Details 15a and 15b of 100 details in 200 days

Here they are, today's details:

Detail 14 of 100 details in 200 days

This another nice one, free flowing, with the sequin flower fitting in nicely.

The ribbon is 7mm silk.

Detail 13 of 100 details in 200 days

I really love this one. You may recognize the lace piece from the length of lace I bought for $1.00 a while ago at the Hospital thrift shop. The block that I'm working my 100 details on is looking good and getting quite embellished. There's not too many spaces left to fill in. I want this block to be totally embellished, with no room for more.

My crazy bear

In the middle of May, Janet (I'm going crazy, you come too, blog) celebrated the 1 year anniversary of her blog with a draw. I was one of the winners and now have a new friend. Janet stitched his little waistcoat so beautifully. Thank you Janet.

100 details in 200 days - Detail 12

This is the 12th detail - only 88 to go!

First Etsy Sale!

I finally made a sale on Etsy! I had some ribbon embroidery greeting cards listed for months with no action, then yesterday afternoon I added a paintbrush organizer and a cake decorating tool organizer to my listings, and not two hours later the paintbrush organizer had sold! Paintbrush organizer Cake decorating tool organizer open and closed.

My garden

View from my balcony looking north east: View looking south east:

I live in a condo and it's about 35 years old. Because of it's age it has nice big rooms and it's solid, all concrete, so I don't hear anything from my neighbours, up, down or sideways. I have a very long balcony, I think about 50' long and about 6 to 8' wide. I've been here about 5 years. I moved from a house when my daughter left to get married. Each year I have had a garden, some years were better than others. For instance the first year I grew climbing beans that did so well, but every year after that they were a flop. I'm still experimenting some, this year it's lettuce, but my main success has been the tomato. And the best tomatoes have consistently been the little ones, Tom Thumb, Sweet 100 Cherry, etc. I have the end wall which gets the most sunlight just for these baby tomatoes, and I've installed netting up to the ceiling because these little fellows actually climb (with a little help) up to the top of the 8' net. Here are some of the tomato plants: I was a little late getting them planted this year because it was coldish around our planting weekend (24th May), but they are sturdy and growing well now that the weather has warmed up and I have my bucket filled up so that they are watered often. Here are the lettuce at about 10 days old: And here are the spring onions:

There is nothing sweeter than vine ripened tomatoes and I'm looking forward to August when I will be picking them.

100 details in 200 days - Details 10 and 11

I'm keeping a couple of jumps ahead of this game! Detail 11 is due today, but I have detail 12 and 13 done too, (just for insurance). I won't post until the due date, but it's nice to be a bit ahead of the game. Here's Detail 10: and here is Detail 11:

100 details in 200 days - Detail 9 and 9b

There are two details for today. One was shown with a length of fine knitting ribbon threaded through some back stitches. Instead I used a length of joined pearls. The second detail was to couch down a patch of hairy yarn with some fly stitches. Well, that's what I have done, but I don't think much of it. A bit too messy!

Edited 21 June. I took the fluffy stuff out and substituted it for a thick soft yarn. I'm still not keen on this type of detail on my work, others can make it look stunning. Check out our Flickr site.

Take a Stitch Tuesday - Detached Lazy Daisy

I got carried away with the petals on these daisies!

East End Cake Decorating Club

EECD's final meeting of the 2007/8 year was held today at St. Margaret's in the Pines Church in Scarborough. The annual Cake Decorating Contest took place, having been postponed a couple of times due to bad weather and a confliction of dates with the CSSA (Canadian Society of Sugar Arts). Even though it was Father's Day, we had eight cakes entered, 6 in the Advanced category and two in the Intermediate. They were all beautiful with quite a variety of shapes, designs, and colours. ...........................Cakes on Display.............................

Advanced 1st Place

Advanced 2nd Place

Advanced 3rd Place

Intermediate 1st Place

................................Intermediate 2nd Place....................................

Winners are:

Intermediate Division (2 entries), 1st place Savina Burdo, 2nd place Shirley Peters

Advanced Division: 1st place Glenys Davies, 2nd place Jean Skinner, 3rd place Diane Matheson.

Congratulations to everyone.

We all enjoyed a good selection of pot luck goodies with a nice cup of tea or coffee while we discussed elections for the new Executive to take over in September.

...................................Some of our members .................................

It was suggested that the monthly meetings, beginning in September should be workshop style. Most members would prefer a hands-on meeting compared to a demonstration. Each month a member or a couple of members would run a demonstration. Members would bring their own supplies and share cutters if they did not have what was needed. All members would have input into the content of workshops.

It was also decided that there would be one charge for membership. The first meeting a new person attended would be free, and membership fee would be required at the next meeting that person attended.

Elections for the new Executive are normally held at this last meeting of the season, but due to the low turnout elections per se were not held. However, several positions were filled by volunteers:

Diane Kingston & Cynthia - Treasurers

Verdie Jackson: Membership - keep records of members and fees

Shirley Peters: Raffle Table - organize prizes and sell/manage tickets

Tea & Coffee - provide refreshments

Diane Matheson: Communication - e-mail members with information

The first meeting after the summer break will be Sunday 21st September, from 2pm to 4pm at St. Margaret's in the Pines. Annual membership fees will be due at that time, and the Executive will be finalized at that meeting.

