Post 200! Burgundy Doll Dress

Wow!  The 200th post since May!  That is a lot of posts, hopefully someone thinks that it is worth reading.

We are expecting rain and it has been quite a gloomy day.  I got up early today considering all the sleep I had yesterday.  I am surprised that I slept at all last night.  Sometimes when I am very sleepy I keep getting up and searching through my supplies.  This is one of the reasons things get everywhere.  Ideas for projects keep me from falling asleep.  Last night I had an idea of decorating a 8 inch dressmaker's dummy made of paper.  I was searching and couldn't find any paper or fabric that I liked for decorating the dummy.  Then I found a doll pattern that I bought ages ago and have never used.  Sewing is not a skill I have and patterns often don't get used.  Then the idea struck me that I could use the pattern tissue to decorate the dummy.  I copied some of the pieces and then started arranging the patterns onto the dummy.  Then what usually happens happened!  I got distracted and finally fell asleep. 

This morning I was trying to remember what I had been thinking the night before.  I saw the pattern and it has lots of cute clothes and so I decided to make a party dress for Barbie.  Not exactly what I had planned last night!  So I hunted and found a deep burgundy satin that surprisingly doesn't fray easily.  So I cut out the pieces and started sewing the dress using a running stitch with a lot of backstitches.  I used a tiny needle and the Gutermann thread I purchased recently.  It only has two pieces a bodice and an off center skirt that is shorter in the front and is floor lenght in the back.  Anyway I decided to get it put partially together and hemmed before starting to embroider it.  The only problem is that I can't find a doll to make sure the dress will fit.  Finally decided to use pink silk ribbon and silver thread on the dress.  If this goes well maybe I will try another pattern.

Last Minute Altrusa Plans

Today I slept almost the whole day.  Guess I wasn't feeling as well as I thought.  I woke up around 6 pm and worked on the last of the Altrusa ornaments.  The pink crocheted basket is finished and it has a pink ribbon rose on it.  The pink crocheted tea cup only needs to be starched a bit and it will be done also.  My friend has invited me to see the tree at the Elks club on Saturday.  She got a dressmakers mannequin as one of the gifts so everything is coming together!  I have only one more thing to find, a pearl necklace I made for another gift.  This tree is going to be a Victorian dressmakers dream!

 

Basket ornament.

 

 

Tea cup ornament.

Teneriffe Lace Using the Stitch-Around by Posi-Bendr

After reorganizing mount craft supplies I worked on learning Teneriffe lace making.  There seems to be very little available on the subject.  I found two books one printed in the early 1900's and another in 1980.  The technique of Teneriffe Lace by Alexandra Stillwell is quite good.  It offers a very thorough understanding of making Teneriffe lace or Sol lace as it is also called.  The author explains how to use a handmade tool and the instructions are really clearly illustrated.  There are also lovely examples in the book.  A PDF copy of the book can be found on this site. http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/books/sa1980.pdf

Many years ago I had purchased the Stitch-Around I think it was from snowgoose here is a link to their Teneriffe stuff  https://www.snowgooselace.com/
Snowgoose is a great company to buy from and they have a variety of lace supplies that are hard to find as well as kits.

Since I last saw my teneriffe tool all I had done was to thread through the holes.  I had never actually started a motif.  So Yesterday I found the instructions and the loom again.  I had found one or the other for years and I knew I had to try making some lace before I lost something again.

The first motif I made was very simple in fact so simple it is barely holding together.

Lace motif one.

So I started another motif using the book pdf file for instructions. I had made the second motif the wrong size so I couldn't make all the rows in the pattern but it did look nice.

Second Teneriffe motif.

The second motif was 2 inches woven with size 20 crochet cotton. The best thing about the Stitch-Around is that by using different rings on the tool the motif size changes from 2 inches to 6 inches.  So I wove the threads through a 3 inch setting and now have two much space because I used a much finer silk thread.  It is hard to see so I may wait until tomorrow to finish it. 

Third motif still on Stitch-Around.

Looks like I just need to practise making motifs to get the hang of sizes of thread to motif size.  One project in the teneriffe book is a small mat made of 5 motifs, I would like to make it as a gift.  Of course what I really want to make is a mantilla, which was at one time traditionally made of Teneriffe lace.  I first saw a mantilla in college, Teneriffe was taught in the general needle arts class.  But this was long ago when it was not as easy to track down needle art tools.  So we learned using pins to weave around.  This method can be very frustrating as the threads try to tangle everywhere and it takes a while to set up the pins.  So I didn't have a piece finished for class but I don't remember anyone else finishing a motif either.  I am very proud that I was able to make my first two motifs and I will at least make a mat or decoration for a pillow.  I also have an idea of using teneriffe motifs to form lace flowers, they would be pretty with the ribbon roses from earlier blog entries.

I almost forgot that in the 60's there was a tool called a knitwit.  It was a little handheld tool that had spokes that were retractable.  You wrapped yarn around it and then popped off the motif.  The knitwit made daisies and it was often called daisy work.  It was a very very primitive form of teneriffe work.  I have some old instruction books on making daisy layettes.  I had started an afghan but the daisies were so small it was just to big a project.  I would love to get another knitwit, about 5 years ago they were popular for a short time.  Maybe one of these days I will make a daisy afghan!  Here is a link to an instruction book from the 50's.
http://www.knitting-and.com/small-looms/knitwit.html

I hope that this has inspired someone to try this form of lace.

Back Again (personal post)

Took a little break from blogging but I think I'm back again.  My doctor didn't take my seizure as lightly as I did.  So he wanted tests and reduced one med that can cause seizures.  The tests all came out wonderfully.  So this last nine days have been busy ones running around.  But I also worked on projects, I just didn't feel up to photographing and posting about them.  I've also been watching a lot of old movies. 

