Slow Burners

There are a few “slow burners” for me to tell you about today. The first is that, if you haven’t seen my social media posts, my shop Rusty and Boots is now open on Etsy! Yay!

I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, very long, but now it’s finally happening and I’m excited but nervous about it too. Some of the items on my shop are my wall hangings that I’ve already shared on this blog and some are newer, my hand painted hearts, for example, but all the work is handmade by me.

There have been quite a few hurdles to overcome in getting my shop open and the work ready for it, setbacks and delays etc. but it got there in the end. It’s now a reality and I can’t quite believe it. Textiles and art have been really big things in my life since I was old enough to hold a paintbrush and my mother taught me to sew and knit as a young child, so to have an opportunity to create things for you is amazing.

Here are a few of the things available so far:

My painted hearts.

 My wall hangings.

The wall hangings are made to order so may differ slightly in the details but that means that each one is unique, no two will be exactly alike. Here is the link to my shop if you’d like to have a better look: RustyandBoots

I’ve got more things coming soon and I hope you like them.  

I’ve also been experimenting with something else;

I’ve had a bit of an interest in pyrography for a while and always wanted to have a go. So, for my birthday this year, my parents got me a pyrography tool. Yay!

Pyrography turns out to be not a great thing to be doing in the hot weather that we had this summer, but it’s good for keeping you warm on chilly winter days.

As I’ve only just begun to try this, my attempts are not perfect, but they’re ok I think. They’re good enough to give me encouragement to carry on and get better. Here are a few of my first forays into pyrography.

 Here, I’ve tried to get the pattern going all around the box.

 Finally, I wish you a happy Winter Solstice… 

…and a Merry Christmas. 

Progress

I know I’m going really slowly with this but I don’t know why. My “Wild Nature” wall hanging has now been embroidered by hand and I’ve got to make the leaves.

I think this is going slowly because I’m having so many ideas at the moment and I’m getting distracted by them. I bought this lovely hand-dyed wool top from Crafty Cat Knitty Bits to try to do some felting with it. 

I’ve had ideas about trying felting again for a while though I haven’t done anything about it, but when I saw this, the colours were so gorgeous I had to get it.

Lovely Debs who made it sent an extra piece of wool which I couldn’t wait to try, so I made this bracelet.

It’s fairly easy to felt really, you just need wool, water and soap and rub it all like mad. I first learned how to do it when I was 18 and doing the Foundation Art and Design course. My first attempt didn’t turn out that well though; it was felted but because I’d used different colours of felt in a pattern, they weren’t really that neat. I hope I’ve improved!

I’ve begun some of my new ideas as well and I’m going to give you a sneaky peek at them. Here is a painted heart which I’m going to use with some fabric.

And here’s another painted heart with a grass and flower picture.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been boiling during the last week. This heatwave is kind of nice in that it’s been dry, but it’s been too hot for me. The air has seemed thick with the heat, like it’s pressing on me and I’ve resorted to eating ice cream and lollies nearly every day. It’s been hard work! I’m thinking of emigrating to Norway. Or Iceland. Or maybe the North Pole. Yes, the North Pole sounds nice. Here’s hoping it cools down this week, just a bit. Have a nice time whatever you’re doing.

Cat Nap 2 cont..

Did you hear about the earthquake in Wales at the weekend? Did you feel it? I did. I’d never felt an earthquake before so I didn’t know what was going on; it seems most people didn’t. I think practically everyone thought there’d been some kind of crash of some sort. I was almost at the epicentre so I felt a huge shudder of the chair I was sitting on and heard a rumble. It wasn’t until I checked social media that I felt reassured that it wasn’t something bad.

Just to prove that Wales is still in one piece after it, here’s a photo I took from the car. 

It’s not bad considering we were going about 70 mph. Don’t worry, I wasn’t driving! 😉😁

I’ve continued working on my Cat Nap 2 and here’s the final piece:

It’s all embroidered by hand with stitches suggesting the fur in the various colours and from dark to light. Here’s a close up:

While I’ve been working on this, the garden has begun to sprout back into life. The privets which I cut back last year have new little leaves:

There are small leaf buds on branches:

The crocuses are awake and showing their gorgeous purple:

Snowdrops have burst forth from their winter sleep:

I bought some roses last weekend to cheer things up even more:

Their yellow looks wonderful against my purple wall. I’ve been feeling tired recently so the colour really brought some brightness to the cloudy days.

Cat Nap 2

Continuing on from my last post, I’ve taken another of my ‘Cat Nap’ drawings and developed it.

This was the original sketch:

And here is the watercolour I did:

I’ve printed it on fabric and now it’s ready to be embroidered.

As it’s Valentine’s Day today, here’s a photo I’ve taken with a rose and a heart shaped stone I found a long time ago.

The book is a volume of Welsh poetry and these particular poems are about love, “Serch” being a Welsh word for “Love”. There’s also “Cariad” which means the same thing.

