Rock carvings: A third glimpse ...

... and then this piece should be finished within short!



These are the birds - might be ravens, like Hugin and Munin - who are discussing Regin's secret intentions to kill Sigurd. Fortunately, Sigurd understands their language, as he has accidently tasted the dragon blood while roasting Fafnir's heart over the fire. (To read more, here's the link.)

(German summary: Hier noch einen dritten kleinen Blick auf die maschinengestickte Skizze, an der ich schon eine Weile arbeite; freies Maschinensticken nach einer 1000-jährigen Felsenritzung.)

Rock carvings: A second glimpse ...

... of the rock carving 'comic strip', this picture showing Regin's horse, holding the treasure of the dragon Fafne on its back.

It takes quite a bit of concentration embroidering these small motifs on the sewing machine - this horse, for example, is only about 8 x 5 cm/3 x 2 ", and Sigurd himself (in my latest posting), was even smaller than that.



So I'm regarding this first approach as a kind of sketch, to get more acquainted with the motifs - I'm thinking of enlarging it further later on, maybe embroidering it by hand next time or even painting it on a wall ...

But I'm very happy to finally having started exercising the free motion machine embroidery - there are so many possibilites in that technique - and it's great fun!

(German summary: Hier kommt das zweite Motiv der Felsenritzung, und die Bilderchen erfordern schon einiges an Konzentration beim Nähen, weil sie so klein sind, dieses etwa 8 x 5 cm. Vielleicht werde ich die Vorlage später weiter vergrößern - ich denke da an einen handgestickten Wandbehang oder vielleicht an eine Wandmalerei ...)

Rock carvings: A small glimpse ...

... of a new project: The story of Sigurd Fafnesbane, carved about 1000 years ago - sometimes disrespectfully called 'the world's oldest comic strip' - this is a rock carving I've been wanting to translate into textile for about 30 years.

And now I've begun, with a small free-motion machine sketch - here's a first glimpse:



... and regarding the background, you can read more here at Wikipedia.

(German summary: Seit 30 Jahren liebäugele ich schon mit dem Gedanken, diese herrliche, tausendjährige Felsritzung ins Textile umzuwandeln ... und fange jetzt mit einer kleinen, frei maschinengestickten Skizze an. Zum Hintergrund gibt es hier in Wikipedia mehr darüber zu lesen.)

Joint venture: Cell phone cover

A little while ago, my friend Gabi was visiting me for the weekend - and while sitting out in the garden talking, we made a colourful cover for her new cell phone together.



First, she knitted a double overlapping strip in garter stitch, with some red crochet cotton and some variegated sock yarn, decreasing the number of stitches in the end - and then I showed her how to punch the knitting with the embellisher to densify the wool and make the cover stiffer.

At this point, we both saw the face of the snake taking form - Gabi embroidered the eyes, I punched the tongue and added a strip of punched glitzy neon fabric to the back, decorating it with a black zig-zag free-motion embroidery - she sew the cover together with the sockwool and added the glasses, which she made out of a piece of wire and some button hole stitches. Finally, we found a bit of red Velcro-tape in my stash and sew it on for closure.

It was ready in no time and we had quite some fun with this joint-venture!

(German summary: Ein kleines, buntes Handytascherl, daß meine Freundin Gabi und ich beim Plaudern im Garten eigentlich so nebenbei gemeinsam gemacht haben - witzig, oder?)

Rock carvings: The solar horse

Now I've coloured the elegant solar horse too - using simple satin stitches and broadened chain stitches - the material is darning wool and sock wool.

While working on these little pieces, I'm pondering over how to assemble them in the end. They remind me a lot of comic strips, actually - maybe I can find a way to mount them in that manner, like a pictural collage or so ...



So far, I've preferred the classic tracing and transferring method using sandwich or parchment paper and a soft pencil. I do have an iron-on-transfer pen and dressmakers' carbon paper at home too, but I find the lines which I get from these too dominant for this kind of embroidery - and as I'm not going to wash it, the lines won't wash out either.

How do you transfer your motifs from paper to cloth?



(German summary: Das Sonnenpferd ist jetzt fertig; teilweise bunt bestickt, mit einfachen Spannstichen und breitem Kettenstich - als Material habe ich teils Stopfwolle, teils Sockenwolle verwendet.

Als Paus- und Übertragungstechnik verwende ich das altbewährte Butterbrotpapier und einen weichen Bleistift - Bügelstift und Schneiderkopierpapier machen mir hier zu kräftige Linien, und waschen möchte ich die Stickerei eigentlich auch nicht. Wie macht ihr das in so einem Fall?)

