Friday stuff

I have finished the little embellisher flower stitcher bag I was making. The fabric is wool tops on scrim and I have used the back side as the top and stitched a lot of flowers on the surface. It has got flowers stitched on Romeo on 2 sides. It is made from 5 triangle pieces. A bit of fun. The last shipment of flower stitch feet sold out very quickly and a new lot arrived today. Obviously lots of people have been inspired to buy one and play with it. You have Val Campbell-Harding to thank for the fact that I have this foot and enjoy playing with it. The foot is interesting on loose weave fabrics too.

We are having rain glorious rain today but hopefully it will stop a little tomorrow so we can fill the skip which arrived today. They were out of small ones so we have a bigger one to fill - yikes! Leanne will be pleased to hear that this time they have dropped the end so we can run the wheelbarrow up instead of lifting it full of dirt.

And we will be building up a genuine sweat so we can enjoy the exciting start of the Rugby World Cup which starts tomorrow. Three games for us to watch - France vs Argentina, NZ vs Italy and Aust vs Japan. A bbq at Bruce and Kazuko's (they have Fox Sports) to be fitted in during one of the games. A nervous 6 or so weeks for NZ - can the All Blacks do it this time? Apparently there are some NZers who don't care about the rugby - shame...... it's our national sport and what we grew up with. I found these little felted flowers at my local scrapbooking shop where I sometimes go to fossick around and I seem to regularly collect flower things to use in my work. These were in a tin and I was wondering how I might use them but the embellisher just adores them I discovered. This piece below I have shown before - it is part of my Kimberley Dreaming series but I popped a few felt flowers on and whizzed around with the embellisher - you can see the orange ones quite well. And I have layered them as well for a bit of dimension. I think you can buy lots of prefelted shapes but some of them look a bit daggy so I shan't get too carried away. It's just cheap and nasty felt but great potential.

I got word this morning that lots of new books are being unloaded at the wharves in Sydney - not that they can go far with the happenings over there this weekend. Books such as 'Hot Textiles', 'Print Pattern Colour' and 'Bags with Paper and Stitch' are three which will be here Monday week. I am particularly looking forward to seeing 'Hot Textiles' after reading Kim's article in Workshop on the Web this issue. I have been off playing with Lutradur today - well painting the 3 different weights we sell and also painting Gossamer Fuse so I can do a bit of combining and stitching and heat gunning tomorrow when I am not helping cart dirt. I have also just received an order of Blending Chalks which I want to play with on Tissutex as well so watch this space. Below is the latest issue of Altered Arts which arrived today - there is an interesting article on using Gesso as a paint which I like to do on my old books - I have been off buying unloved books to work in. There is also an article on a Medieval theme. Interesting stuff.

So - just one more sleep and then 6 or so weeks of excitement (nervousness?) Good luck to the All Blacks......