First Beautiful Botanical Embroidery Bag-from-Jeans

I have lost 22 kg over the last 9 months. Mostly I am wearing the same clothes, in some cases modified. One pair of 3/4 length jeans reached a point where they fell down, and a belt didn't work well. I considered giving them to a charity, but decided I'd rather recycle them another way. 

I cut the legs off as tubes and then the body part along the side seams. Folding the back in half along the back seam will give me a bag with pockets, using the waist band as the bag top. The front is then cut into strips to form handles.

I am going to use adaptations of some of the motifs from this book on all three bags. For the first bag, I'm using a version of the design on the front cover.

Once I was sure I couldn't trace on to this weight of cloth, I tried a couple of different pens, settling in the end for an archive one. I drew them by hand, enlarging them to fit the shape I had. 

I chose my hoop size to fit the large motif on the bottom corner, and assembled a bundle of threads I thought might work.   

       

I used a  variegated perle 5 thread for the large bloom. I love the opportunity to use acquired specialty threads in projects like this. It used the whole skein.

Here is the finished side. I considered whether to leave the other side plain, but settled on a spray of leaves and blooms, still from the Botanical Embroidery book, in white on the other side. 

I'm using a No 3 Twilley's Stalite cotton, which gives a good coverage and texture.

It took three moves of the hoop and a few touch ups on the edges to finish. The denim has stretch in it which seemed to help in maintaining tension.

A single strap was enough and I lined it with some spotted cotton from my stash. It required a join - but no hassle (believe it or not, it has been ironed, though not with my steam iron. Never was much of an ironer!)

Here's the finished product, back and front. I am delighted with the result and am looking forward to making the next one - this time a night scene with owl.

Winter Birds Table Topper Start

After the Samurai, I wanted a project that had large components, a bit free-flowing and involved no counting,  preparation or construction. I settled on a kit for a table topper, bought, of course, on sale.

I bought this because it is so cheerful. I like the colours, and the style reminds me a bit of Hungarian embroidery, which I admire. I also like to have some projects on hand that require no finishing once I've finished stitching and I rather liked the edging on this one.










The thread is 5 Perle - solid and fast, and the instructions consist of a large diagram and a sheet of stitches. Basic.

I began on the red berries and really enjoyed the freedom after the cross-stitch effort of the last weeks.

I moved on to the pine needles, and decided to couch them rather than have long loose stitches as in the diagram. That seemed to work well.



I then decided to experiment a little on some of the larger leaves, trying some of the lattice techniques that Mary Corbet has been writing about in her blog.

I needed the filling fairly dense, so used two shades of green with the framework lines fairly close together. It was possible to get the lines intersecting so the colour is all light at the tip and all darker at the base and a mixture in between. It gives a textured effect that I quite like.






It doesn't look so good, however, with the gold veins in place.

Next I played around with the cream-coloured blobs that I take to be snow. Not having a lot of experience of snow, I don't know whether birds actually choose snow rather than exposed branches to sit on, and I would have expected the thread to be white, not cream - but I am out of my knowledge base and may be too literal.

Rather than large blobs of satin stitch, I tried layers of couched lattice - a layer on the straight and couched down overlayed by another set at a 45 degree angle. It would work well for a nest, but probably isn't the best effect for snow.

The photo also shows how the gold veins for the satin-stitched leaves sink into the work, while those on the latticed leaves stay on the surface. Looks like satin stitch wins for the leaves.  I want to try something else for the snow (assuming that's what it is!). It's good to be working on something I can easily play around with.