cheer for the holidays

Wanted to wish all of those who drop by, a warm and joyful season.  I've been stitching away without completing too much however, 

this is the piece (well, one of the many UFO-WIPs) I'm working on at the moment.  The text is in process.  It will read, "two sided story, once told."  It's stitched on an old vintage quilt.  The heart is made from some scraps of fabric samples.  It needs work on the edges as well but it's nice in the hand. 

Last week Karen Ruane's "embroider, embellish, create" class EEC had it's last on-line lesson. (The link is the the flickr group so you can see how wonderful the work was from that group.) 

My cloth is not completed.  It's a piece I'm working on for my mum.  I don't know if I'll get it ready for the upon gift day but her birthday is in January (she'll be turning 92) so by then it should be put together. 

Here's where it's at - the pinned stage:

and the last little piece I'm stitching upon now:

This work has been very different for me.  First the colour is white, for the most part. Also, there is a lot of "fancy" stitch work going on.  But, as different as this is from the things I usually show - it is closer to a picture of my mother - soft, vintage cloth that has known something of life - and hopefully representing the beautiful life that I see in her face. 

Well, happiest of holidays - and until the New Year - thank you. 

May I be a better blogger in 2013.  

not much to say!

Most completed piece from last week - the piece from Karen Ruane's: Extended Embellishment

This is a piece of scrim that has had FME: free motion embroidery done on it with a sewing machine then wrapped and embellished with embroidery stitches.  The piece isn't actually complete yet but the main section is.  The "framing" and "edge" work still has to be done. 

The other things that I have been working on is causing my fingers to get sore and achy:  English Paper Piecing:

I am basically practicing making little hexies and 9 (1") patch pieces.  I'm hoping to use these as elements on a base cloth (perhaps the one I started - see last post) - using traditional quilt elements but interpreting then in my own way - embellishing and stitching - something in that boro style that is inspired my Jude's work. 

http://spiritcloth.typepad.com/spirit_cloth/

The other thing that I've been doing is hunting and gathering...as the days cool down things start falling from the sky and it's time for me to find shapes and save dates for my winter's inspiration (mood board?) images/imagery.  I still have all my oak leaves from last year in a box.  These will start a new box:

I'm also gathering real material (cloth) for a new class with Karen Ruane that will start in November:
http://karenruane.bigcartel.com/product/embroider-embellish-create-2012

This is real vintage lace gifted to me by my sister.  She got a bag of cuffs and collars a while back from a friend who had removed them from garments from an elder relative that must have passed or was cleaning her closet of old dresses.  Some of them are very fragile and I'm not sure I'll be actually manipulating them but how wonderful it is to hold and have these things (fellow stashers will understand!) 

And speaking of stashes aka our own messes:

 I am quoting here from Karen Ruane's blog post (hope it's okay Karen.) 

 Karen had posted a picture of her work table:
http://karenannruane.typepad.com/karen_ruane/2012/09/unpacking-virtual-boxes.html captioning it, "what's on my table?" and from this grew a flickr group: (karen's quote)
 "Sara has started a new group centred around tables, the stuff we have accumulating on them. As you know my own table is always covered in junk!The group has the potential to grow into a fascinating archive of images and the more contributors the better. To sign up or browse then just go here"

So without further ado I proudly present my table (aka mess):

Cheers  for this week.  Thank you for stopping by.