knitted Blanket

I will call this blanket the 'ski blanket'.

Knitted on a Passap machine many years ago - I used to design knitting motifs and patterns. I used the samples to make into blankets, this one I made up last year and some are still being made up although I have not done any for a while. It is quite a challenge as the swatches are all different shapes and sizes.

Yield [IF], Polar Birds and Tap Collages

Illustration Friday challenge this week is 'yield'.

Yield – to give up, as to superior power or authority - The pig has given up his sty to the giant frog

Below - Polar Birds - Collage/altered photographs, watercolour and white pen background, found images of polar bears and birds, white pen decoration on birds heads

Collage of found images/altered photographs

Pages from Sketchbooks

This house was created using found shapes.

On the page below I used the colours that had seeped thru from the previous page, then drew on the flowers and thin blue lines.

This doodle also seeped thru to the next page as shown below. It is the promarker pens that seep thru, I think they make some nice effects

I sketched the sea creatures below by copying a photo in a magazine

TAST 10

Take a Stitch Tuesday - week 10 is the simple running stitch.

The background fabric is hand painted, the dark blue rectangle is hand painted and stamped paper, the image is  from a magazine. If you look closely you will see a fancy button too. Click on image to enlarge.

My daughter came up this last weekend and she brought some flower chocolates for me. It was a shame to eat such pretty things but these two were the only ones left to photograph. There were some roses and daffodils originally too. [I didn't eat them all myself!]