Woven Fringe Earrings

 Joan Williams's project in the autumn 2023 issue of Belle Armoire Jewelry caught my eye immediately -- Czech glass on a miniature rug woven from cotton floss, inspired by the saddle blankets horses wear.

 

Lacking a mini loom, I made one from a large matchbox:

I enjoyed the weaving so much, however, that I'm seriously considering getting a proper loom of that size (the matchbox worked, but the warp threads had an annoying tendency to slip off at inconvenient moments).

Lacking glass beads in a suitable color, I instead created a little stack from brass discs, fordite beads, and size 8 seed beads to anchor them in place. Finishing was easier than I expected, too; a blunt needle made it easy to hide the thread ends under the wefts on the back.

These earrings were a lot of fun to make; I bet a bracelet would be, too!
 

Untitled Red/Pink/Orange Thing

 This project has been on my mind for years. I'm using the techniques in Effie Mitrofanis's gorgeous Threadwork: Silks, Stitches, Beads & Cords. 

The first step was gathering fabrics and threads.

 Four years ago I mounted linen gauze (from some expensive curtains my cats wrecked 🙄) into a frame, tacked on a base of sheer rose fabric from an old camisole, and layered on rectangles of dupioni silks. I used a running stitch in matching pearl cottons to hold the silks in place.

 

Last year I tacked on a rose motif from a fancy scrap of polyester fabric. I couched Japan gold around the edges, filled in background sections with chipwork, and stitched the center spaces between petals with metallic ribbon. 

 Initially, I was disappointed that I didn't have any gold purl for the chipwork (this project is purely from my stash), but I like the way the silver looks.

 A couple of weeks ago I twisted silk scraps into ropes and coiled those ropes into spirals, twisting, coiling, and couching them down as I worked. What a pain in the ass that was! It made me realize I really need a proper stand for this frame. Or a third arm.

 

This past week I kind of went overboard beading a sun motif in the upper corner, using tiny scraps of folded silk (straight from Mitrofanis's book), sequins, bugle beads in two sizes, and lots and lots of seed beads. 

 

I'm ready for a break from this project, but I have a couple of ideas for it still -- I want to use more scraps to create a vine with more flowers and leaves along the bottom, and I think I will embellish the rest of the background with lots of tonal embroidery. But who knows where inspiration will take me!

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

This was a fun little project, although not quite done. The cross stitch design is Oddpothecary by Noctiflora Designs, from the Just Cross Stitch Halloween issue from 2024. I did redesign two of them, changing bat wing to wool and frog bones to toes to better fit the quotation from MacBeth.

Meanwhile, A Somerset Halloween featured a cute project from Patty Thurlby, using altered Altoid tins to hold fun little Halloween treats. The tins were supposed to be covered in gold leaf, but that was a fiasco -- neither my local craft store nor Michaels had real gold leaf, so I used a fake version from the latter. I then tried applying it with double-sided tape, tacky glue, and the glue recommended for gold foil, but each failed in a different way 🙄. I eventually painted the lids in black and the rest in a metallic copper. I backed the cross stitch with heavy-duty fusible interfacing and trimmed them (I should have made a template first), then glued them to the lids. I then glued a bit of yarn around the edges of the fabric. Maybe I'll add a second cord around the top. Or dimensional paint; that could be cute.

 

The insides of the tins are unaltered; I want to decoupage some spooky paper images, but my paper craft stuff is stored away at the moment. I shredded bits of yarn for the wool and found a package of eye cabochons for the eyes, but  I haven't yet come up with a thing to be the frog toes.

It's not quite the look I was envisioning, but overall I'm pleased.

Hoop Art

 Inspired by Nichole Vogelsinger's work, I made this:

I had a lot of fun picking different threads, stitches, and beads for all the elements. It's the second hoop I've made inspired by her work, and I will be doing more.

Peace in our Hearts

 

This bead embroidery project was inspired by The Beadshop's similar Intentional Heart project. A milagro of a dove is at the center of the ultrasuede heart and I added seed beads and metallic spacers around it, with a beaded picot stitch to sew together the front and back. As I sewed the edging I inserted two jump rings at the top of the heart. I have since added a small chain to the rings to hang the heart with the rosaries hanging by my bed, but if I ever want to wear it it I can easily replace it with a longer chain.

It's shaping up to be a terrible year, and because of the ridiculous amount of personal crap I'm dealing with, I can't fight back against the administration as I wish I could. But I can pray for peace and justice.

Weaving Around

 Years ago I started this project, and set it aside for who knows what reason. I found it again while rooting around for something, and I was determined to finish it -- both to cross something off my list, and because I had the perfect spot for it on the wall.