The demonstration in September will be QUILLING. More information will be e-mailed early in September.

hydrangea cake finished

Well, here it is all finished. Trying to arrange the hydrangeas on the top was a struggle and I had a pile of broken petals at the end of it.

Detail 8 of 100 Details in 200 days

Here's the 8th detail, but I'm not too happy with the way it looks, it's just too bright compared with the rest of the block. I need to tone it down a bit, and I don't know how to do that. My Crazy Quilting for Newbies group could probably help solve this problem.

Hydrangeas - continued!

Here they are, assembled, dusted and steamed. I'll leave them overnight to totally dry and then they go on the cake. Now......back to CQ'ing!!!

This is the finished cake.

Hydrangeas

Today I'm working frantically to finish a cake for a competition on Sunday at the East End Cake Decorators Club. It's going to have five or six hydrangea blooms on the top, pink, dark pink, lilac, violet. Each bloom is made up of about 20 small flowers, all wired separately, so it's a lot of work! Of course the cake is styrofoam. I've covered it already and decorated the sides with lots of ivy leaves. When the flowers are dry I'll tape the 20 flowers together, then dust with the appropriate colour, then steam to blend the colour and give a sheen. That needs to be finished today so that the flowers can dry properly. I given this post a label "hydrangea tutorial". It's not a complete tutorial, and if you do want more information on how to make these blossoms, leave me a message please.

100 details in 200 days - Detail 7

Detail 7 is a choice of two, one of which is the feather stitch. I love the feather stitch and used it a lot on my Under the Sea Block as sea weed. Today's example is used to fill up a patch. I used three shades of pink thread and beads and a silver filament. The second choice I'm still working on, so come back later!

It's later - Saturday morning, and here is the second seam treatment:

!00 Details in 200 days - Day 6

Today's detail should be a satin stitched butterfly. Butterflies are not my favourite things, along with moths, so I chose to do a pansy. I used a DMC 5 thread which covers the area quickly, but shows clearly when your stitches go off! Several of the petals were done twice.

The first time around this project was "100 details in 100 days", and I'm so glad this time we have 2 days to do a detail instead of just one.

Good shopping!

Our local hospital charity shop had a 50% sale today and I got some good buys. The best was a home made belt of lovely lace for $1. I also bought two nice pieces of fabric for $1.50 and two necklaces which I have unstrung for 50c each. All that stuff for $3.50!

Take a stitch Tuesday - Buttonhole Stitch

Today is the second Tuesday of TAST. This is my example of the buttonhole stitch. Instead of using it as a seam treatment, I filled up a space. The square sequins in the top picture are a beautiful pink which changes from light to dark as they move. The green one was just a practice when I was doing my Under the Sea block.

Sequin flower

While I was surfing around I found a lovely sequin flower. There were no instructions, but it was mentioned that originally instructions were in an Australian magazine. Anyway, I had a go at it and it turned out fine. You need to have sequins that are shaped like bowls, or concave. I don't think it would work with flat sequins.

This is what I did.

1. Where I wanted the middle of the flower I put a dot on the fabric.

This shows five of the petals completed and the sixth one laid out to show the order of the beads and sequins on the thread before being sewn down.   Also shown is the pattern I marked on the fabric.  The diameter of this circle is 5/8".  

2. Around the middle dot, I put six more dots evenly spaced around. All these outside dots will be the centres of the petals which are the sequins.

3. Start on one of the outside dots by pulling your needle up through the dot to the right side of the fabric. Thread onto your needle one seed bead, one sequin upside down, one sequin right side up, one seed bead and one sequin right side up and two seed beads. Take the thread back down through the fabric close to the edge of the sequin and at the closest point to the middle dot. Do a few stitches on the wrong side to keep everything snug. Then move to the second dot in the outside ring.

4. Repeat until all six are finished.

This is the finished flower with two stamens in the centre.  

5. The centre. I came up through the middle dot, threaded 3 seed beads on the needle, and came back down through the centre of bottom two beads to the wrong side of the fabric. I repeated this a few times. They look like stamens. You could use a bigger bead in the middle if you want to.

Detail 5 of 100 details in 200 days

Time for another detail! Here is the fifth one in the series. Lots of bullion knots using rayon slippery thread. The example used velvet ribbon which looked much nicer than the silk ribbon. I will try it again with velvet ribbon.

Detail 4 of 100 details in 200 days

Well, we are moving right along with our 100 details. It's so interesting to see the other variations due to beads, lace and space, that some of the participants are doing. This one is 2mm lilac silk ribbon double herringboned onto 2 strips side by side of 7mm burgundy silk ribbon. There is a crystal bead (from a necklace I was given in the '60s as a leaving present from my co-workers in England) in every other space, and seed beads in the rest. The original design showed some weaving in and out, but I didn't have the heart to do that after I had worked so hard to keep the silk ribbon flat!

Detail 3b

This was a lot of french knots! I used three different shades of DMC 5 embroidery thread and wrapped the thread around the needle 3 or 4 times.

Detail 3 of 100 details in 200 days

Here is the first one of detail 3. My lace was different from the sample original, so it didn't turn out the same.

Detail 2 of 100 details in 200 days

Two stitches were shown for today. A ric-rac with chain stitch and buttonhole stitch in little fans.