The Feathers no.3, Part 1

This week I have already posted about two feather embroideries.  Well I'm starting up another and I thought you might like to see step by step how it comes together.  Last week I dyed my fabric and chose my color palette for this piece.  I made patterns of my feather shapes and used a small zig-zag stitch on my machine to applique them down.  It would have been smart to trace my pattern on to the feathers before stitching them down, it is easier to trace through one layer of fabric than two, but I didn't.  I'm still not sure what kind of detail I want to add with my stitching.  Once an embroidery pattern is traced on to the fabric, I'm stuck with it.  I want to be able to change my design and adjust as this piece comes together.  Tomorrow I'll post about the sketching process I have been going through to decide on an embroidery pattern, and show you how the stitching is coming along.

Cloud Lights

Last week I posted about a beautiful cloud mobile I found on pinterest.  Today I saw these stunning cloud lights by Netherlands-based Wout Wessemius over at Happiness Is... They are constructed from polyester wadding (that's a fancy word for fiber-fill right? ) with a plastic shell surrounding the energy saving bulbs to hep diffuse the light.  I assume this also helps to keep the polyester wadding from melting.  I want to know how they got that wadding to be so cooperative and hold such beautiful gravity defying forms.  Absolutely stunning.

Images: Beautiful Life

Feathers no.1

Yesterday I posted about an embroidery piece it took me a while to finish.  The concept for that piece began with this one.  I've been going through a feathers phase for over a year now, my phases can last quite a long time, and this was the first incarnation of the feather motif I tried in embroidery.  This piece is also done in hand-dyed cotton muslin and organza stitched with cotton thread.  I think of my embroidery as a form of painting, and accordingly stretch them onto wooden frames for hanging when they are finished.  I have just started another feather themed embroidery project and will begin blogging the experience step by step later this week.  Check back to see how these embroideries come together.

Feathers no.2

Last week I posted about an embroidery piece that was almost finished, for what seemed like the hundredth time.  It finally reached the point of fully finished this week and here it is.

It is stitched on hand-dyed cotton muslin and organza with cotton thread in shades of white and cream.  The feathers are stitched in two layers.  The first layer was stitched on the muslin.  The organza was layered on top of the muslin and a second layer of feathers was stitched through both fabrics.  This was done to give an impression of depth to the viewer.

What I like most about this piece is the subtlety of the colors.  From a distance, the white and cream feathers disappear against pale purple muslin.  The feathers reappear as the viewer approaches and the glossy thread catches the light.  I feel that so much of today's embroidery is about playing on embroidery's homemaker reputation and is overly cute, or turning that reputation on it's head and is overly aggressive or ironic.  However, embroidery has been around far longer than homemakers.  I want to bring it back to what I believe to be its roots to be.  I want to make embroidery that is simply beautiful.

Help from Friends

Last week my sewing machine gave up on me.  I tried to take it in but discovered repair would cost about as much as it is worth and could take upwards of two weeks.  Unacceptable, don't they know I have projects to finish?  So I was faced with a dilemma: spend too much money to get it fixed, buy a new cheap machine at a big box store, or wait until April when I can pick up my spare machine at my mom's house.  None seemed like very good options.  I put out a call on facebook for loaners, hoping I could at least borrow one for a day or two, and my prayers were answered.  Thanks Tessa for loaning my your little beauty while you are out of town!  I have one week to get as many projects finished as possible, how many do you think I can do?

Pinterest 101

I've been on pinterest about a year now, and it has gone through a lot of changes even in that short time.  For those of you who don't know, pinterest is an online pinboard service.  Pinterest lets you copy any image from anywhere on the web and store it on the site with a link back to the source.  When buying lots of glossy design magazines became impractical, both financially and storage wise, I started doing my visual research online.  This lead to many folders of saved images from the web floating around my desktop.  It was hard to keep organized, and impossible to remember where I had gotten my images from.  When pinterest came along it was a godsend.  Read more about it after the jump.

In The Clouds

 

I saw this photo from The New York Times on pinterest and fell in love with the cloud mobile.  It's made from crumpled paper.  Crumpled paper!  Isn't it lovely?  It reminded me that making things more fancy or complicated doesn't always make them better.  I needed that reminder today.

DIY Leather Lunch Bag

 I posted last week about some beautiful ceramics I saw on Design*Sponge.  I didn't mean to do another re-post today, but I couldn't help it.  This lunch bag is just too cool.  The tutorial is by Matt of Wood & Faulk.  Looking through his site I was very impressed by the style of his work.  It is definitely masculine and I think Nathan would love it, but I'm pretty crazy about it too.  I'm in love with his wool camera wrap and the old-school book strap (another tutorial for Design*Sponge).

