Tif 5 – crocheted doily finished

I’m sorry you didn’t read anything from me for long. Stuff like back pain, a cold and my job kept me from posting, and the few days I was well I went out to enjoy the nice weather. However, I did do a little bit of craft. I finished the hot pink doily. Well, here it is. The design is not that good, but I didn’t want it to grow too much more, so I finished off quickly. As you can see, I used a new thread that is slightly different, couldn’t get the original one any more.

I’ve also been to the botanical garden last weekend, but I’m not sure you want to see any more photographs.

Click on the picture to enlarge!

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tif 5 – stuff I’m going to use

Well, I have been thinking about tif 5 some more. This is some stuff I’m going to use. The yarn colours are the ones Pam Kellogg suggests. Then there is the pulled thread tulip and that crocheted doily.
It is made from simple polyester sewing thread. Unfortunately I’m out of that special thread and the motif is nowhere near complete. The center was from a commercial source the rest was made up as I went. I think it was the very same thread I used for my very first lace crochet exercises after Grandma had given me an appropriate crochet hook. I started this about 5 years ago when I was lovesick. Just don’t ask, lol. I’m not sure if I will finish it using a similar thread or just use it as is. I guess this also counts as Ufo finishing/stash using.
The fabric is pure linen and was horrribly expensive. I saw it at the shop where I bought the floss and fell in love.

The picture will increase in size when you click it.

sketch for TIF 5

I did a quick sketch about ideas for my tif 5 Project. The thing on the left is my pulled thread tulip, which is done by now. The thing on the right is a crocheted doilie I’m planning to use because it is pink. Sadly, I don’t have as much time for craft as I used to have, and I like to be outdoors in this nice spring weather, so I have to bore you with such sketches to have anything to show at all.

By the way, the ladder hem on my tif 3 sampler is finished. Slow cloth like this and the tulip make my blog stats go down the drain because they look boring for a long time while being a lot of work. Maybe I am too blog stats obsessed.

Have you seen that my blog has two new pages? I’m trying to get more organized. On the project index page I will list posts belonging to one project,so you cann follow the progress of something you like easier. On the tutorials and how-tos opage I will list tutorials in the widest sense, so they won’t disappear in the archives.

Thoughts of TIF 5

The topic of this month’s take it further challenge is “What do you call yourself? (related to what we do). Artist or Craftsperson?

Basically, that’s the old art versus craft debate taken to a personal level. My first thought was “Why, I’m just a dabbler anyway”. But I guess that answer would be the easy way out.

I dabble in acrylic paint and watercolour, so I can well call myself an artist. But on the other hand, where is the line between art and craft in paintings? Are paintings in the style of the home decor TV shows art? In fiber, I do a few original things. But I also love doing crafty things like knitting, crochet and mindless embroidery. I think I never really defined myself beyond “dabbler in xyz”, replace xyz with my current subject of study. Maybe it’s high time I think about such things a bit.

I don’t really know yet what I’m going to do about that topic, but I think it screams for another sampler, showing the artsy and the crafty sides of me.

The colour scheme is another interesting case. The official me hates it but I think my inner child loves it.

To add a bit of eye candy, here is another progress shot of the pulled thread tulip. If I really do a sampler this will be part of it. Sometimes things just fall into place like this. This ttime, the picture is not clickable, I’ll upload a really big one when it’s finished.

tif 3 – the background fabric

Yes, my blog has got a new look. I just couldn’t see the old theme any more, I wanted something more clean. I’m not really happy that I ended up with one of the most used themes now, but it is definitely one of the best. All others that I might have liked were too narrow and ate parts of my old pictures, making the posts look odd. Now I’ll nave to find out how to change the header picture, and design something decent. I will have to learn CSS one day to be able to have a more customised theme, but I’m too busy for that now.