Re-start with rock carvings

Oh girls - it's been a while ... Not that I have been too idle, but when you once stop posting regularly - due to the heat and all those summer holiday activities, for example - it's real hard finding a good access again ... Guess this happens to us all once in a while.

I know, it's still summer, but as my blog-friend Elizabeth/Landanna is now making a new start with a whole bunch of fresh photos on Viking rock carvings from her recent holiday in Sweden, I will hang on there and join her in mutual inspiration.

Yesterday I found these two pictures in a tourist folder regarding the rock carvings in Bohuslän, which she sent me in a mail - and today I 'drew' the outlines by free-motion stitching on my sewing machine.



A 'solar horse', the text in the folder said - I think it's a very elegant design, as modern as ever!

I like this second one very much too - makes me think of a woman on her way in a boat.



I've been doing some other free-motion embroidery on the sewing machine lately, noticing that practice really is the only thing taking you further on this matter ... I'm drawing the lines with the needle in a kind of 'Navajo technique' - sewing a couple of inches, then moving backwards again, forwards - slightly more than before - backwards, a bit less - until I'm happy with the thickness of the line.

I prefer this to going round the whole piece several times - the small motions make me feel that I have the line more under control.

My thread is very thin too - normal polyester or cotton sewing thread - therefore it's even more important to sew several times to get the outlines clearly visible.

I've also discovered that it's possible to fill the under thread bobbin with cheap overlock thread from a big thread spool - just put the spool on the table, close to your sewing machine and use your fingers to lead the thread on to the usual bobbin spooling gear.

Tomorrow I will proceed giving these two rock carvings some colour - and I will be back regularly now again, it's a promise.

(German summary: Oh Mädels - wie die Zeit vergeht ... Und eigenartigerweise, wenn man einmal eine Blog-Pause eingelegt hat, ist es verflixt schwer, wieder einen Anfang zu finden - geht es euch auch so?

Ich packe jetzt auf jeden Fall die Gelegenheit beim Schopf, da meine Blogfreundin Elizabeth/Landanna einen Neustart mit frischen Fotos von Felsenbildern aus dem Schweden-Urlaub wagt, und schließe mich gleich an.

Ich habe mit vielen Vor- und Zurückstichen, mit einem dünnen, schwarzen Faden freie Maschinenstickerei ausprobiert - und dazu den Unterfaden gleich mit günstigem Overlock-Garn gefüllt.

Und noch etwas: ab jetzt schreib' ich wieder öfter - versprochen.)

Deep down the dustbin .../Fasermonster-Familie

... there once lived a fiber monster - although I never knew.

One day, it popped out of the bin and layed down under the needle foot of my embellisher.

Then it had a full service beauty surgery and became a bookmark.

Nice, huh?

(German summary: Wer hätte denn gedacht, daß sich ein Lesezeichen-Monster im Papierkorb versteckt? Ein bißchen 'Schönheitschirurgie' am Embellisher, und schon war's geschehen!)

A brooch with a face/Eine Brosche mit Gesicht

Now I've used one of my free motion machine stitched faces for a brooch - and as I was listening to a historical audiobook novel while working, I guess it was something of that feeling that influenced my hands here.

The hair is stitched with a thin organza ribbon, the background consists of fabric and wool punched with the embellisher and then embroidered on with my hand-dyed threads.

I sew on a big, coloured safety pin on the backside, as I'm going to use it for holding a shawl in place.

(German summary: Ich habe jetzt eines meiner Gesichter für eine Brosche - oder vielleicht eher Schultertuchspange - verwendet.
Beim Arbeiten habe ich gleichzeitig ein historisches Hörbuch gehört - ich glaube, daß man es auch an dem Gesicht erkennen kann ...)

Working on faces/Gesichter sticken

'You can never have too many faces', Jude Hill/Spirit Cloth once wrote in her blog - and that's true.

A face gives your (textile) picture a personality - and makes it tell a story. I learned that when I made 'The Goose Maiden' - and I also realized that I need to do my very own faces.

So I've been working on some faces now - using my new sewing machine and a piece of cloth, which I have sun-dyed with the breakfast teabags and dried walnut skins in a jar on the windowsill.

Even if my new sewing machine is a wonderful improvement to the old one (so quiet! so exact! and with an embroidery foot!), it's not easy to make the faces much smaller than this. And of course it's more of an effort than having them printed - but on the other hand, I like the idea that each one of them is unique, and has a character of its own.

(German summary: Ich habe Gesichter gestickt, mit meiner neuen Nähmaschine, auf handgefärbtem Stoff - und auch wenn sie nicht so klein werden können, wie gedruckte, gefällt es mir sehr gut, daß sie alle ein bißchen eine eigene Persönlichkeit haben!)