The weather has finally changed to cold!  It is finally time to start baking again because we need to warm up the house!  My mom would bake when it got cold and I would call it baking season.  I can just see my mom warming her hands with the oven slightly open.  Just have to find the energy to bake and clean. 

The crystals are roughly sorted and I'm considering making jewelry just to keep from having to sort them anymore!  I did finally get the jewelry drawers out of the bedroom.  Right now I can't see me doing anything this year for Christmas.  I still owe Christmas truffles from last year when carpel tunnel got me!  So maybe it is better if I don't try to do much this season.  I'm still working on the only gift I started.  It is just that with Pattie's kids leaving the nest I would like to send them chocolates for their holiday traditions.  Along with a link to this blog for the tutorial on how to make them.

Still have to finish the Altrusa tree ornaments, just three more to go!  Maybe I will be able to see the tree all decorated but I doubt I will get to it!  I hope it earns lots of money!

In any case I will try and move around today and see what I can get done.  Need to go through the supplies for baking, I am tempted to make more Stollen this year.  I absolutely love it!  So much for losing weight!

Ribbon Flowered Necklace

 

Fabric Necklace.

 

 

Close up of necklace.

 

 

Close up of left side of necklace.

 

Yesterday I had one of those moments of inspiration!  I went to Beverly's to show another crocheted teacup that I made in ecru and pink.  The pattern is easy enough but I don't like how small the cup is compared to the saucer.  So I keep trying to adapt the pattern.  In any case I was told to move onto other projects for the tree, we still need poinsettias for the tree.  The problem is that I'm not sure how big to make them.  The tree is due in 13 days so I need to concentrate on the embroidered mirror as well as the flowers.  Beverly's was really busy because they had a 65% off fall stuff.  Sadly I didn't have the money to buy the glass pumpkins.  But I did get a spool of pink thread, pink felt and they had the large size of the clover flower tool.  The large size Kanzashi Flower tool seems to be different from the small.  So I will have to play with it a bit more before I decide if I like it.

So instead of standing around at Beverly's I went to Cafe Noir and had ice tea and Russian tea cakes.  There was supposed to be a write-in for Nanowrimo at Cafe Noir from 12:00  to 3:00.  Only Lee and I were there.  So Lee was writing and I was working on poinsettias when I felt inspiration hit me like a 2 ton weight!  The night before I had tried to cut straight strips of pink satin fabric with the idea of some how making them into flowers.  The price of ribbon is so high right now that I really can't afford the ones I want.  In fact Betty's Fabrics have some very old silk ribbon that is half the price of the new poly ribbons!  So if I want to continue making flowers I needed to adapt!  I was looking at the Kanzashi Flower tool when inspiration hit!  I took out the pink fabric strip and started folding a rose.  I started by rolling a center and then folded the ribbon back and sewed the rolled center to the ribbon making a petal curve.  Here it got tricky because the unfinished edges were showing.  So I gently folded the raw edge under the ribbon and carefully tacked it down.  Not the easiest thing to do because of how much the fabric frayed.  I made two more folds and then started gathering the rest of the fabric.  First stitching close using small stitches and then spacing them out gradually and making longer stitches.  Once the fabric was gathered I pulled it tightly.  Then with another thread I started to sew the gathered fabric to the rolled center.  I found that the tighter the fabric was gathered the better the flowers came out.

The fabric flowers turned out to be really lovely.  So I decided to make a fabric necklace with the flowers.  I took some of the cotton cord that I made the fabric basket out of and wound green ribbon around it.  Then I sewed some white lace over the green.  I decided to curl the ends for interest.  Unfortunately the flowers were to big for the necklace.  So I made some runched flowers and rolled roses out of 1 inch pink ribbon.  One of the large roses I put on the necklace over the close.  I added gold and pink pearls and gold crystals.  It was hard to decide where to place everything.  Then I remembered that I have a dressmaker's dummy.  So the dummy was helpful in arranging the flowers,  I really love the necklace but some more leaves and pearls will be needed to finish it.  I worked all day on it because I was afraid of loosing the momentum but now it has been a two day effort and I need a break.

Crocheted Teacup Garland Update (didn't work)

 

Crocheted teacup.

 

The teacup garland didn't work because the cups were to close together when I put a light string inside the cup.  So another idea might be to use ecru thread and make a square with scallop edging.  Then you could alternate a string of cups and tea biscuits!  Without the lights.

 

The Altrusa tree is slowly coming together. Today I worked on a teacup garland. I had some mini light strings and I am trying to come up with a lighted garland. It has to be safe as well as pretty so I am looking into several ideas. Tomorrow I am going to Beverly's to see what else I can do to help.  I'm sure the tree will be beautiful!

Rainbow Bugs

I first discovered rainbow bugs when I started making jewelry.  When I would be piecing crystals together and the sun was streaming into the room there would be small bright rainbows on the walls.  I decided to call the lights rainbow bugs.  Then I realised how much they actually could help me in creating jewelry.  The refraction levels would be my guide to when I had enough crystals in a piece of jewelry.  Today I had bugs all over the walls!  The earrings below are a change from what I usually make.  I used two pieces of chain and then wired 10 crystals some with an AB finish on each earring.  This is a very labor intensive style so I don't do them very often.  Then I found one of my jewelry stands and put it in front of the ribbon flowers.  The pictures came out great!  The earrings already have a new home just in case someone wanted to adopt them!

 

 

 

Crystal Earrings.

 

 

Close up of crystal earring.