brother in law

 

My brother in law

(husband's youngest brother)

became sixty last Tuesday

and we celebrate that fact with a party tomorrow.

 

For a little present I made all the preparations

for another "stitch-and-burn" piece

 

by painting the "lutradur" (kind of thick polyester interface)

the "vliesofix" (wonder under) and ironing 

unpainted vliesofix onto the polyester velvet.

 

 

Cut, ironed

and topped up with polyester sheer pieces

 

 

The fun part is the stitching

with  COTTON (!)  thread

...

but

 

DON'T FORGET TO PUT THE PRESSER FOOT DOWN !

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

otherwise, you'll end up with this nasty mess of loops

at the backside

which you have to undo

and start anew

(do you see the amount of thread, I did it móre than once ...)

This happens  because, with this "quilting" presser foot,

I have to put the foot down in some semi down position ...

which I sometimes forget !

 

I did the burning today outside in the sunshine

(it stinks ! thought I didn't burn out a lot,

I did it outside anyway)

 

You can see the "60" here in the design

though it isn't too obvious in the whole piece

 

(I think ...)

 

 

In this picture against the bright sunlight

 

you can clearly see I used the leftover cut out shapes 

of the circles to complement the square design

...

no initial plan, that just happened

*

 

And in that sunny garden

 

 

BLUE  ! 

 

and a bit of brown



40 !

 

These last weeks I've been busy,

but nothing of that ever appeared here

...

because it was a secret !

 

Today daughter celebrates a special bithday :

 

*  40  *

 

Oh my ... 

yes, that means :

 I've grown forty years older as well,

since that sunny Spring day she was born !

No, the time didn't pass in the blink of an eye,

we've had lots of wonderful times together

 

(and some not so wonderful, but that's life)

 

and she "gave us" also three wonderful grandchildren.

 

These wet (!) felted cats were one of her presents today

They are look-alikes of her own two Birma cats

(that stay at our house at the moment)

 

 

 

 

I made them with a PDF tutorial

I bought from my German blogging-friend Gabi

her felted animals are awesome !!!

 

 

But there was another present.

(I did this before, for two friends : and it was always a big succes !)

 

I had a little heart-shaped book

and asked a lot of family and friends to write / draw

something for her in it.

 

The book started its journey

but very soon I realized it wouldn't be finished in time,

if it was really sent to every person on the list.

...

So I started sending out double pages

to people who lived far away,

and asked them to return the finished page to me,

that helped a lot !

Ha, it was so special to recieve an envelope and open it !

 

But you can't imagine how many people thought

they weren't "creative"  enough ...

but let me tell you :

all the pages were special !!!

 

Then ...

the little book started to loose pages like leaves in autumn

GRRRRRRRRRRR

 

I finally solved the problem by buying a good sketch book

from my art supplies shop

and swithched the pages into that ... saved

pffffffffft !

 

 

 

 

 

 

A random selection of the pages

(so don't believe it when people say they're not creative)

 

Instead of drawing  I did some (thin) stitching

(which I had to hide when daughter payed us

an unexpected visit)

 

The fun part (for me) is

that there are bits and pieces of far-away blogging friends in it

(thank you Jude, Eva, Sus and Heike)

 

It was really a special gift !

I want to deeply thank all those people who participated

to make it a succes

 

!