making lemonade

that's what you do with lemons. remains of the warp from hell after some more fine tuning. all these natural dyed silk glories that were not going to get thrown away no matter how fed up i am with this warp-note the verb tense. tin need of some relief and after getting the brief from my sister re the  house ending i gave myself playtime. as she said: what a week first donna summer, then robin gibb and now house. and she doesn't know about my warp!

quoting a friend i don't get paid, but i work very hard . hi holly!
took my needle felting machine and felted some of the silk along with bits of merino wool while watching  with delight how a clump of yarns turned into a nice background. added a piece of silk fabric and kept felting.

time for embellishments-love that word. machine stitching with a verigated thread stitching some flowy lines. added some hand stitching to
highlight the visually important part, the felted  silk fabric, and the strong negative space on the left. color, color making the balancing act.

then a border to finish and emphasize the shape that coincidentally turned out to be a d . d for disaster??? as a final step i added some glittery shiny stuff, just for fun.

come to think of it and the afternoon i spent d stands for diversion :)

pd:blogger doesn't let me post comments on blogs. wonder why. anyone out there w. the same problem?
ETA: has to do  with not allowing 3rd party cookies. thank you google. we have created a monster.

neki desu

working from the back

Loom break. Don't want to push myself too hard as i'm wearing an elastic wrist band . Yet here i am at the computer during my loom break. Like someone who doesn't drink coffee because of the caffeine, but drinks 3 cokes a day.

The photo on the left is the original weaving. i found it very" hefty" for my current mood and in one of those- which one do you think the front or the back?- dilemmas i chose the back as it makes a subtler more interesting background for embellishing.

There's a glistening stream going from the bottom right to the top center left. -Does that make sense?- It's a shimmery chiffon scarf that i found and have been merrily cutting up and using wherever i can. The lovely merino is from RosyPink and whatever i say will not do justice to their wonderful fibers.
i wanted a misty feeling over the water lily pond and the embellisher took care of that . Actually it's like a floating fog ,more mauve and less pink, but natural light is not cooperating today and i didn't want to overspend myself with ps because i'm working on another accordion book.

Perhaps the work needs a bit more of cohesion.Will have to sleep on that. As i commented the other day at a blog , we need a workshop that teaches when to stop and when to keep working on a piece. Seriously!
Have a great weekend.

neki desu


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maiden voyage

Succumbed to a deal.Yesterday i went to the Elna distributor in the other side of town to get a twin needle.While there i asked for a quote to convert my -cheap- bought- for- that -purpose- sewing- machine into an embellisher.The nice attendant said that hourly rate for the technician would be steep and added that they had embellishers to go. They had bought many of them and were stuck with 10 as the craft had fell out of fashion.( go figure why) She said that the original price was 300€, but that i could have one for 80€ as they were trying to get rid of the stock.
Now i am a sucker for bargains.Therefore i ran to the ATM and you can see a photo above.
Granted it's not a top brand, but i don't really care, because basically what i'm buying is a motor.

Here's my first try on the machine's maiden voyage. It works .It's very quiet.It's smooth.
Dare i ask for more?
When husband-san got home i showed him the maiden and oversimplifying, i said it was a felt making machine.His jaw dropped in a panic attack as he asked if i was going to flood the studio with water. i replied that it was needle felt, dry felt, and he said he had just fallen in love with the new gizmo. LOL!

Now i just need a spreadsheet for establishing ratios between available time and all those techniques.

neki desu


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the lily pond series nº2

Actually this was the first woven and i was trying out the colors and grist of the linen yarns.i got my information, that's what samples are for aren't they?, but the results were very literal.That's when i made up my mind to use the weave as a background for brocading and surface techniques.
There's needle felting and machine stitching here. Pleased with the different qualities of the encircling line.
Meanwhile there's a downpour outside...oh no !and a hail storm.Poor plants.

neki desu


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the whole gamut

i've made ATCs and postcards that i have to upload. Now it's the turn for stamps.
You can see the scale with a 5 cent € coin. All materials with no remorse:) lutradur, paint, foil, beads, those cool iridescent square sequins and thread. And oh yes the heat gun. Fun to play with when you're stressed out.

neki desu

trading post

i've been making ATCs for trade lately just to help me get back in the swing of things. It's taken me a while to get back after the flu.
These are the first three of a series of 10. If you're interested in trading leave me a note.

i'm recycling some thick loosely spun yarns that i've had for years but could not bear to discard because of the you never know syndrome.And it seems that i finally found a use for them.

i'm also having fun adding other materials and beads and sequins. Not only is this a stash reduction phase, but also a beads and sequins phase.

neki desu

more pictures of the floating world

Working on punching fabric bits into polyester organza. Yes, me the purist using polyester!Interesting to work on horribly difficult to photograph. Too bad the iridescent paints did not come through. Bad day for taking photos with natural light.

i find the details a lot more interesting than the sum of all parts. And here they are.

neki desu

bitting the dust and chewing it

It has always sadden me when i read of weavers who passed away and their estates, looms, stashes, samples, in a good scenario, end up at a garage sale with unappreciative people.
Its not that i'm going to die, well, eventually everyone does, but i've had this concern about my woven samples. And while i came up with something to do with them they were ever so often dutifully shifted around from place to place within my studio. Until very recently.

i started using some of the fabric samples as backgrounds for the TAST
embroidery samples. Yes, more samples! Though sometimes the fabric was not suitable for embroidering on and it had to go back to the sample box.

This Sunday the lights finally went on. Why not use them for ATCs?
So i brought out a hand needle felting device i had bought, my brand new heat gun and all the thrums that i could find. i had sworn that i wasn't going to jump into the needle felting bandwagon unless it added something to my work. Same resistance that i had towards weaving with chenille when it became le dernier cri and everyone was doing it.

Nonetheless i had a flawless alibi in that i was recycling everything and not buying more stuff. i even recycled some of the chunky yarns i had from my tapestry weaving days, i'm talking second day of creation here.
As a result these are the first ATCs of the season and they are up for trading. A compendium of materials and techniques in an effort to slim down. The lutradur is courtesy of Annica of Fab Threads and the final push is due to Purple Missus

The stone gray background fabric is a woven sample of a networked twill woven in silk in all its defective glory, the gingham is commercial fabric and so is the ric-rac.

neki desu