Poppy Love

After not having been very active on this blog for so long, it feels a bit difficult to get started again. What should I write? How should I start? Should I apologise to you, my reader, for my inactivity? Well, I think I'll just say that there's a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens, and with so many things going on and such a big change in my life over the past year, blogging had to take second place. But I missed sharing my projects and discoveries with you, so I will make an attempt to breathe new life into this blog now. And I will start by sharing a little piece of quilt art that I finished recently.

I started working on this mini quilt in December, and I've shared a couple of process images before here. It was basically finished and part of an exhibition in January (link), but I wasn't 100 % happy with it, so it's been hanging around looking a bit forlorn since the exhibition, until I took pity on it and added what I felt was necessary. And now I'm quite pleased with it. I attached it to a canvas frame, which will make it easier to display, as well as make it look less like a little potholder on the wall and more like a proper piece of art.

Ok, enough talk. Here are the images:

The size of the mini quilt itself is 15,5 x 15,5 cm (6" x 6") and the techniques include monoprinting, stencilling, fabric markers, fabric collage, Free-motion machine quilting, hand embroidery and beading. The name of the quilt is Papaver (2013). Papaver is the Latin name for poppy.

Thanks for reading! More to come soon, because I'm bursting with projects and new things to try. :-)

Thinking Outside the Box

A few weeks ago I endulged myself with a bit of box-making. I love small handmade boxes. There's something about the way they sit in your hand, and the way the lid slides perfectly in place with a little rasping sound.

This time I tried something new, and while I was in an explorative mood, I decided to stitch, or close, every side of the box and lid with a different method, just to see how it worked.

Here, the box is still without its lid:

And this is how I closed the sides of the box:

In the last image, I've hidden the stiches under a fused strip of fabric.

And this is how I closed the sides of the lid:

The finished box:

Right now it's holding part of my big collection of notes on small slips of paper. I'm always writing to-do lists, taking notes and jotting down ideas on any piece of paper that happens to be nearby, and my surfaces quickly fill up with these papers. Now I have a safe place to put them until I have the time to file them properly. Yes, I know I should file them properly right away, instead of writing things on little pieces of paper, but... well... you know...

Thanks for reading, and see you again soon! - Annika

Own Time

After a tough week I decided to enjoy a bit of own time with a simple embroidery project. Or two, in fact. Both are inspired by Japanese sashiko embroidery. Simple and relaxing.

I haven't decided what to do with this one yet. I'm just working on a piece of fabric that I coloured earlier, but that didn't work out as planned. I'm just improvising as I go. A mystery project!

This will be a dramatic skirt in black cotton sateen with red details. A long-term project, but I'm getting near the end now.

Have a great weekend! - Annika

Happy Easter! Happy Spring!

I've had a few busy weeks again, but I managed to find time to create a bit of Easter ambiance.

First I planted some grass seed. It sprouted overnight. I love the furry white hair that first appear. And the stalks. Fragile, but determined, little spears of green.

After a few days it looked like this.

The beautiful root system is the reason why I planted the seeds in a glass candle holder.

Then the chicks and chocolate eggs moved in.

I dyed these eggs some years ago, using tea, coffee, onion peels and crocus petals. Yesterday I got a tip about more natural dyes for your Easter eggs. Check it out here.

An Easter cupcake gave me renewed energy to finish what I'd started.

I made paper crocuses with the kids on Wednesday

and was so inspired that I made a whole bunch for myself. Spring is late in Finland this year, so in lieu of real crocuses, I can enjoy these instead.

Thanks for visiting. Happy Easter and Happy Spring to us all! - Annika

Busy Fingers

I've been busy again for a few weeks, following a visit to the dentist's, where I had my very last wisdom tooth removed surgically. Things were a bit slow chez moi afterwards, as my jaw was pretty sore, which meant that I've had a lot to catch up with. (I was a bit worried that the last of my wisdom would go with the tooth, but I've had a few clever ideas since, so I guess I'm safe...)

My fingers have been busy this weekend, as I'll be participating in a fair (Arbismarknaden) at the adult education centre next Friday. I'm selling handprinted and machine and hand embroidered items, such as the pretty purses you've seen on this blog before (here and here (the green purse is still unsold)), these little boxes (my very first blog entry!), and these coin purses I've been making this weekend:

The prints are made with a hand carved linoleum stamp I made myself.

I also made a couple of coin purses for a friend and myself. The print on these is a monoprint which I texturised with a handcut eraser stamp in the shape of a key:

I'll report back later about the fair, Until then, have a great week, and thanks for dropping by! - Annika

A Wrap-Up

Last autumn I gave you a sneak preview of a wrap-around tunic I was working on at the time. I finished it eventually, but I haven't yet shown you the result.

The pattern for the tunic is from the book Simple Modern Sewing. 8 Basic Patterns to Create 25 Favorite Garments (Interweave). It's the tunic you can see on the cover. It's a fairly simple pattern, but I had some difficulties with it, as there were errors and vagueness in both the pattern and the directions. But with a little help and good advice from a colleague I finished it, and I'm pretty pleased with the result.

I added an intricate design in raw-edge reverse appliqué on the back:

It would have made a lot of sense to free-motion sew the appliqué, but I actually sewed it with the feed dogs up and an open-toed presser foot (appliqué foot), and a short stitch length. I wanted full control of the stitch length, to make sure that the appliquéd fabric won't fall apart when I wash the garment. It took me hours to sew the design, with a lot of lifting and lowering the presser foot in the curves, and then hours to carefully cut out the design, but it was doable. Here's a detail:

Now I'm working on this skirt. Again, I've made changes to the pattern, so it's slow work, but I've made good progress. My skirt will be in red and black with a Japanese theme. I hope I'll be able to show you images soon!

Have a great week, and thanks for visiting my blog! - Annika

Where Did the Weekend Go?

Gosh, the weekend just flew past me, and here we are: Sunday evening again. I promised you more images of my spray printing experiments, and here they are.

I used stencils and masks (hand made, commercial, as well as found ones), and printed with them each time I'd sprayed over them. No point in wasting good paint! So I have both positive and negative prints now. Very nice. Another thing I tried was spraying wet into wet, and letting the paint seep through the fabric onto another peice of fabric underneith. That produced the cool patterning you can see second to the right in the bottom photo. Spraying is fun. You should try it!

Thanks for visiting, and have a good week! - Annika