I've Been Busy

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Bird's Eye View

The beginning owl doodle

Well kind of busy. I did get my owl embroidery and my Bird’s Eye View done. Like I said in my last post I can sit and stitch for hours. I get lost and love what is happening with the thread and the stitches. The more I thought about this the more I realized how often I’ve heard sayings that revolve around “Do what you love …” theme. And I’ve been convinced for a long time now that most of us discover what we love to do in our childhood. The only problem is we forget, get bogged down in other things, listen to the voices of well meaning family and friends and turn our backs on the “what we love”. This is true for me. I learned to embroider at a very early age (7) from a lady(my mother) who also had a love for it starting at a very early age. I moved out on my own in the late 60’s to San Francisco no less – that’s right - home of the hippies! I did not pick up my needle and thread at that time. Too bad! I did do some work in the early 70’s for my youngest brother and I still have a shirt I made and embroidered for him. It still looks pretty good; too bad I don’t fit into it. I have memories of things I worked on as a child and as a young girl. A few of these items are still with me today. While going through my stash of unfinished items I was surprised to see how many revolved around embroidery. And I am so happy to be back in the groove again!

Owl on Vintage Fabric

Faux Lava Rocks on "Lava Fabric"

One of the items I came across had nothing to do with embroidery. Here is some muslin I painted with a textured paint that was called lava. My original intent was to make some beads that looked like lava but were lightweight.

They kind of worked and I’m not sure where I was thinking of using them maybe on my woven necklace. But looking at that fabric gave me an idea. So now it has become my inspiration fabric. I’m not sure if I will actually use it but I decided to try my idea on regular fabric first. 

Here’s the first of a series of work I plan to do. I will probably sell both the readymade and the patterns once I have a few worked up. I think they are coming out quite nicely.

Big Island Hawaiian Petroglyph #1

And I discovered another piece of the painted fabric I didn’t remember I had. Haha!

However I’m so far behind on my 52 projects that I think I better start doing more work and less thinking.

Bone Rings and Button Blanks

Okay I’m off and running on another idea to accommodate my needle habit which I like to carry with me to work and other places. I was looking for some bone rings (well now they’re made of plastic) that I’m sure I had (that’s how I discovered my other piece of painted fabric!). I finally found them after muttering under my breath several times “I guess I have to go to town because I really want to make this – today”. In amongst them I found a button blank (part of a button that didn’t get to actually be a button) that would work just as well as the bone ring I was looking for. Now I’ve got another recycle, reuse, repurpose item! Just love it when that happens! And I know I have a lot of them somewhere but I’ve found enough to get me started. So now I’m off to my sewing machine to make it so I can take it with me tomorrow. You’ll just have to wait to see what I’m doing.

Happy stitching!