Latest Creations

Several years ago a friend gave me some old embroidery supplies that I think belonged to her mother. I started using them when I began doing hoop embroidery last year and in the middle of embroidering my Stitchtober fairy tale piece the inner part of the vintage embroidery hoop broke. I would have just thrown it out except that it had a vintage label on it from F.W. Woolworth’s that included the price – two for a dollar – and the country of origin – Taiwan.

It just hung around broken for awhile and then I realized what to do with it. I could use it to frame a vintage image. And maybe because I had been to three Henry Darger exhibits at the Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art over the last year, I thought of searching for an old coloring book page to use as an image.

I found this little girl and with Henry Darger in mind, I thought she would be perfect. I had some challenges transferring the image to my fabric. This time I just traced directly onto the fabric but since I don’t have a light table I have to use the window and it is challenging. Getting her face right was quite difficult but I finally had to accept that I had done the best I could and as long as I don’t compare her to the original I’m pretty happy with it.

I used some of the vintage embroidery thread on her dress and apron and her hair. The label is on the right on the side of the hoop.

I was almost finished with her when I had to stop to take a road trip to go to a wet felting class with Dawn Edwards I had signed up for with my felting friend. We could have taken a weekend long hat felting class but since our first foray into wet felting had been with the master hat felter Beth Beede, we opted for the Friday Flower felting. We were imagining flowers with stems and while Dawn did show us how to do that, the main focus of the class was on flower embellishments. I made most of a poppy at the class and when I got home after I finished the embroidery, I needlefelted a center for the poppy and added some beads for seeds. I think I’m going to attach it to a headband and turn it into a sort of fascinator.

I plan to tackle some flowers with stems next but I’m not sure if I will wet felt or needlefelt them.