It's a simple project: wrap an old cd or dvd with warp threads through the center (an uneven number), then weave over and under them on the non-label side of the disc, changing yarns as you see fit. It's a great project for leftover yarn and threads, and has a lovely texture:

The instructions (this was a project by Kristin Cleveland from an old magazine) called for attaching the cds to each other by connecting warp threads with pearl cotton, but that was too floppy to hang on a wall, so I glued popsicle sticks to the backs (you can see a bit of one in the bottom picture; I guess I wasn't careful enough butting the edges together).

I enjoyed the weaving quite a bit, especially mixing different textures and thicknesses together, but I really really really can't add another craft to my repertoire, so that's it for weaving. For now.

Hoop Art!

 I have a few hoop finishes to show off. 

Over the summer I picked up the book Boho Embroidery by Nicole Vogelsinger. Her style is lots of fun; she layers bright, quirky, colorful fabrics on top of each other, then embellishes them with embroidery and beads. I was excited to try the technique:

I cut out a cat face from some Tula Pink fabric and appliqued it onto a Kaffe Fassett background. Then came the fun part -- embroidering lazy daisy petals and adding beads at the flower centers. For the frame around the cat I used fringe beads, little tear drops that naturally fall into an alternating pattern when strung together. 

I'll be doing more of this; I have all sorts of ideas for the novelty prints in my stash.

For Christmas my husband gave me a Winter wreath kit from Nicky Franklin:

The vintage linen the kit came with was a dream to stitch, so soft. There was an awful lot of satin stitching, but otherwise this kit was a fun one.

This pattern, Fall Leaf by Cutesy Crafts, was supposed to be finished in November, but I ran out of the silk I was using when stitching the outline. I debated switching to a different color because I was dying to see the completed stitching, but I'm really glad I waited to get more. One variegated color was exactly the look I was going for.

When finishing the back, I tried the string art technique for the first time. It uses a whole lot of thread, but looks neat:

Finally, I did the little freebie kit that came with an issue of Love Embroidery magazine:

The bird was supposed to be stitched with long-and-short stitch in browns and reds, but I hate long-and-short even more than I hate satin stitching, so I made my bird a little more abstract.

Whew!

Sari Bead Necklace

 The spring 2021 issue of Quilting Arts Magazine had a project by Susan Brubaker Knapp for beads made from strips of sari silk wrapped into balls and secured with thread. How could I resist?

I strung the beads on beading cord (not easy to do; I bent one needle and almost wrecked another) with pony beads between each, and finished it with size 6 beads for the part that would hang around my neck. 

This was a fun project, and it could be easily adapted to scraps of leftover fabric, yarn, or novelty thread. I kept my beads "plain," but you could also sew on seed beads or small sequins for a little sparkle.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

January's pick for the Inspired by Reading book club was The Starless Sea, a novel which I had fortuitously bought for myself as a birthday present the previous month. It's a story about stories and the truths they tell or hide. Grad student Zachary finds a mysterious book on the shelves of the library that contains several tales about a giant library below the world where all stories are kept, including the tale of how a young Zachary found a door to that library and almost went through it but didn't -- an event he never told anyone about.

I loved this book so much. It's a lovely paean to storytelling, filled with rich and vivid imagery -- bees and keys and swords abound, and honey lemon cookies and cats and dollhouses and trees and doors appearing everywhere. There's a millenia-old love story, and another sweet, more recent one. There are endings and beginnings and second chances and lost opportunities, and through it all the thrill of a well-told tale.

There were also some narrative problems. A sinister secret society becomes quite dangerous early on before fizzling out completely; another secret society ends up not having much of a role at all. One of Zachary's friends takes over part of the narration at the end of the book and she's wildly entertaining but she feels like she belongs in another novel entirely. And I would have liked some variation in the voice of all the non-Zachary tales, to reflect the fact that the underworld library is supposed to hold all kinds of stories told in all kinds of manners. But on the whole I could not get enough of the world Morgenstern created. Maybe a sequel centered on Kat?

I went with the obvious when it came to making the jewelry:

I attached a bee, sword, and key to a black filigree base, and attached that to a matching chain. A second strand of amber chips to evoke the honey of the Starless Sea adds a little textural interest.

But I didn't stop there!

Using a deep indigo strip of silk I picked up at Allegory Gallery a few years ago, I attached a big brass ring with a slip knot and added an assortment of charms, beads, and another hunk of honey-colored amber. this is my favorite of the two, and I will keep it for myself. The other I will list in my etsy store.

Christmas Sampler

This sampler was the ninth of my stitch9challenge, and I finished it on the second to last day of the year. It was by far the most fun to stitch:

The Christmas pudding, and Nativity were inspired by other designs, modified by me to fit the 14x14 stitch squares. The Charlie Brown Christmas tree, regular Christmas tree (made from fly stitches), and winterberry bush were my own design. The cross stitched gift was a Stitchy Box design, the one over one cookies were Brooke's Books designs, and and the blackwork was from ... somewhere. The beaded candy cane was a reject from a pair I made for earrings. I made a beaded snowflake, stitched a woven rose, and embroidered an ornament-shaped piece of felt. Lace, charms, buttons, and a tiny crystal cross round out the squares.

