A New Mini Wall Hanging In The Shop

I meant to post about this last week but never got around to it. so here are a couple of sneaky peeks of a little fabric and lace hanging I have put into my shop.  Hope you like.

Guess What I've Been Doing

This is what I started off with:-

  a pile of snowy white lace, broderie anglaise, tatting and other bits of net and trim.

                                       Here are the same items afterwards:-

                                         varying degrees of subtle pinkness. Yummy!

Yup, you guessed right - avocado dyeing again.  DH is the avocado fan in our house - I don't like them and he used this up at the weekend and I asked him to save me the skin.  I wasn't ready to use it at the time so it was put into a plastic bag in the fridge for a couple of days and brought out yesterday.  I wasn't sure if it would work as it had been in the fridge and not used when fresh and ripe.  I found that it took longer to boil this time maybe as a result of this but I ended up boiling it all for an hour and a half (much longer this time) until I could see a murky brown colour in the pan and I knew it was starting to take.

I put the skin inside a piece of cotton scrim to boil this time as it is a fairly messy job with all the little pieces of avocado pith floating around and it seemed to work quite well at keeping them all inside.  I don't think the colour was as strong this time but it's still pretty and some of the pieces are such a delicate shade - not quite white, not quite pink, as every type of lace takes the dye differently.

It's quite a time consuming job but well worth it I think.  Now to use it!

Sneak Peeks - New Goodies Now Available

Here are a few sneak peeks of new items I have listed  in my shop this afternoon. - pop over and have a look.

New Digital Collage Sheets/Background Papers

Here are sneak peeks of 3 new papers in  my Etsy shop.  Pop over to see the whole sheets. Hope you like them - I haven't done many designs just lately but I'm on a roll this week!

Shabby Patchwork Heirloom Heart

I have had a lot of time on my hands of late and although I haven't been as creative as I could have been, I managed to make this little heart.  I had been going through some old Australian patchwork magazines and came across an applique heart pattern which I thought I could use.  I amended it slightly and made various shapes for the patchwork, then assembled bits of fabric, silk sari ribbon, old lace and printed or stamped canvas for the body of the heart and assembled some of my absolute favourite buttons and embellishments as I wanted this to be the kind of thing I would buy for me.

It was very fiddly and sometimes I wished I hadn't decided to make something so intense but continued on.

It was quite tricky in some places as I decided to use hessian for the backing and it was quite tough to sew but eventually got there through trial and error as some of the patchwork pieces didn't fit quite right.

Well here is the finished result and I love it - I will hang it onto one of my rustic door handles.  Hope you like it.

Homework - First Attempts at Free Motion Stitching

Carole over at Madness and Mess has been giving free video tutorials on free motion stitching in readiness for her new online course which is starting fairly soon.  This is to enable anyone wanting to do the course without free motion stitching experience to be up to speed ready for sign ups.

I have always wanted to master this but it has always frightened me - putting the feed dogs down and the fabric wandering all over the place is very scary indeed!  Here are my first attempts for Carole to have a look at!

Very tiny, scrunched up writing!

Getting a bit better.

Not too brilliant but better than when I first started - what do you think Carole?  I know I need much more practice.  I find it quite tiring holding onto the fabric, making sure the needle doesn't run away with it!

Flea Market Goodies

As is so often the case, I went to the local bric a brac market with a view to sourcing more supplies for my shop but nothing really grabbed me this week (apart from a couple of items which I ended up not buying because I thought they were way too expensive for what they were - some dealers really put their prices up high) but there were several items which I could use in my home and ended up buying these lovely goodies for me!

 a pretty pink flowered crocheted doily; two gorgeous silk hankies with lace edging;

 an embroidered  piece of linen with raw edges which hasn't been finished off, but I thought I could do something with;

 and another embroidered piece which is shaped to go over a coathanger, so a few ideas for this piece.