stitching new houses

More stitching of the house variety.  I decided to make a change of address card to hand out to the few people, nearest and dearest, etc who might wish to know where we are going.  After an extensive search on pinterest and a collection of a few ideas from there, I found a plan of our new house, and decided to use that nice simple image as my picture, and I did a very simple stitching of it on an old linen doily.  Not sure what to do with the rest of it, but i'm sure something will come to me.  An address would probably help.

And then I was looking at Tiny Happys blog and she had made a sweet birthday card for her son with paintings of all the houses they had lived in since he was born, and I marvelled at the collective unconciousness of it all, if we can count two people as collective, which I am happy to do.

stitching

My dearest beloved friend in Australia asked me to make an embroidery for her to put on the back of a coat.  I had done a t-shirt for her for her 40th birthday which she had put on the back of another jacket and she decided it was time for another one.  Given no design brief but for a photo of said jacket, I had a bit of trouble deciding where to go.  We have known each other for many years, and from age eleven and for a few years, we dressed similar like, but life dragged us in different directions, physically and style wise, so I had to just bite the bullet and go with whatever my brain came up with.  These things take on a life of their own after a while. Here are some pictures.

 This was designed around a paper-cut/ doily idea, some black fabric paint and stitching and some waves.  I like it but am undecided as to what she will think.

 It is a picture of my house and her house on different sides of the Tasman Sea.  She has recently started to learn to surf, so there is a picture of her with surf board amongst some waves, some clouds and some manuka flowers.

 My new addiction to pinterest was very helpful, although the inspiration search takes up more time than the actual doing.

repeat fabric repeats

As I wait impatiently for my Spoonflower swatches to arrive in the post I can't leave their site alone and have been trying out different things, playing with the colour changing thingymig etc.  I have had a fun day cleaning out the gutters which get so full of next doors leaves they are almost like a compost bin.  I scraped them into a bucket and then drenched myself with a hose and also managed to rinse the gutters a bit too.  

above came from this dollie that I made for my daughters friend.

These were illustrations from an AA Milne book about children.  Thought it would make nice summer dress fabric.

above was simplified from a photo I took 

as was this, of tree branches and scenery.  And there were more but the computer decided that they were not pictures and wouldn't let them on the blog?

doll face

My nine year old is still on summer holiday, for some reason her school goes back a week later than all the others.  Yesterday and today she asked me to draw her a face on some material so she could embroider it.  she is such a clever little thing and so patient with her little stitches.  Her friend came over today and they sat at the table for so long stitching away, it makes me a happy mum.  (they did also play on the ipod and watch some tele)

amazing.  I do remember at primary school, sitting on some steps at break time doing some tapestry when everyone got too annoying to play with.  I probably thought I was being frightfully aloof and artistic, age seven.