A Very Newsworthy Class...

So last weekend i was up at Jennifer Bee's again with another of our silk shading classes. It was good this time as we had a mixture of new people doing the kit and some others starting projects of their own.

 

The state of Victoria has seen some amazing rain this winter, and last week was no exception. Where we live in Gippsland we are subject to flooding as the water makes it's way from the mountians behind us, down to the lakes and sea. Jennifer is Based just on the outskirts of Sale, which is usually beautiful farming land, but last saturday the water had broken the banks and filled the fields right up to her back yard.

 

The morning started off fairly interesting as there was a lot of air traffic as helicopters flew over the scene, scopping out the area. not sure what was happening we would poke our heads outside for a quick look, but then head back inside to carry on stitching. It wasn't until around 3pm that we heard this noise get louder and louder... and it suddenly sounded like someone had landed a helicopter in the yard. Turns out they had! Channel 9 News had turned up to pick up their reporter so she could get some footage for the nightly news, and had chosen the only spot big enough and dry enough to land, which happened to be the neighbours back yard!

Interviews...

I've been a little popular of late... I got interviewed for 'Milk' magazine, a very interesting magazine about the gippsland region here in Victoria. Then, while I was finishing up the green man I had put some pictures up of it on Flickr and was approached by urban threads to be interviewed for their blog. They originally designed the green man and I love their site... to me it's a bit like embroidery porn. Anyway, I totally jumped at the chance and you can read the interview HERE.

New stuff on Etsy!

Wow, it's been a busy few weeks! Lots have things have been happening, mainly for me my time has been spent digitizing some of my original kits for sale as PDF files on etsy. Now, for those of you who know what my original kits were like you'd think that this wouldn't be hard, which is what I was thinking too. However, when i moved to australia I had just had my computer die a horrible death and so the first job was to retrieve the files off my old hard drive. Now, since i have had my lovely new red laptop I have begun using new programs on it, such as 'Open Office'. So now when i open these newly retrieved files they appear all skew-wif (yes, that is a technical term!) and so i start the task of reformatting them all over. Finally I have to re-write some bits as they are now instructions only and therefore I have to talk about materials and such... needless to say this has been a long drawn out process while I'm still finishing off little other bits and pieces and still trying to get my pieces started for the Nowa Nowa Nudes. My first kit is up on etsy now though, and you can find it HERE.

 

Green Man - Finished!!

So I finally managed to find time to finish off that green man I've been working on...

  Creating the stumpwork leaves takes time, bending all that cake wire into the right shapes. And then to attach it to the fabric and cover the wire with trailing...

Once the trailing was all done I cut out the leaves and trimmed back the fabric to the stitching, and then bent the wire so that the leaves took form a bit more. The final step was to stitch them in place on the face.

 

If I could change anything it might be the fabric. Although I loved that I was able to upcycle old school jumpers and a skirt for this project the fabric for the background leaves had a tendancy to fray, even with the couched thread edge. It doesn't take too much from the overall effect of the piece, but I now have a better understanding of the fabric and I still love how he turned out. I think I'll be doing a few more of these when i can and put them up on etsy!