The coolest thing about this project is that the leather is sewn by hand. He recommends using a few specialty tools, but notes that they can be substituted with tools I have lying around.  No fancy industrial sewing machine necessary.  Awesome. Click the links above to check out the full tutorial.

Lacey Juice Glass

Yesterday I posted about my first attempt at hand-engraving glass using my dremel and a diamond engraving bit.  Today I got some more practice making this lacey juice glass.  Keep reading after the jump to see how I made it.

Engraved Glass

Last week I saw some beautiful hand-painted ceramics on etsy.  They inspired me to finish up this set of glasses today.  The design was inspired by the veins on a leaf, but I like how it kind of looks like cracking in the glass.  I made the first one last year after my brother got me a Dremel for Christmas and I began experimenting with glass engraving using a diamond bit.  I forgot how fun and easy this is.  I'm working on another design at the moment that I'm looking forward to getting started on.  Check back tomorrow for the full details.

Good News/Bad News

The good news is that I dyed a bunch of fabric for my next embroidery series yesterday.  Here is the color palette I am working with.  I'm pretty into it, what do you think?  I'll post more about this series as it progresses, but I will say I am excited to get started.

The bad news is that my sewing machine has decided to stop cooperating, and I am stuck doing all my sewing by hand until it gets back from the shop.  While I have had few different machines over the years, this one has a special place in my heart.  My mom got it for me for my twelfth birthday, and it's been trucking along without complaint ever since.  I have never had it serviced before, so I guess you could say a little love and attention is long over due.  Here's to a speedy recovery little sewer.

Long Weekend

Look what I got in my inbox last night!  My dear friend Jamie sent me a picture of her valentine in action.  It looks like it found a good home.  I am all set to enjoy my long weekend.  Nathan is out of town having some boy-time with his buddies.  I have a long list of projects to attend to, some of them I have been putting off since last summer.  Here's to a long, and hopefully productive, weekend.

Spring Already?

This afternoon I took a walk to admire all the blooms I have been seeing lately.  In addition to these beauties I saw jasmine, agapanthus, honeysuckle, princess trees, paper whites, and more I cant even name.  We are still waiting for winter in the bay area, but it appears that spring has decided to come early.  We have only had a handful of rainy days and most of those were little more than drizzle.  Where are the grey skies?  The frosty mornings? The damp wet days that in years past have seemed to never end?  I'm not complaining, but I can't help feeling like it's too good to be true.

Finished! (or maybe not)

Some projects seem to last forever.  They just drag on and on, sometimes for years.  Others, I find, are in a perpetual state of being almost finished.  I'm working on an embroidery right now that has that quality.  In the beginning it was a simple piece, mostly made to accompany another piece with a similar motif (I can't help but feel that every piece needs a friend).  But my how it has grown!  Each time I think I am finished, I think of just one more thing I should add.  So here I am almost finished yet again.  Does this ever happen to you?

Hand-Painted Ceramics

I saw this post on Design*Sponge yesterday and couldn't resist.  These hand-painted ceramics by Yevgenia are out of this world.  I picked up some Pebeo ceramics paints a few months ago and found them pretty tricky to work with.  Knowing that, I'm even more impressed with this work.

I recognize this juice glass from Ikea, I have a cupboard full of them.  Who would have thought it could look this good?

How To: Valentines

I've been excited to post about this since I started making my Valentines last week, but I didn't want to spoil the surprise.  I saw a lot of great valentines floating around the web this year, but I was particularly struck by this one.  The simple red heart and loopy handwriting inspired my design.  I failed a semester of German in college, but still love the language I am so poor at speaking.  "Du bist geleibt" is one of my favorite phrases and means "you are loved".  I used the English inside the card for all my non-German speaking friends.  Keep reading after the jump to see how I made them.

Valentine's Eve

I am attempting to get my last valentines in the mail today in hopes that they will have a speedy journey and make it to my loved ones tomorrow.  I am very fortunate to have excellent friends, and maybe just a little unfortunate that they are spread out all over the country (and world - still trying to figure out the postage to London) so I don't get to see them as often as I would like.  I was so inspired by all of the great valentine tutorials I read all over the blog world, that this year I wanted to remind my dear friends that they are loved with handmade valentines. I'll post about my valentine making tomorrow so I don't spoil the surprise.  Did anyone else get into the valentine spirit this year?

Hey There!

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