Coiling.. How to..

My own picture tutorial on how to coil.

Silk Painting. What silk to use.

Shibori with chemial dyes.

Rug Tufting. Hand or machine?

I'll start with a rug I made by hand 2 years ago. I love this rug so much, mainly because I put so so so much work into it. Every piece of fabric is hooked through by hand. I'm going to take some tutorial pictures of how to do this, but as I'm home for christmas and all my stuff is back in Huddersfield I unfortunatley can't at the moment. The basic technique is that you get a rug tufting hook, you can buy them online for a few pound each. You then need to buy a piece of wide weft hessian and cut long strips of fabric, the width of the fabric can be whatever you desire! I've created smaller pieces with fabric about 3mm wide, however for a larger piece I'd reccomend using pieces about 2-3cm. You hold it under the hessian and push the hook through, grab the fabric, and pull through leaving a loop on top. It's best to draw your design onto the hessian first so you don't get confused! Anyway, I'll upload a photo tutorial soon.

Machine rug tufting.

Make time for tea!

Homemade teacosy. Me and my boyfriend developed a thing for Bettys loose leaf tea, I advise all you tea lovers to try it! We use to keep the teapot warm by wrapping a tea towel round it, so I decided it was time to take action. Being a craft student I have loads of bits of fabric all over the place, which is perfect for a piece like this. They're so simple to make and can make great presents! 

I started by roughly drawing a half moon round the teapot we use, leaving room for sewing, around 1 or 2cm is fine. I then turned up the bottom around 1cm, and stitched along the line on a sewing machine, if you want you can do things like this by hand and iron it over, you could even use bondaweb if you want! I then added my decoration to the front, I cut shapes out of various fabrics and used applique to add them onto my teacosy, you can do whatever you desire! and use whatever means to attach them, I've used a combination of machine and hand embroidery. I then created the tab at the top by just cutting a rectangle of fabric, facing the outsides together and stitched along the edge and turned it inside out. I then faced the front and back together, remembering the tab at the top and stitched about 1cm away from the edge around the outside, turn it inside out and there you have it! You can also add a lining if you wish or some insulation.

Edinburgh, I love you.

I apologise for the poor quality of these images as they were taken on an iPhone, but I just LOVE Edinburgh. What a beautiful city. Me and my boyfriend went for a few days just before Christmas and had such a lovely time. I think it may be the place for me. We visited the Dovecot studios where there is an exhibition, "All tied up", a selection of weave artists work. We also visited the National museum, and went to a double bill of Elf and Santa Claus the movie at the Cameo cinema, a beautiful old cinema just outside the centre. If anyone is planning a trip there soon, I reccomend you go watch a film there! Student discount is also available which makes it that little bit better!

Cotton reels.

Some vintage cotton reels of mine, they have such beautiful colours in them. I'm just too scared to use most of them incase I run out as I won't be able to buy the same one! I will have to overcome my fear soon as some of them are stunning.

Nothing beats a good sketch.

 

Some of my drawings from the past few years. The Russian Dolls were drawn with a variation of pencils, the Jellyfish with pencil, magenta ink and fine liner 0.5, the Fish/ Seahorse all with just a black biro, and the bottom images which were dealing with negative space were all done with a variation of pencil, ink and pen.

My lovelies!

My lovely, lovely sewing machines! In the bottom left is my Bernina Minimatic, beautiful machine for freehand, runs like a dream. The other two, a singer and a brother were infact my biggest bargain to date. I was in a charity shop trying on some clothes, when I turned a corner and spotted an old table, gave it a closer look and realised it was a sewing machine table, and tucked underneath was the Brother machine. I inquired and the lady told me I could have them both for £5 as they'd been sat there for a while. I gladly handed over £10 as £5 was too much of a steal, especially for charity. When I think back I wish I'd given more. I may head into this charity shop soon and donate some money!

That new book smell.

Eco Colour - Botanical dyes for beautiful textiles, Indie Crafts, 5000 Years of Textiles, Mark Ryden

These are some of the books I've got recently, they're all beautiful. Hardly anything beats a new book. I can't stop looking at Eco Colour, if you're interested in dyeing fabric, natural materials, learning how to dye fabric or amazing texture, I advise you go and buy this book. It is absolutely stunning. Here are a few photos I took to give you a taster..

Origami flapping bird.

 I taught myself how to make an origami flapping bird via a video on YouTube and then made my own tutorial with the use of images. I really liked making these, however no matter what I did, I couldn't get my bird to flap! I'm not sure if I did anything wrong, but it just wouldn't work. If anyone else has made any of these, or knows the trick to make the bird move, please let me know.

The art of coiling

Here is the first bowl I created through Coiling, I will upload images of how this is achieved shortly.

Blue/ Camel, January bargains!

Here are some of my most recent bargains that I'm pretty pleased with myself about. (From left to right) Quite a simple shift dress I found in New Look £25 reduced to £10, it has a beautiful print on that reminds me of the texture in butterfly wings, lovely. A pair of topshop shorts, only pair on the rail, they didn't have a price but I've looked at a pair like this before that were in the region of £40-50 reduced to £5, it's definitely worth rummaging for a while! And finally, this is a knee length pencil skirt found in Primark for only £7. I love the print. Lovely jubbly!

Remember Macrame?

Yep, you read it right, Macrame! A technique that was incedibly fashionable throughout the 70's, and seems to be creeping its way back in thanks to Gucci. When learning this technique at first, I was producing simple pieces with boring yarns. However, once I got the hang of it, I couldn't stop! I've recently learnt coiling which is a technique used to create things like bowls by hand using yarns.. I think I can imagine these two coming together quite nicely.

Babushka, Babushka.

Just a few of the lovely presents I recieved for Christmas, my family, boyfriend and friends know me oh so well! All the Babushka stuff in paperchase at the minute is lush.

Natural materials.

 I have recently been working with natural materials, I have used a process called Quilling which is normally created with paper. I first saw these made from newspaper on Kirstie Allsopp's Handmade Britain (I think shes fabulous!) I've created these with lasagne sheets and leather. I left the lasagne sheets in boiling water until they went soft and then left them a while to toughen up, just so the pasta was flexible enough to work with. Below is how I created the pieces..

 

I'd love feedback on how useful you find these instructions, on the base of the rose I have used double sided tape to stick down the quilled material. I personally prefered working with the pasta, as once you have created the rose and left it to dry out, it is a solid structure.

Crochet fruit.

I've recently learnt how to crochet and whilst playing around with it one day, 

ended up teaching myself how to make these! A crochet tomato and raspberry.

I will add a photo documentation of how to create these shortly.