I love inchie samplers, and I'm sure I'll be doing more.

E is for Easter

Not that this project actually has anything to do with the holiday. I've mentioned before that letters have distinctive colors in my head, and I've been working on a series off and on. E is light blue:

The blue calico fabric has sentimental meaning for me, as it is from my mother's stash and dates back to at least the 80s. The background is two different remnants of silk, and I added a bit of lace for contrast. The card is backed with light blue linen.

For those who are wondering, D is green, but I haven't decided yet how I want to represent it.

Three of Hearts

I planned to make only one heart this year (I have a lot going on), but it quickly turned into three.

The crochet heart was a free pattern from Fresh Stitches, and perfect for the small skein of pink yarn I had.

The mixed media heart is from the latest issue of Quilting Arts. I layered different yarns and scraps on a fabric heart, covered it with netting, and secured it with machine stitching. I then beaded and embroidered the top, sewed on a backing heart, and stuffed it.

The last heart is made of beaded filet stitch from The New Beadweaving by Ann Benson. I'm glad I tried this new stitch (based on filet crochet), but it was pain to work with.

May this next year be filled with more love for our fellow man.

Cruz de Milagros

I've been meaning to make a cross covered with milagros for a number of years.

I started with a plain wooden cross from the craft store and painted it a deep yellow in the recess and purple elsewhere.  I then glued milagros all over, and for good measure added little pink plastic flowers (really teeny hair barrettes broken in half) to the corners.

I hung it with the painted cross and portrait of La Virgen de Guadalupe my mom gave to me.

I Don't Like Walking Around this Old and Empty House

"Little Talks" by of Monsters and Men:

It's been a while since I made an ATC about song lyrics.  Although this looks similar to the house I made for Where'd You Go, Bernadette, the idea has been floating around in my brain for a few years.

The first step was laying a piece of background fabric onto super thick, stiff interfacing, and sketching out a house shape with the sewing machine:

I then appliqued little scraps of fabric to make the wallpaper for the different rooms:

which I then trimmed close to the stitching:

Next up was the embroidery -- pieces of furniture, decor items, stick-figure ghosts, and, of course, the famale narrator of the song.  I trimmed the result to 2.5 by 3.5 inches, backed it with felt, and zig-zagged twice around the perimeter.

I'd forgotten how much fun these are, and I should start doing more. 

Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

I've missed some of the months in the Inspired by Reading group, so I scrambled to read Where'd You Go, Bernadette? in time for this week's discussion/reveal. I'm glad I did!  Semple's novel was a thoroughly enjoyable depiction of funny, troubled, exasperating people, and a touching meditation on creativity, mental illness, and responsibility.

Rather than make jewelry, I went in a different direction.  Bernadette is an architect whose masterpiece was a house made entirely of recycled, salvaged, or local materials.  That inspired me to make my own house from my stash:

I placed fabric scraps on a piece of heavy interfacing and sewed all around and across the roof to make a house shape.  A leather tag from an old pair of my husband's jeans and a keyhole doohickey became the door. I attached another hardware doohickey to the roof with beads. The upper windows are scraps of metal mesh from an earring organizer I made, and the bottom windows are the plastic tags from doses of Xopenex I had to give Beadboy1 during one of his many hospital stays -- you see, like Bernadette's daughter, my son was also born with a serious heart defect and needed surgery as an infant.  And like her, he has asthma triggered by viruses (I know all too well how school nurses overreact to coughs out of an abundance of caution).  The hand embroidery was done with floss left over from various stitching kits.  Once I was done with the house I backed it with felt and machine-stitched once more around the perimeter. 

Taking broken, used, defective, discarded things and making a home and a life -- I think Bernadette would approve.

Restocking the Esty Store

With milagros and religious medal necklaces:

A couple more pairs of bobbin earrings:

I also decided to sell the rest of my embellished Lotería cards:

Sari Tassel Beads

My latest creation:

inspired by the February box by Blueberry Cove Beads. 

I coveted that box the moment I saw it, but I couldn't justify the expenditure, especially since I already owned recycled sari strips:

little bells:

and glass beads from India:

Inspiration struck almost immediately.  I cut a few four inch (or so) lengths of the sari strips and used brass craft wire to tie them together, making a wire-wrapped loop at the top:

I folded the strips down and used more wire to wrap around the bundle, creating a tassel:

Then, using beading thread, I attached to the base four strands of small glass beads, ending each with a brass bell:

Love them. 

 When I shake my head, I hear the bells tinkle together!

For good measure, I made a second pair to sell through my etsy store: