Fabric Friday

This used to be a regular feature here and now I’m bringing it back. Beginning with a peek to my stash of pillowcases:

From 1960′s to 2010.

Recently Thrifted

Well this isn’t really recently thrifted but spoils from my trip to the huge flea market in Vantaa back in November. I bought this tray together with a vintage hat box and some Christmas decorations for a reasonable price.

I think it’s rather sweet.

 But I’m selling it anyway. My friend pointed out that I can have either craft supplies or vintage goodies all over my apartment and alas, choices had to made.

Wish me luck that it will sell quickly.

 

Flowers!

Monday is the challenge day! This week’s theme at Craft Your Passion is Flowers and as an extra challenge, you must have flowers in your image, not just in paper or embellishment. This worked out for me pretty well, as my embellishment collection is quite limited.

See, I took some in progress pics! These are the papers I was considering for this card. The digi stamp is by Delicious Doodles.

 In the end I went with the lettering paper by Crate Paper. It gave me this NY loft garden vibe so I kept the entire card simple and the colour palette limited. I so love this paper and I’m totally regretting that I bought only two sheets of it.

 The compulsory close-up! This week’s challenge prizes are from Delicious Doodles and Di’s Digi Downloads. You have till Sunday to participate so go and get crafty!

TAST 33: Scribbled Pekinese Stitch

Pekinese stitch was very interesting to work with. I had to check out couple of tutorials but it wasn’t too hard to figure out. I had more trouble to come up with the sketch to stitch as I was overwhelmed by all the fantastic antique Chinese samplers I saw. In the end I settled on a loopy scribble, a similar one to my couching sampler.

 Can you see the mistake I made?

 The mistakes show up particularly well in this picture. As I was doing the second round of stitching, the looping, and I was turning around, I kept picking up the floss strands up, leaving them standing up quite ugly.

 Another thing I’m not too happy about, is the way I added the one lonely half-loop. I thought it would be a fun detail but it actually looks very sad and gives the sampler very half-finished look.

 But all in all, I’m excited about Pekinese stitch. It will take some finessing but I think it will lend itself to fashion embroidery quite well. Imagine military detailing…Anyhoo, next in-line is Linked Double Chain.

My other samplers are listed here. Go and have look. Clicking the pictures will take you to the individual posting where you can read more about my process with the particular stitch.

Till next time!

Power Of Three

This week, Craft Your Passion, asked us to create something with triples of things. In my card I had multiple of things in threes. 3 black diamonds, 3 clear ones, 3 layers of paper, 3 shades of grey (heehee) and 3 ways to finish edges; faux stitching, real stitching and doodle framing.

I’m such a multi-faceted crafter with many, many layers of deepiness, deep inside me.

I know, I know. It’s very unattractive to laugh at one’s own joke. But I’m still doing it.

Anyhoo, I used this image by our sponsor, Crafty Sentiments Designs because it reminds me of one of my cousins, Siiri. She’s 8 and she is so sweet and adorable like you wouldn’t believe. Since I’m going to send this one to her, I tried to capture her personality in the card as many ways as possible.

 

First of all, I coloured the girl blond and gave her blue eyes just as Siiri. Last summer she was a flower girl at her aunt’s wedding and wore a dress just like that, so that colour came from there. The flowers are coloured to give an impression of Finnish summer, which means no exotic colours.

 

As for the background…I wanted to emphasize how Siiri and personality always brighten up everyone’s mood, she really is a ray of sunshine, so I decided to go with monochromatic papers. To give the stamped image even more of a pop, I lifted it with foam from the background. The stitching, faux and real, also gives another dimension to this card. Almost as if the image in the center is fabric badge of honour on someone’s grey, floral sleeve.

Oh, I’m such an artist. A poet.

The diamonds in the corners are there because A. they are girl’s best friend and B. Siiri wants to be a pop star when she grows up and naturally pop stars wear diamonds.

 Hope you enjoyed my rambling. Now go and craft and take part in Craft Your Passion Challenge. There are prizes for three this week!

Till next time!