Felt bowls finished.

I finally finished these bowls. I stitched and added hand-dyed gauze to soften the rims and make the bowls a little more interesting.




I use the blue one to keep my found porcelain bits in a safe little nest ...

and the yellow one holds a set of vintage wooden toy skittles I found at the car boot sale. 

Yay for car boot sales!

PS I am so sorry I haven't been around to visit my favourite blogs more often and leave comments. Things are hectic, and in the New Year, once the books have been submitted, I will have more time to cyber-gallivant ...

Fabric Beads.

I made these beads a couple of weeks ago. I used stuffing for the middle, wound strips of  a beautiful red and green African fabric (bought here) around the stuffing, pinned, and then, with a needle, worked with a contrasting colour thread round and round and through the bead to secure. I have made a necklace and a bracelet.

I admit that they look a bit scrappy on the photo, but they actually look rather nice when I wear them.

We are now entering the critical last phase for the two books that have to be submitted in the first week of January. As I still haven't received ANY text for the second book, you can imagine that I am more than a little stressed. I will probably be eating my Xmas dinner with a red pen in the hand ... rolling my eyes and singing mad little songs to calm myself down.

Japanese slippers.

About a year or two ago a dear friend of mine, who is a crafty soul mate, made beautiful little Japanese slippers for babies. I fell in love with them and have always meant to have a try at making an adult pair for myself. I found a description online on how to put together the baby slippers, but unfortunately there was no proper pattern. So I just put my feet on a piece of newspaper, drew around them, leaving ample allowance for sewing up, and then kind of guessed what the dimensions of the top bit would have to be, and cut it out from a piece of newspaper, freehand nogal*. I then draped the top piece around the sole part to check the proportions, and snipped away at the pattern until it looked right.

I must say that I am pretty proud of them. They even fit!! And I also like the two cotton fabrics and denim inner that I used (all car boot sale finds).

Although they fit, I haven't really worn them, as the bottoms are quite slippery. I don't really want to break my neck in my quest for recycling bits and pieces, do I? Now I need to find out where I can get thin rubber soles to stick onto the bottoms ...
nogal*. In slang usage this is an expression of surprise, meaning "of all things", or "can you imagine?"

Yellow necklace.

I have never been a big fan of yellow, but I realised some time ago that it looks really good with grey. So before the current trend for yellow runs its course, I thought I should make myself a bright yellow necklace to wear with my grey tops.

I made the pottery beads myself, had them fired, then painted them with yellow acrylic paint. Finally I varnished them and strung them on a black leather cord. To tie a sliding knot, see here.  (I subsequently redid the knot to balance it more evenly between the two smaller beads and make the necklace a little shorter.)

See No Evil.

Something I started on a few months ago. It is meant to be part of a series of three, but the second one (Hear No Evil) came out a bit of a disaster and I am still deciding on how to rework it. Also, I can't find many pictures of people with their hand(s) over their ears (that is the reason why HNE was a bit of a disaster), or over their mouths. I can't draw from my head, so I need a photograph or something to refer to ... sigh ... This one is from a European fashion magazine. I lightly sketched with pencil on the fabric (an old linen table mat), and then madly stitched it with Mr Darning Foot.

This one is not quite finished yet - I am now going to hand stitch with coloured embroidery yarn to fill in the background and a few other areas.

Sitting pretty.

I have two large cushions that I like sitting on. But I needed to make them look a little more interesting. So I dyed some vintage doilies, collected from car boot sales, charity outlets and junk shops, and sewed them onto a continental pillow slip to make a cushion cover.

At the same time I also reworked the cushion with the fabric yoyos that I made ages ago, as it was becoming a bit tatty. Took them all off, washed them (as well as the cover) and restitched them with embroidery yarn

.

The Eye of God.

I saw this a while ago and thought it was lovely. It is a Mexican symbol called ojo de dios - the Eye of God. I made one using sosatie sticks, black wool and the leftovers of my grey merino wool. Quick to make in between editing.

Then I decided to use my beautiful coloured bamboo cotton and make a bunch of them to use as Christmas decorations.

Aren't they pretty?
And then, being in a philosophical mindset, I started wondering what it all meant? Does it mean God has many eyes, a bit like a spider? Or does it mean there are many Gods? And if so, do they each have one eye, like a cyclops, or two eyes? Or more? And what if there is not only one universe, but a multiverse, what then??
The mind boggles.