Thursday is Purse Day - Poinsettia Purses

Here are two purses I finished in January 2009.

This is Poinsettia Pochette.  A pochette is an envelope-shaped handbag.  The body is 4 x 10 inches.  I basically made a small quilt, 8 x 10 inches, then folded it in half and sewed the sides by hand. The handle is striped fabric, folded over and over again, then hand-stitched closed.

I free motioned a large Poinsettia bract and added red seed beads on the points and miracle beads at the center.  Miracle beads are made of acrylic, are typically in vibrant colors, and have a lacquer overlay that gives them a glow.  I used gold thread to meander around the flower so the Poinsettia would pouf out.  Eyelash yarn and three short strings of assorted beads add an embellishment to the front.

Two differences on the back:  

1. There are two little red buttons at the top which I added to cover the threads that were showing after I sewed the gold buttons on the front.
2. A different embellishment on the center panel.

The green leaves are sequins.  The "berry" is a button.

This is Poinsettia Purse.  It's around 9 inches square, including the handle.  The handle is black webbing, folded in half, to which I added stacked beads.  The front flap was fun to make with all the swooshiness.

Two rows of light bulb beads make a nice rattling sound when opening the purse.

Bear Dens

Last week's bear finds are ready for you now...

 
Here is where Bearly Winter lives - in one of many wire cubbyholes where I keep my favorite teapots.  I cleaned up the bears I bought last Friday and made this new arrangement.  The black bears are salt and pepper shakers.  The little polar bears and penguins used to be ornaments until I cut off the strings off the top of their heads.  I made individual stands for each one of them, to keep them propped up.

What are the black bears looking up at?

They're looking at their upstairs neighbor and hoping the roof of their den will hold.

Tea for Tuesday

On occasional Tuesdays I'll be featuring a vignette of tea-related items.  Most of them will have one of my teapots; they all have at least one thing you could use at a tea party.

Well, why not keep the bear theme going this week?  A sort of Christmasy-feeling bear, at that.  This bear used to hang out with these friends, but lately it ditched them for Bearly Winter.  I think he feels more at home this way, though.

Last week at a thrift store, I found some really cute bear things (not ready to disclose yet) that I think I'll display with the quilt instead.   Once I figure out how to make some of them stand up, I'll show you the whole arrangement.

Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.  These cups were big in the 1970s, but I got it at a vintage store in the last year or two.  However, back in the 1970s I sent in for one of their tins and I still have it.  A little bit rusty now!

I wish I had a radio like this bear has...  

 

Bearly Winter

We finally, temporarily, got some winter weather.  In honor of the first measurable snowfall of the season, here's my mini-quilt on the theme of global warming.  The title is a pun on "barely winter."

 

The quilt is approximately 12 inches square.  The top half is the colder portion and lower half is the warmer portion.

The fish, flip-flops, sunscreen, and "Gone Fishin'" sign are buttons.  It looks like the bear is sitting on a table, but that's a pier.  The bear was fussy-cut and fused to a backing, then I used a teeny stitch around the edge to keep it from fraying.  The fishing line goes to the blue fish.

The igloo (excluding the doorway) is made out of one piece of fabric, with free-motion quilting used to delineate the blocks.  The snowflakes are buttons.  Let's talk a little more about snow...

You've heard that Eskimos have many words for "snow."  I was wondering how many, so I did a little research and it's not exactly like it sounds.  First of all, there is no "Eskimo language."  The most common languages are Inuit and Yupik.  Their grammatical structure is different than English.  They use extra syllables in a word which has the same result as phrases in an English sentence, and that's why they have more words for snow.

Examples:
qanuk 'snowflake'
natquik 'drifting snow'
kanevvluk 'fine snow/rain particles

You get the idea - it takes us more words but we get to the same place in the end.

Not Just Another Pretty Face

PIGIPEDIA
Race car driver Mario Andretti had a potbelly pig named Martini who liked to go to the beach at their mountain house in the Poconos at Bear Lake.  He would burrow a hole deep enough to hit moist ground and large enough to fit his body.  He would lay there for hours, then when he got bored he would walk into the lake to go fishing.  

He walked in only so far as it took until the water touched his belly.  He stood there for hours, watching the sun fish swim around him.  They would nip at his belly and he'd retaliate by putting his whole head underwater, trying to bite them back.  Sometimes when he wasn't fishing, he'd put his head under water anyway, and just blow bubbles, the sound of which carried all the way back to the deck on the house. 
 

Thursday Theme - Modern Asian Inspiration

On some Thursdays I'll feature items that have a similar theme.  They might be quilts, books, or purses I made.  Or, they might be ceramics or other objects (not made by me) related to the theme.  If there are too many, I'll spread them out over multiple, but not always consecutive, posts.

I showed you this Alexander Henry fabric before.  I bought it at The Sewcial Lounge in September when they had their birthday party.  Sometimes I buy fabric and get tired of it, but I'm still very happy with this.  I bought 1/4 yard and have three projects planned.

Look what I found yesterday - a box of stationery.  You see the theme beginning to unfold. 

I will love this box long after the notecards are sent out.  I must remember to keep one of each for myself!

I also found this small teapot yesterday.  This side of it looks Modern Asian to me: Asian because of the bamboo-feeling handle and Modern because of the color.  The other side has a black line drawing of crude-looking fruit, which is sort of stylistically charming, but not as pleasing as this calm, blank side - and definitely NOT Modern Asian.  I'm going to pretend the other side doesn't exist.

  

Last in the theme are these Asian motifs from Aimee Ray's Doodle Stitching: The Motif Collection, the embroidery book I've been raving about.  You just know I have to make something with them.

Now I just have to decide if I'm going to wait and show you the three projects together, or show them individually.  I guess it will depend on how quickly I can get them completed.  They're all small, so I should be able to finish by the end of the month.   I'm probably kidding myself, because I want to finish my dress form quilt, my fabric color wheel quilt, and my fowl embroidery, first.  So I guess you'll see them whenever!
 

 

Fowl Embroidery - The Beginning

I started another hand embroidery project this week, making some tweaks based on what I learned from my first project.  You might remember the cow.

I used to store my floss in plastic sheets in a ring binder, but when I turned the pages, the bobbins kept falling out.  In hindsight, it was still worth the money to buy the package of binders and plastic just to have the bobbins.  It was only $3 - $4 I think, for a package that had 60 bobbins.

I moved the bobbins to one of those little boxes you get pretty cheap at Menards.

I'm using this book again.  For my first project, I used just one image.  I wanted to focus on the technique and keep the project small.

For my second project, I used multiple images and made a little tableau.  The book comes with a CD.  Just bring the images into Photoshop and resize them.  Each of these images originally filled an 8 1/2 x 11 paper, but I reduced them and this entire collection is only 8 inches square.

Here's a peek at what I have so far.  The blue lines are made with a Frixion pen and will disappear with a hot iron.  I still have to do their eyes with French knots.  I'm going to wait until the end to decide what color they'll be.

I did the cow with three strands of floss.  I started one of the chicks with two strands, and you couldn't see the color very well, so I stitched over it to make a total of four.  That looked weird, so I tore it out and redid it using three.  The reason I wanted to try two strands was to make it easier to thread the needle.  Even though the needle has a large hole, my needle threader was still getting caught trying to pull the thread through, and it kept bending.  So I reverted to the Luddite method of threading a needle by wetting the end of the thread and pinching it really flat.  That works very well for me.

I hope to have this project finished next week.