maandag 14 juli 2014

the tale ( 14 - 7 - 14 )

Yes !
All the last little bits and pieces 
are attached to the bigger piece.
The tale can be told !


I read this tale in the novel 
"Bone House"

(the book is set in Elizabethan England  and the tale
 was told by one of the main characters in the book)

"Near a village lives, hidden in the woods, a wonderful mystrerious bird. 
All those who have ever seen a glimpse of it, tell their own wonderful story.
A traveler hears all the wonderful stories and is desperate to find this
miraculous bird. He then roams through the woods, without finding it, untill
in the end he does catch a glimpse of its beauty. He grabs his bow and 
shoots the bird. Then, where it fell down, he only finds a small gray black
little bird ..... At long last, he puts the dead bird in his bag and returns to 
the village. He tells the villagers that he saw the bird in the end ... and that 
it was just as wonderful as they all had told him. He tells them to keep
safe this wonderful miraculous bird and leaves the village, to never return."

The villagers

telling their strories about the beautifully coloured bird.

The mystrious bird 
(everyone tells a different story about its beauty)

The dark woods, with a glimpse of colour

The traveler shooting the bird

and when it falls to the ground, he only finds this.

But the story has to be kept alive ...

THE  END 


zaterdag 12 juli 2014

another player in the flow

My embellisher story-telling piece slowly continues

Another player had to be added.
Wel not exactly, because he was already there,
but now (only) he continues on the other side of the piece.



This little extra piece was also backed with a bit of green fabric,
I had to make a bow and arrow
and just had the right (thin and thick) coloured wire.
The string of the bow I poked through one hand,
and the bow was fastened in the middle to the stretched other hand :
stitched tightly between wool and fabric.
(then I just tied the thin wire around the bow)

Here I'm attaching the little piece to the backside of the "setting'"

More wire.
This time to make the whole piece standing upright
(fiddly business)


(to be continued)

I made two more "pages" for Sara's Challenge
But this at least one of them is for someone
in the group of "sister-challengers" 
We are waiting which name for each one of us 
comes out of the hat
;-)
So : no pictures
otherwise the surprise is gone.

dinsdag 8 juli 2014

the flow continues ...

With this new embellisher "story-telling" piece I'm working on.
I encounter problems that need solving
that need some good thinking before I can continue.

Because I want all of the tale in this one piece,
using two sides was a good starting point :
as a setting where the story takes place.

But there are also some "players"

To give these "players" a clear place
I made them as a separate piece.
But because you'll see the back of that when it is in place
I had to cover up the not-so-nice back with some fabric.

(hmmmm ... that pointing finger was quite fiddly)

Sewn to the big part !
(and on the other side, the green fabric just blends in with the rest)


And boy, was I glad to come up with the best way 
to use my "magic thread" !
Not just somewhere, hidden along some edge,
but prominently and as an element of the tale.


(to be continued)




zondag 6 juli 2014

in the flow (of a tale)

While the little booklet of Sara's Challenge 
is finished now
the  f l o w of the embellisher is still going
so why not take advantage of that.

There was a story in some book that I liked,
and now I want to make something tangible of that

 The start is to make a layer out of wool (and some scraps)
and carry on till it's dense enough.

I want to use both sides of the piece

The story is about a mysterious
and wonderful bird
that hardly anyone has ever seen a glimpse of

A tiny wet felted bird with crochet wings,
and part of the "inside" forest taking shape
.....


I made the tiniest stitches on the chest and back of the bird
and then adorned it with the wonderful silk ribbon
from Emma's shop in France ! 

(it will be a challenge how to adjust the bird to the piece,
but that will be one of the very last steps in the process !)

The bright "outside"

and the darker "inside" so far


(to be continued)

dinsdag 1 juli 2014

finished Challenge !

I think after almost eight weeks
after Sara started her Challenge for us,
I've finished the booklet.


"Along the Lines"





In fact it has become quite thick :
7 x 7 x 10 cm

That is because I made a lot of pages.

With the first instructions Sara gave us,
she suggested to think of a number of items
you could make for your chosen theme.
(so, I started thinking and made
about ten little sketches for possible pages
for my "lines" theme)

I ended up with 10 pages. 
In fact there are 11 but I sewed two together.

On top of the considerable number of pages, 
I backed every page with fabric,
so I didn't have be careful with the embroidery stitches.


On the backing fabric is machine-written what "line" it's about


The next step was to make buttonhole stitches on the spine-side
of all the pages.


Then, 
stitching every page to an extra piece of felt, and after that
attaching this piece to the cover spine
.....
front and back cover sewn to it, and :

FINITO !

Dear Sara,
it was a wonderful challenge that you initiated 
THANK YOU  for that.
It was a joy to work on it 
and encounter a lot of nice people
who participated in it