And then there were two....

My one little guy needed a friend. The second seagull has a separate wing. He's not supposed to be flying here, but just on another part of the sand. But I think that would be neat to have some flying critters with 3-D wings on a block. Just for the record, I sat down and said to myself that I could have one hour to sew, but in actual fact it took me two hours and I worked on it until it was finished.

A presentable bird

It was quite good fun to do this little seagull. I made the stitches much closer together than my first attempt (see previous post) and because of that I needed to work with a magnifying glass to get the stitches into the right place. He's 1 1/4" from tail to beak and 1/2" high, not including legs and I stuffed a little cotton under the wing to give him a little more dimension. He's now on Nokomis Beach on my holiday block!

Another try at Needle lace

Last February I tried making a needle lace dragonfly and I posted about it. I followed instructions that used a heavy cardboard and several layers of strong fabric. I found it very difficult to lay down the thread pattern. Trying to find the hole in the cardboard from underneath was slow and frustrating. One of my new books, Beginners Guide to Stumpwork by Kay Dennis gives instructions for a way to do it that's much easier on the fingers. The photo below is from the book. I tried the seagull.

Kay Dennis suggests three layers of thin cloth, like muslin, your paper pattern and then cover it with a piece of Press-and-Seal wrap. Below is my pattern after I had finished using it. I didn't think to take a photo before I started. I used three layers of muslin, my paper pattern and the press and seal on top of it. It was very easy to couch down the outline.

And here is my humble first attempt. The eye and legs will be embroidered later. I used the same stitch but much looser. I'll try again with the tighter stitch.

Needlelace dragonfly

I have sore fingers from this! And I think for a learning project I should have chosen a design with bigger spaces. The body has two rows of buttonhole stitch, in fact everything is buttonhole stitch so far. On the blog that I mentioned with the tutorial, there were good set up instructions, but I didn't find stitch instructions. Those I found in another place, http://www.vintagecraftpatterns.info/. But as I said, the spaces I have to fill in are too narrow. I'll finish this dragonfly, and then maybe try an angel. Annet left me a message that she has done this type of work and will look out some photos. Thanks Annet, I'm looking forward to seeing what you have made.

Just had to try this out!

Today on SharonB's blog, Pintangle, she wrote about needlelace and mentioned a blog, extile Dreams that has a tutorial. I've been wanting to have a go at this for a while, so I put all my other projects aside for this evening and dove right in. It's quite a process to prepare. It involves drawing the design on stiff cardboard, tacking the cardboard onto two layers of strong fabric, pricking holes all around the design, and then couching down thickish threads around the design. Here's where I am after two hours.