Sunday 25 July 2010

Have a cuppa!

I've been gripped by 'applique' fever the last couple of weeks - here's the last of my card designs for now. I still haven't mastered the art of 'free motion' machine embroidery, but I'm using my own methods to get the effects I want to achieve. This is the initial doodle/drawing for the 'cup of tea' design (I've used the Gaelic version here!) - I thought this lovely houndstooth tweed would look great in the shape of a teacup . . .

and here's how the final design worked out . . .

I'm quite pleased how it turned out - the swirls of steam were a bit of a challenge, and at first I just added 4 straight lines to represent the steam, but it just didn't look right. A couple of days later, I came back to it, did another doodle of how I wanted the swirls to look and finally decided to tackle them with my sewing machine (I did attempt to hand embroider them but it looked incongruous with the rest of the card). 'Teenage son' said it looke nice and 'cartoony' which was exactly the effect I wanted, so double portions of dinner to him, hehe!

I won't be adding this one to my online shops yet and I've yet to try an egg cosy in the same style - that'll have to wait until I come back from my hols.

I'll be busy this week getting us all ready and packed, but I'm sure I'll find time for a couple more posts, and definitely my Merry Go Round post on Friday!

Have a lovely Sunday :)

9 comments:

Swirlyarts said...

Free machine work is something I would like to do at some stage but I'm a bit scared to be honest!! Yours looks fab :)

Florcita said...

I love this! From the thumbnail photo I thought it was a magnet! :)
The spanish version of the word tea is té... I guess we just put the accents on the other direction! LOL
I love that you include gaelic in your work. Seems much more you, much more original and interesting as well.

THis card is great! (more for a little frame and to hand in the kitchen or something!).

Florcita said...

By the wat, what is free machine eenbroidery? or ...what was it called?

Tweed Thoughts said...

Hi Mariana - thanks! Yes, I'm returning to my Gaelic roots which I love (but can always do English versions of the same designs!).

Free motion machine embroidery is pretty much like 'drawing' with your sewing machine. I haven't figured it out though, so I just used ordinary sewing. I think there's lots of videos online, but I was too lazy to follow them!! :D

Lynsey - I haven't a clue how to do free-motion embroidery, I just sewed slowly using the ordinary method and reversed over the stitches to give a squiggly 'look' - it seemed to work OK! :) I'm scared of it too, hehe!

Janet Metzger, Artist said...

Alison...your creativity is growing and growing....well done ;-)

june at noon said...

Loving all this applique! I'm impressed how the steam turned out. I haven't tried my hand at free motion with the machine yet.

Tweed Thoughts said...

Me neither Gretchen - it's just ordinary sewing stitch I used :) Some day I'll sit down and study how to do it - till then, I'll just 'wing it'!

Thanks Janet! x

Madcat Marion said...

Do you know this blog/site
http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/
I've learned lots there on freemotion quilting.

Tweed Thoughts said...

Thanks Marion! I'll go and have a look :D