Several Small Stitcheries

 It's been a minute since my last post. I have not been idle however. I've been working on these little pieces of slow stitch off and on.

3" wide x 4" tall

The flat pink rock is actually a bead meant for jewelry making. I did a series of two of these with stitches, sequins, and more beads. The one below has some wool yarn pulled apart for additional texture and interest.

4" wide x 3" tall

The birds and the tiny orange flowers are buttons.

4" wide x 3" tall

This one (above) was a way to use some scraps of the feed sack prints I used recently in a quilt top.

3" wide x 4" tall

Another one begun with mere scraps. The circular medallion is a Tim Holtz product. It says, "in every walk with nature one receives far more than they seek." The butterfly is a button, the feather is a charm.

3" wide x 4" tall

This one began as a study in purple scraps. It was a little harder to move forward and sat as a blank canvas for a while. Eventually one stitch led to another, I found the scrap of lace,  and the Trust charm finally found a home. The bird is another sequin.

3" wide x 4" tall

Here's another one that began with feed sack scraps. Red flower-shaped buttons from my collection, a couple of little crocheted flowers, and a faux postage stamp button.

4" x 4"

This one also sat for some time before I could see what to do with it. In the end I just feather stitched between the hearts that were in the print on the top, seed stitched around the flowers in the strip of binding tape below, and then just added the clothing label and the charm to the bottom.

2.5" wide x 4" tall

This little tag shape was fun to create. Nothing but embroidery and a strip of lace for embellishment. 

These will all be going to the Disabled Artist's Foundation Inc. for an upcoming fund raising auction. It feels so good to be able to make things to contribute to a worthy cause!

#JustBecause Book

How has it been a whole week since my last post?! Time really does fly when you're having fun. Or at least when you're engrossed in a good book. 😉

 I've been working a bit at a time on a fabric book for some time now. During the last week it became a finished product. I began with some rough cut pieces of yarn-dyed plaids I won in one of the Disabled Artists Foundation auctions. About the same time I was learning about art journals from YouTube videos. I also came across Susan Taylor Brown's videos and began tuning in to her live streams. She encourages us to make art "just because." This sounded like an ideal antidote for my perfectionist tendencies. I decided to have a go at turning those pieces of cotton fabric into pages and a cover for a book. Most significantly, I was determined to do it without straightening any edges or making everything the same size and shape!

I began with some slow stitching on single pieces of the fabric bundle. 

I played around with layers of textiles. I created a couple of pockets, and then made a pair of tiny tags to live in them.

Even a feather from one of my canaries got stitched down!

 There are beads and buttons strewn throughout.

A lot of the laces also came from dAFi (Disabled Artists Foundation, Inc.) auctions.

 But of course there are treasures from my own hoard included, like labels from men's neckties and quilter's cotton prints.

 

 Assembling the pages into signatures and then assembling the book as a whole was the scariest part. I hadn't thought out the process in the beginning and that complicated matters a bit. I'm happy with the end results though. 😊

The front cover.

The back of the book.

And that's the end of the story!