Carmen has received her July page based on castles so I can show it to you. It is based on a photo of Nunney castle that I found online. It’s an inside view of the ruins. It’s all done with machine embroidery with the techniques I learned from Carol Shinn’s book. I really liked this technique but it shrunk much more than I thought it would. Because the book pages are supposed to be a certain size, this was somewhat of a problem. I had to add an inch to the bottom after my first attempt turned out to be too short.

Here’s the back – pretty boring – just  a piece of black felt but I didn’t want to do an edge so I needed something that wouldn’t fray. The neat thing about her technique is it makes an edge to the embroidery that doesn’t have to be framed.

Here’s a close up. I really liked all the play of shadows and light in this piece and chose this castle because of the photo image that I had found. It doesn’t look exactly like the photo but it certainly has the same feel. I hope you like it Carmen!

Now for my tale of woe. I made this page for Juliette with the theme of The Seashore and sent it off to the UK on June 19th. Juliette still hasn’t received it. So I had to make another page to send her. I couldn’t duplicate this page because I don’t have any of the fabrics that I used left.

I had found the perfect seashell fabric for the base but only had two pieces of it. And the rest is made from scraps and bits I had left over from other projects.

Here’s a close up of the heart rock that I found some time ago and attached. There was a page that had been missing for two months on it’s journey from Germany to India and it finally arrived so maybe there is still hope. But I went ahead and made Juliette another page and finished it today. It is completely different.

Here’s a sneak peak of it. Now I’ve got to start on August for Chris with a theme of coastline. Hopefully, but the middle of next month, I will be able to get back into some felting again. My goals have fallen by the wayside this summer, first the back problems (which I’m still dealing with) and then loads of company. I’ve got two more weeks on the company and then I’ll get back to a more regular routine.