'Where do you get your ideas from?'

I'm occasionally asked this question, and sometimes I've no idea, but now and then it's an easy question to answer. One of my resolutions this month (and beyond!) is to blog more frequently, and another is to create a new item at least once a week. Hopefully these things will be good enough, or lead to something good enough, to make more to sell.



So yesterday I got out my sketch book and then started looking at my instagram feed. And first up was a new print by Eloise Renouf, whose work I love. And from that starting point, I started sketching a few ideas using some of the shapes and combinations that she has used in the print.

This morning, once I'd finished off some orders, I started making a couple of rough versions of two of the sketches. The idea is that they will eventually be made from gold and silver, but naturally I'm starting with all silver versions.

This is the top part of the earrings with the post and a tiny jump ring attached to the reverse, and the lower parts before I cut them out.



Then I popped a ring through the hole at the top of the shapes and threaded this through the other ring, and soldered it closed. Finally I polish the top part to a mirror finish and the dangling shapes are matt.

 

The magic of soluble fabric and freemotion embroidery

An actual finished item. A single bed crochet
blanket (only took one whole year to make)

I love hobbies - I've got lots, but I've got even more UFO's (unfinished objects for all the people who when they start something actually finish them too). Looking around me now there's a big basket which I know contains an unfinished quilt, a bit of old fashioned patchwork (suppose to be a cushion cover) and a failed attempt at knitting a cushion (I really can't knit). There's a smaller basket with several crochet projects on the go, and next to me is a square of Tunisian crochet which I'm currently trying to teach myself. With limited success.

Strangely when something goes well, I tend to make loads of it and then get bored, so I'm hoping that my enjoyment of freehand machine embroidery doesn't wane just yet. I've made flowers, both framed and in vases using iron wire, and you can see some in an old post and my instagram page, but the last few weeks I've been making beetles... quite solid ones, like patches you'd sew on your jeans when I was a kid in the 70's. I start by tracing my drawing on to soluble fabric (amazing, magical stuff!), and then I make an outline on the machine using a 'bouncing foot'.

Then I start 'colouring in ' with all the different thread colours, until it's really quite solid. 

Once the fabric is washed away under hot water, and left to dry, I mount the beetle on tiny pins, and pop it in a frame - ta-dah!