Piece worked coffee cosy...

You know how I love tea cosies...


Well, I'm experimenting with optimum shapes for a coffee cosy...


This is the first attempt, and although I will change the base pattern I am pretty happy with the result...


I have used my hand dyed doilies and vintage fabrics on a felted woolen ex-jumper, and backed it with a vintage blanket...


...et voila!

Pieced tea cosy...

While I have been procrastinating over my Flora paintings, I have not been idle!


No- it has been a very busy procrastination indeed...


Check it out...


It includes some of my hand dyed doilies, my mother's scarves and pullovers, and lined with a World War II blanket.

Prototype teacosy...

I've been playing around lately with piecing and applique...


I've recycled one of my daughter's angora cardigans, used some of my stash of hand dyed doileys and felted wool, and this is what I came up with...

More blanket work

Well....


It's been such a long time since I posted...


I hope you have all had a great time over the holiday period.... 


I must admit I have been busy populating and getting obsessed with the two other blogs I am writing (see post below) - Dad gives me such a lot of things to write about! 


But, I have been working on a piece for my blanket, and took some shots to show you!


I am doing the blanket in sections.  I find it easier to work with as I need to be able to get "into" the pieces to add sections.  Plus, the piece gets pretty heavy to work with...  Not to mention it's pretty hot here, and I'm working with felted wool!

First- the new piece:


Here is a shot of the piece in its entirety....

And now a few close ups of the individual sections....

Then I laid the two pieces together to see how they will look...


Obviously I have a bit of tidying up to do...

And Larry decided he needed to keep and eye on my progess as well....

He just loves me....


What can i say???  I'm adorable apparently...

 Here's a better shot of it all....

Coming together nicely...

Out of not so good comes something else

Or a door closes and a window opens....  You know all those old sayings....


The stimulus for these ponderings is that, unfortunately, I dislocated my thumb.  It keeps popping out of joint and I have to strap it up.  An injury from recent overly vigorous knitting.


Now stop laughing.....

Anyways, sadly, I have a basket of unfinished, nearly finished and waiting-to-be-sewn-up offerings to the knitting gods.

However, because of this threatening injury, I have taken up other exploits while the healing occurs.

Firstly: progress on my quilting piece I posted about recently....  I have kept decorating and adding pieces, and I think it is coming along rather nicely!

And I have finally got back into the studio and started a bit of painting.


I'm doing a separate post showing the progress there...

A bit of hand dying!

Looking after an aged parent (with DLB and Parkinsons) and two teenager girls (with exams, and of course their versions of teenage dementia) means that generally I have very little time to myself, but TODAY- yay- Dad goes to what the household calls "Grandaddy Day Care" for the day....


So- I will finally get some posting and creative stuff done and indulge myself a little.  Actually what it really means is that I will make a HUGE mess and then spend the rest of the week cleaning it up.  Joy.


Here's my recently hand-dyed collection of laces, cloths and doileys - all ready to be cut up and sewn back together in quilt form, and in soft toy format.  I used turmeric and tea to give the soft brown/aged effect, and for the brighter yellow a very concentrated turmeric.


The others were from commercial dyes and not nearly so satisfying - let alone you sort of know how they are going to turn out and the other baths were a bit of a mystery until everything had dried off.

At the local Op Shop (Aussie speak for Opportunity Shop/Thrift Store/Charity Store) I stumbled across these delightful "things"- not sure what language they're in or what they were intended for originally, but they'll go in my stash until I find the perfect time and place to use them.....

Now I just have to decide what to do with the rest of my day and my time....