Flowers

I've finally started some samples and I'm very excited about them!

I'd had this idea for a Carnation for ages and couldn't wait to try it, it's silk (of course) and the first one was just folded with the raw edge hand sewn to the fabric so it wont fray. I thought this looked too much like a Rose and tried to make it more Carnation-y by using bondaweb on the back to stop it fraying and so I could get twice the amount of fabric as I didn't have to fold it. I think this one works better as it looks like it has petals where I cut the fabric (I daren't on the first one cos I thought it'd fray everywhere and look rubbish)

This one was just a simple daisy but I love how the reverse applique turned out! I quite liked the idea of the hand embroidered one and it can turn out really well - I've done it before but smaller and with 2 colours and I think it works better that way. I still kinda like it, it looks like a dandelion clock..



Applique and whatnots :)

We've been doing some applique which was quite fun but also quite stressful when we were doing reverse and shadow applique and I had to cut stuff away, aaah! I was so worried that I was going to cut through my stitching when I was doing that.

The first pic is normal applique and reverse applique, and the second pic is shadow applique. I really liked that one cos I used a sparkly silver thread and it looks all Christmassy! It doesn't really look it in the pic but it makes me smile :)

We also had a play with dyes. The top row are calico samples that I dyed and the bottom are silks that I dyed. Believe it or not but the corresponding samples have actually been dyed the same colours...

And, I found a nice new stitch - the cloud stitch, oooh...