'Blue Tits' pattern tile.

I saw a picture and article on this lovely 'Blue Tits' pattern tile in a magazine.
It was designed by a Dr Christopher Dresser and registered in 1870 by Minton & Co.

I used my Ikea bird fabric again and stitched the blue tit with scraps of fabric, in the same way as I had made the 'woodland bird'.

I cut him out, then turned and tacked the edges to the wrong side.

Then he needed a branch to sit on. I used a piece of linen from a soft furnishings sample book.

I fused a lighter piece of linen on to the back and then cut out the branch and leaves.

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I painted the branch with acrylic inks.

 Frances Pickering outlines most of the work in her books with a black pen so I tried it out on my branch. It definitely 'lifted' it. 

Time to perch the blue tit on his branch.

Last night I watched a programme on tv called  'The hoarder next door.'
It featured two women, one who hoarded everything imagineable and the other who just liked hoarding anything and everything to do with ladybirds!  You couldn't have moved in their houses.
Well my pile of stuff didn't look so bad after that!

The 'Blue Tits' tile, along with two others, was auctioned at Christie's in London in 2004 for £836.

Signs of Spring.

We went for a walk along the Lagan towpath today and parked in the carpark at Drumbeg.
I saw this beech tree hanging on to it's winter leaves and it reminded me of the paper tree I've just about finished stitching.

There were marsh marigolds growing and flowering in this swampy ground. I couldn't get close enough to them to get a good photo.

The celandines were out at last.

I saw this scalloped shaped fungus....

....and wood anemone..

...and deep red catkins on the willow trees...

...buds about to open...

but I'm already thinking of summer flowers.

Wildlife pond.

One time, when I was little, my Dad took me for a walk to a pond near our village. I remember how scared I was of all the dragonflies hovering around and, despite their beauty, I still don't like them much!
How do you paint a pond? I googled it.  I looked at a drawing of pond algae. It's confidence I'm lacking because, on fabric, once it's done you can't rub it out.
I used a bit of bleach and Lumiere paint, it's a metallic acrylic.

Well I can't rub it out, but I could cover it up!

I pulled out another of my old samples. I thought it might make a pond. It's layers of organza and chiffon stitched together.

I've distorted it with the heat gun and melted holes with a heat tool.

I cut it out and melted quite a bit of it away hoping the painting I'd done on the fabric would show through.

These are my bits of machine embroidery that I'm re-cycling from windows into dragonflies.

I painted them with some Lumiere. I can see wing shapes.

So I've been using some more of my re-cycled bits for greenery around the pond...

...and some other scraps for the dragonfly wings.

I'm making the dragonflies with wire and beads.

I'm using some paper beads here but I don't like their stiffness. I've tried cutting through the bead - as I wanted my dragonflies segmented!

I'm working on them. Scary things.

Cow Parsley done!

I was stitching some cow parsley a while ago here.
I'm realising as I progress with this fabric book project that I don't finish anything straightaway. I've had to have about four things on the go at once as I'm trying to make things fit together on the pages.
This is a piece of silk paper I made a while ago and the 'seed heads' are made from Tyvek.
I'm going to re-cycle it.

I laid the cow parsley on the silk paper to see how it looked - my friend Pamela said, "Three's good."

It stuck in my head because I knew she was right! I  pushed myself to stitch another one.

Then I machine embroidered some cow parsley shapes on to the silk paper.

And that was how I left it, and moved on to something else, until yesterday when I got out my pencils and decided to finish it off. I practised drawing on paper first then on to the fabric and went over the shapes with a fine wet brush.

I bought the butterfly bead at Easter in 'Sugarisland Beads' on Main Street in Newcastle.

Finished.  Three is good but would five be better?!

  

 I think maybe this would have looked better without the silk paper - I've a feeling there's way too much going on here!  Too late now.

Paper leaves and a foxglove.

I've ironed a sheet of Bondaweb to the back of my disaster of a tree to hold in all the snipped stitches.
Look at that...if you wanted a nice wintry, frosty effect Bondaweb is the way to go.
Anyway, the tree is saved as it really was a puckered up mess.

I used a sketching pencil to draw the shape of the foxglove. I copied it from a wild flower book and I'm getting a bit braver since drawing the violets.

This is the 'Radio Times' page I painted and then cut out the leaves for the tree with the 'Big Shot' die-cutter.

I'm back stitching the leaves on to the tree.

I didn't want to paint or stitch the foxglove so I've used a tiny bit of bleach to paint the edges of the flowers - it bleaches the colour out and works really well on linen. Then it gave me the idea to bleach out some little mushroom shapes under the tree.

I coloured in the foxglove with Sharpie pens and I've attached the little mushrooms I stitched the other day.

Wondering how long it takes Frances to make her books?  I'm really enjoying making this but I'm getting tired!

Paper tree.

The day that the 'Big Shot' machine came to my craft group I took in my painted papers and had
this paper tree embossed.

The piece of fabric below is linen - so far all the other pieces I've used for the book are calico. The linen was very floppy but when I painted it with the floor polish it really firmed up.

 I could see a faint tree shape on the right hand side.

 I've painted over it with the Koh-I-Nor dyes. I dropped some blobs of water at the base of the tree to give me some mushroom shapes - and on the left hand side I did the same. 

I like having the shapes to work with. I think I'll put a foxglove there.

I cut the paper tree out and I'm going to place it partly over the painted tree, but first I'm going to do some stitching.

I've cut some strips from a sheer that frays easily and then machine embroidered them on to the trunk of the tree.

I didn't put this in a hoop and
as I stitched it pulled tighter and tighter and the linen was gathering up badly.

I've had to cut through most of the stitches to ease it out flat again. It looks ok but now I think I'll have to iron a piece of Bondaweb on the back to hold it all in place.

Not very impressed with this piece of stitching but
it'll get covered up with some paper leaves.





Went for a walk today at Shaw's Bridge. Picked up the leaflet at The Lock Keeper's Cottage.
Then I came home and stitched this lot!