But now to business. I wrote before you will get to see the background fabric for my tif 3 sampler, and here it is. It is a cheap non-evenweave 100% Linen that was sold for clothes and such. You do get perfect evenweave that looks similar, but for thrice the price. So this one will have to do. I folded the edges and I’m busy doing a ladder hemstitch all arround without any machine sewing. This was the traditional hem for almost all decent needlework in my area one or two generation ago. It takes a lot of time, but I find it is a very peaceful and soothing activity, I love doing it.
It looks a bit untidy because I didn’t hide any loose ends yet. The side shown is traditionally the wrong side, but I will use it as right side because it shows how the hemstitching and the corners are done. Details of my craft. I think this will also be the title of the finished piece.
I have finished the first round, but t is aproximately 50*90 cm in size so this step will keep me busy for another week. “Good things like to take their time” as we say here.

tif 3 – and another scrap

I’m sorry I don’t post more these days. It was another completely crazy week at work, but I do keep stitching on the commute. Tomorrow you’ll get a glimpse at my background fabric, I promise.

Now this was made from two unconnected strips of jute band which were melted together with three layers of polyester organza by ironing. That worked extemely well. It is not a really beautiful scrap, but it was an interesting experiment.

tif 3 – jet another set of scraps

So wordpress made some changes to their new image uploading process – it is slowly getting more comfortable. So I post a few more scraps. These were also treated with the heat gun, but they were not melted brutally but heated carefully from both sides to avoid curling. Obviously, the temperatures needed to melt this kind of kunin felt I have would burn away about anything else. I begin to think that it contains heat guarding chemicals or something.

The first scrap is a strip of green organza, lutradur and lazy daisies stitched with knitting yarn made of manmade fibers (I have forgotten which one).

The second one is green organza stitched on the cunin felt with the same yarn and some green gift wrapping band.

tif 4 – and some more tif 3

So the month of march is over. Where has the time gone? My march tif is nowhere near done, and this time I’m determined it before I start something new. I’m not that happy about this months’s challenge anyway. Up to this point, I tried to work with both the colour palette and the topic, but I honestly don’t know how to do a piece about life and its cycles in such dull colours. So I will probably pass this one.

For March tif, I have bought a nice linen fabric for the background. I’m planning to do something really big this time which may look good as a wall hanging. You will get to look at my progress as soon as I have something to show, in the mean time I have got some scraps I haven’t posted jet.

Here is one more scrap for last months tif. I stitched kunin felt with wire that was supposed to keep it flat when I heat it. Then I heatgunned it as brutally as I could. My heat gun is one of those from the hardware store, it does 300° Celsius. As you can see, it did a good job on the felt, it even altered the colours. The part that was less heaviely stitched curled up totally, the heaviely stitched part was deformed considerably.

The first picture is before heatgunning, the second one after. The pictures were scanned and prepared the same way, so they show the actual shrinkage of the piece. Of course, it is very stiff now, probably it doesn’t fit the description of Fiber any more.

Before heatgunning:

Heatgunned:

tif 3 – more scraps – done using spunfab or lutradur

Here is the next batch of scraps. The first two were done like the last, I ironed organza on batiste, but there was a layer of spunfab betwenn the organza and the rest. Spunfab is a product which is similar to bondaweb but has no carrier paper. The surface of these samples is a bit less brittle and it is only broken in those places where heavy cotton threads were trapped under the melted organza. I feel the surface is still not strong enough to be used without some unmelted top layer.

For the next experiment, lightwight lutrador was ironed onto batiste, with a few scraps of organza trapped between the layers. The lutradur melted forming a solid yet flexible surface, this works better than organza. Yes, I know, this one is kind of boring.

Oh my, I’m running out of time again. High time I start combining the scraps into a sampler, no matter how many new Ideas to try out stuff I have.

tif 3 – some more scraps

Hey, happy Easter to those who will celebrate this, and a happy springtime (or fall) to everybody else.

OK, this tif piece will have a lot of parts. But it is about tiny details, after all. Well, here are the next ones.

The first one is brhundy polyester organza ironed onto batiste strewn with sniplets. It looks similar to the green sample made the same way. The surface is similarly brittle, this one will have to go under some other layers either.

The next one is the proof that not all organzas are equal. This was extra sparkly plum organza. Looks like the warp of this was of different material than the weft, so the melting result is stripey. This one is brittle either.