Author Archives: ruthlane

Progress

Posted on by under hand stitching

I have been stitching on the paisley book cover and I’ve made a fair amount of progress. That’s mainly because I’m doing chain stitch which is fast and using #5 perle cotton. The heavier thread makes a bigger statement and it really works well on felt.  Smaller stitches and thread tend to sink in and disappear.

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I’m enjoying working with these bright colors. Now I have to decide where I’m going from here. I don’t think I have enough thread to cover the entire cover so I think I need to find the book to go inside to see how much of the “front” will be showing.

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It takes quite a bit of thread to do the detached chain stitch in between the rows of regular chain stitch.

New Look

Posted on by under Felt, hand stitching

I’m jumping up and down and waving madly! Are you there?? I hope everyone has followed me over to my new site here on WordPress. It made sense to me to have everything in one place. Now I have my store site, The Felting and Fiber Studio and Permutations in Fiber all in one place. I am still working on some of the pages here and I’ll be adding more photos and fixing up the tutorial/video page.

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I did get a bit more stitching done on the book cover.

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It is starting to look more like a paisley pattern. I would really appreciate it if you would go over and like my new Facebook page if you do the Facebook thing. You can find it here.

Refashioning a Bag

Posted on by under hand stitching

Sometimes at the store, I have items that just don’t seem to sell well. If I’ve had them for a long time and they won’t sell even if they’re marked down, I try to get creative and do something to make the item sell better. That is what happened with this bag. It is a woven bag and originally was a “backpack” bag. It had the straps sewn to both ends so it could be worn as a backpack. The way the straps were attached, I was able to cut them from the bottom and then just tie them together to make a longer strap on the bag so it can be worn over the shoulder. Then I added those orange crocheted bits that I showed you last time.

 Here’s the bag now. I added more texture and it definitely brightened it up. I used blanket stitch to attach the middle ring portion to the bag.

 Here’s the back. It kind of has a floral feel to it but not specific flowers.

Here you can see the weave, it’s got great colors and the crocheted bits really bring out the orange lines. Now to see if it will sell. I have at least 5-6 more of these bags, not all the same shape and colors but if this works, I may embellish the others as well.

Seeing Orange

Posted on by under Dyeing

I know, it’s supposed to be seeing red. But today I’m seeing orange. I needed orange decorations for a purse I am refashioning and I had found some little crocheted pieces at the thrift store. They were white and actually had some sort of glue in them when I bought them. I just soaked them in water and that took care of the stiffening agent. Today, I dyed them orange and since I had some extra dye, I put in a little fabric as well.

 This photo about blows your eyes out – the orange is really bright.

Here’s one you can see a little better. I’ll show you the bag after I finish.

 This photo is of 90# cheese cloth. I dyed both pieces of fabric in a baggie.

This piece of fabric is a combination of silk and cotton. The way it is woven, it has silk on one side and cotton on the other. I’m sure it will look more interesting when it has been ironed.

I spent most of today working on a new blog/website on WordPress. I am going to move this blog as soon as it is finished. It will be much more up to date than this blog. I wanted to have all my blogs/websites in one place so I decided to go with WordPress. I hope to have it finished in the next couple of weeks. I will let you know the new address. I appreciate all my followers/readers and I hope that you’ll like the new site.

Finishing Off

Posted on by under Felting Book, hand stitching

I have been going through my stash of items that I have made but haven’t completely finished or that just need labels. I am getting them ready to sell at my store. (By the way, we have a brand new website, if you’d like to check it out http://purplepomegranate.com/) I also have a few projects that need some hand stitching and I started on one of those.

 This one is called Avalanche Creek and is made with lots of different fibers. It has been wet felted and needle felted. The inspiration was from a photo I took in Glacier National Park. It was made for an example in my book, The Complete Photo Guide to Felting.

This piece is called Roots. It was made entirely on my Janome needle felting machine. It was also made for the book but sadly, none of the fifteen projects I developed for the book were included. I guess I’m too long winded. I had hopes that they would publish the projects separately but I haven’t heard anything from the publishing company about it. Roots also has a variety of fibers, yarn and fabric.

 Here’s a couple of closer views.

This was fun to make, I really enjoyed adding all those yarns on top.

 Here’s the hand stitching project. It is a nuno felted book cover. The threads are the colors I am going to use. I thought it needed a little brightening up.

Here’s a closer view. Chain stitch around the prefelt orange pieces. I think this is going to be a kind of paisley design. I have lots more stitching to do on this as I’m going to cover lots of the white.