I’m really enjoying watching the Winter Olympics at the moment. I watch it every four years. I’m not a huge fan of much sport, but for some reason I love this, particularly the snowboarding, the luge, the skeleton, the bobsleigh and the speed skating. If I were younger, I might have a go at one of these. Maybe.

Love to everyone, have a lovely day.

A Mini Wallhanging

I was really tired at the end of last week, so missed a blog post. I didn’t want to write anything I could come up with just to post because if I’m inviting you to read my blog, I want it to be good enough for you.

So, here, at last, is something I’ve been working on.

To start off the new year, I’ve gone with something small and gentle as an easy project to get me back into my work. (I needed something easy; after the holidays it’s been difficult to get back into everything, even though I really want to get on with my textiles.)

I’ve made what I’m calling a Mini Wall Hanging because it’s quite small, only 12.3 cm x 14.9 cm (excluding the hanging ribbon). It’s an image of a hydrangea flower to presage the coming of Spring.

Here’s the finished thing.

And here’s the process it went through. First, I stamped an image onto fabric and coloured it. Then I put it on a backing fabric.

I added some stitching around the edges and some beads…..

…and sewed it all together.

I’ve also begun a personal drawing project where I’m hoping to do a small drawing or sketch every day for a year. This was my first one, a couple of toadstools. The fairy hasn’t arrived yet!

And here’s a cat.

I’ll (hopefully!) be posting my daily drawings on my Twitter and Instagram accounts, which you can find here if you wish to:

 Twitter

Instagram

I hope you’re coping with the cold weather. I am, just about, although I actually like cold, frosty days; it gives me the chance to layer up with warm clothes and scarves and enjoy being cosy. Also, the coldness now makes us even more welcoming of the warmer temperatures in Spring when they arrive. I hope Spring also comes with more energy for me.  

Speaking of warmer weather, this rose has been flowering all Winter. It doesn’t normally – an effect of global warming do you think?

The blooms haven’t lasted very long though. They’ve been withering at the petal edges and turning brown fairly quickly, giving a lovely wabi-sabi effect.  

I’m just about keeping on track with my aims for January with the drawing and plans for my textiles, I just hope I can keep it up. Do you have any goals for this year? I’d love to hear them if you do. For now, enjoy the weekend.

Barn Owl Embroidery

I've finished my barn owl wall hanging so here are the pictures of it. First of all, to remind you, this is the original painting I did:

Here's the painting printed onto fabric and the tea-dyed fabric I used for the background:

This was the work in progress when I was sewing the wheat on the bottom:

This was the finished wheat:

And here's the finished thing all together:

As you can see, I added a hedgerow in the background and did some machine embroidery in the sky with blue and lilac thread to try to convey a look of cloud and dusk as that's when barn owls become active. I've also hand sewn the pattern on the owl's back, around his head and machine stitched along the wings, which you can see better in this close up:

This was intended to be an experiment to see how my idea might work out and I'm quite happy with it. There are a few little things that can be improved, though that might be me being hard on myself!

My mother loves owls, especially barn owls, so she's claimed this for herself to put on the wall! I'll be making another one soon, so you'll see the process here when it comes.

Have a lovely day. 😊

Autumn Equinox

“Autumn days when the grass is jewelled…..” Anyone else used to sing that song in school?  🍃

Before I get into autumn, an update on my barn owl wall hanging. (Although it does have a certain autumnal feel to it anyway with the colours.) I’ve completed the machine embroidery wheat.

Now I need to do the hedgerow behind the owl and some sewing on the owl himself.

As well as that, in my spare time I’ve been crocheting a shawl with the yarn I showed you last time and this is how it’s coming along.

I absolutely love the colour changes and I’m hoping to get it done by the time the weather starts to get colder.

But for now, we’re definitely in autumn. Today is the Autumn Equinox and you can feel the shift in the season. I love the subtle light of these days, it’s paler, not so intense as the summer sun. A bit more gentle. The cooler air is lovely too, making you need just one extra layer maybe, the start of wrapping up for the winter. It all has a kind of fragile feel to it, like nature is vulnerable at the turning points of the seasons, in a transition from one thing to another, shedding her skin or her bright summer cloak. The leaves on the cherry blossom in my garden have begun to turn colour already; a few are now that amber-yellow shade.🍂🍁

It all makes me feel a bit wistful, though I don’t know why. Maybe because the warmth and colour of summer sped by so fast, especially as it rained a lot in August which it seems to do every year now. I’m sure August used to be warm and sunny.

It also feels like a time of new beginnings, probably because school starts in September and that always brought new books, pens and uniform to go with the new school year. It seems to have stuck with me even though I left school a long time ago.

I think it’s connected to nature as well. As she is going through a time of change, withdrawing and preparing for winter, it seems to make you think about things, to re-evaluate where you are and start to plan again. To get back on any path you wandered off. The berries are already out on my holly tree, so nature is definitely thinking ahead. The birds will have food, but I feed them anyway, so they’d never go short. 🐦🍒

Happy Autumn to you. I hope you enjoy some wonderful colours on display on the trees. Stop for a while and really notice them.