Arch, box, houses

Well, here's what I did today - I worked on an arch page for a swap with a new (to me) group Textile Challenges, which is run by the lovely Carol T. The swap is for the whole year, one page a month to a different person; we each have expressed some preferences about colours and themes and so on. This month, I am making an arch for Judy, who said that she liked trees, doorways, leaves, ancient artefacts, oceans and I forget what else. She didn't specify colours. Given that I'm into trees at the moment, I thought that was a sign, and decided to make a tree the focus of the page (which, I should say, is essentially 4x8 inches, only arch shaped, of course). The tree is done the same way as yesterday's tree - free motion embroidery with brown thread and then over top with the neutral variegated.

The background behind the tree didn't photograph well - it's done with Stewart Gill MetaMica paints - a blue and a green together and looks a lot less silver in reality than in the photo. The archway is German scrap with some views from an ArtChix sheet behind it; the bird is also German scrap. [Looking at it again now, I think the line at the top of the archway piece is a bit harsh - I might play around with it and see if I can soften it somehow.] The charms in the trees are silver keys and parts of an old earring - I loved those earrings - they had the three dangles shown, plus two other longer ones in different colours. Unforunately, as is so often the case with favourite earrings, I lost one of them. This was about 10 years ago and I have been hanging on to the other one ever since, because I knew I'd find something to do with it - and look, I did!

I have stamped in the bottom right corner with a fern stamp and then added some pressed flowers - these were pressed for me by my lovely DD2, Olivia, last summer. Again with the whole "using things someday" lark!

I hope Judy will like it - as this is the first month, I'm flying a little blind, but I had fun making it. The back is a piece of shibori-ed fabric, on which I will write something (not sure what yet); thought it best to keep it simple.




Another thing I did today is this box (which I actually started yesterday) which is made from scraps from the Hawaiian shirts - I had a big freezer bag of scraps; this has barely made a dent in it. But I think it's fun, and I have promptly put it to use holding scraps of pre-fused fabric. It's 8"wide x 5" deep x 4" high. A nice compact size, but big enough to be useful. This was inspired by the scrapbag challenge on the Fibre and Stitch group - I have actually already done one thing for this challenge, but hey, another one gives me another chance in the draw...



And finally, I worked on my postcards for the Little Houses swap. I knew from the time I signed up for this that I wanted to make the basic houses in the same way I did the ones for the Inching Artists challenge, but wasn't sure what else I wanted to do with them. Given my tree theme this week, I decided to add some trees, and some lawn/grass in variegated green. It remains to edge and back the cards, but the basic work is done. And that was my today!