Crazy busy
I've been silk felting pieces lately. I love just putting the colors together and looking at them.
I redid a painting. I just went with an impulse and redid the vases and the glaze behind, erased the flowers but then a friend said she missed the flowers so I repainted them as orchids. This time around I think they came out really well. I'm glad I took the risk because I like the colors much better now. It seems more me.
At basket weaving this weekend I made this rustic basket using only English Ivy. I'd been wanting to do one like this since December. I was really happy with how it turned out. And it was finished in the time we had for class, three hours, which is great. When I first was weaving, it would take a long time to complete a piece, but I think it still largely depends on what you are making.
Here is my silk felt pink and red book. I ended up sewing stones onto it and I like how it looked. I did a lot of working with this one, took it apart once. I think I like it now.
I had to share the finished sari bag. You remember how long I worked on it? Four hours at least at the sewing studio, cutting and sewing and lots of time at home adding more strips. I'm happy with it now and I made it from a picture I'd seen, not a pattern. So like with my knitting, I feel like I'm gaining some expertise in sewing. Enough that I actually dared to buy fabric to do a slipcover for an ottoman. We'll see how that goes.
Speaking of classes, I'm taking the making a duvet class now. On Sunday, I put together the top of my duvet. You'll notice the central panel is mauve with silver swirls and the sides orangey pinky watercolor. I have no idea why, but I wanted to combine these two from the beginning. I doubted myself, and so got only a little of the water color at first but later I though, oh, screw it, and went back and got enough to make the duvet. If I am going to do a duvet cover, I want to do one that is really unique, like a work of art. When I sewed everything together, somehow it looked cohesive, like it really worked, so I think I did the right thing.
So one of the latest things I'm working on is a little bag made out of silk felt. How this came about was I saw these wonderful retro looking bag handles made of recycled horn. I wanted to do something special and I've been making silk felt lately so I thought it would be like a little work of art on its own. So this is one side of the bag. I have to make the other and then the idea is to sew them into a bag at the studio and somehow figure out how to incorporate the handles, perhaps in the sandwich between the lining and outer bag...