I spent most of the day today dyeing a variety of fibers green plus a piece of silk. I’m planning a new project which includes nuno felting.
Here’s some locks in the dye pot.
And here they are drying out.
I was trying for a variety of greens.
This is a portion of the silk I dyed. It is 3 yards of 5mm silk.
It is also mottled green. As usual my fingers are a bit green as well 🙂
Today was our local fiber group meeting. We made kites and then went out and flew them. I have never made a kite before and I can’t remember the last time I flew one. It was really simple to make the kite and we had a lot of fun flying them.
Wally, Bunny’s husband, helped us with the kites. He already had a pattern made and we used plastic garbage bags to make the kite. We just traced around the pattern and then cut out the kite.
Here’s Wally and I.
I’m tracing out a pattern.
Here’s Carole and Wally getting the next bag ready to trace and cut.
I’m not sure what Louise was saying at this point but,
Carole is replying!
Then we taped sticks to the kite.
Cut some kite string.
Reinforced the edges with tape, burned a hole through the plastic and tied the two edges with string.
We added tails with ribbon and attached the long strings to fly the kites.
And off we went to the park to fly them.
Here’s Bunny flying her kite.
We decided to try a different location since there wasn’t quite enough wind.
It was starting to get cold but the wind was good.
Everyone got into the act!
It was amazing how well the kites flew.
We had a great time. So my suggestion for you is go fly a kite.
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. Â Smaller stitches and thread tend to sink in and disappear.
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.
It takes quite a bit of thread to do the detached chain stitch in between the rows of regular chain stitch.
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.
I did get a bit more stitching done on the book cover.
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.
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.
Ruth Lane Art 