The Goose Maiden/Die Gänsemagd

So this is The Goose Maiden - a small wall hanging, different fabrics, wool and ribbons punched with the embellisher, decorated with hand embroidery, beads, sequins and free motion machine embroidery.

When I visited Sara in Alicante earlier this year, she gave me a few printed faces of hers - so yes, this is one of her fabric faces which I've used for the maid. Ah, and the goose itself is actually a painted tin button - you can still get hold on some buttons like these in old Viennese haberdashery shops!

(German summary: Die Gänsemagd - ein kleines Wandbild, daß ich mit dem Embellisher gepuncht und danach mit Hand- und Maschinenstickerei, Perlen und Pailletten bestickt habe. Das gedruckte Gesicht ist von Sara - sie hat mir ein paar von ihren geschenkt - den bemalten Zinnknopf habe ich in einem Wiener Kurzwarengeschäft gefunden.)

New start into autumn/Neuer Herbstanfang

Crisp, foggy mornings and red apples hanging sweet and shiny from the trees in my garden ... This year's Indian summer slowly turns into autumn and I realize it's been quite a while since last, dear friends ...

But it's been a great summer, warm and sunny, with friends and family visiting, some of them for several weeks. I've done a bit of this and that inbetween - maybe I'll show you some of those projects later on.

Things have happened: Elizabeth at Landanna is back blogging with fresh inspiration - Sara has moved to Argentina and told me in a mail, that there are lots of interesting textiles to see in Buenos Aires - Clare has visited a free-hand machine embroidery workshop and will certainly come up with new projects on that - and in other blogs, I've seen a lot of beautiful natural dyeing experiments, which look very exciting.

I think we are blessed to have this medium to share and inspire one another.

Two days ago, I received a very much longed-for, late big-birthday present from my Dad: a new sewing machine, a Bernina 350, to replace my still-working, but 50-year-old Singer. (Men understand the point better if you remind them that cars have improved a bit too during the last 50 years ... ;-).

I'm overwhelmed with this wonderful, new tool - and today I started playing with it, using the darning and quilting foot, exercising on a dog print fabric I had at hand:



The picture to the right shows the back - I think it looks rather funny too, almost like a newspaper comic!

Here's another one:



I did a couple of free-motion flowers as well - maybe for a greeting card - using an automatic machine pattern for the border:



And of course I had to try out free-hand writing on the machine too!



There are some books on this subject that might interest you:

- "Free & easy stitch style" by Poppy Treffry
(German title: "Das etwas andere Nähbuch")

- "Scandinavian Stitches" by Kajsa Wikman
(also known as Syko: www.syko.typepad.com)

- The "Impatient embroiderer" by Jane Emerson
(German title: "Einfach maschinensticken")

- "Textile Natur/Textile nature" by Elsbeth Nusser-Lampe
(German and English text)



And while working, I had this somewhat crazy idea to simply colour some white thread with markers to get striped and dotted thread ... Of course this is more convenient to use for hand-sewing, as you will have to renew the pattern from time to time, when unravelling the upper layer - but it's fast and easy and it even looks decorative on the shelf!



(German summary: Herbstanfang und Neuanfang. So viel Neues gibt es bei euch, liebe Blogfreundinnen - schön, daß wir dieses Medium zum Austausch haben. Ich habe seit ein paar Tagen eine neue Nähmaschine und spiele jetzt vor allem mit der Freihandstickfunktion - einige Buchtipps zum Thema, drei Titel davon auch auf Deutsch - und eine verrückte Idee, mit einem Edding das Nähgarn auf Zebra zu trimmen :-)

Mini Summer Project II: Flower Doodles/Kleines Sommerprojekt II: Maschinenstickerei

This was quite fun to do!

While helping my daughter with her jeans bag project, I had some time inbetween to try out some doodles/free embroidery with my sewing machine. This time, I wanted to find out if I could do it on the plain no-name household sewing machine, which hasn't got any additional equipment at all for doing this type of job.

And it worked! All I had to do was putting some sticky tape over the transport feeding/feed dogs, adjusting the stitch length to zero, removing the fabric foot (but still lowering the lever for sewing) and start moving the fabric around!

It helps, of course, if you double your fabric with some vilene first and/or mount it in an embroidery frame (flat side down) before stitching ...



(German summary: Dieses mal wollte ich ausprobieren, ob man auf einer ganz einfachen Haushaltsnähmaschine ohne Zusatzfunktionen auch frei sticken kann - und jawohl, es geht!

Einfach die Transporträdchen mit Klebeband kaschieren, den Nähfuß abmontieren (und trotzdem nicht vergessen, den Fußhebel beim Nähen herunterzulassen!) und die Stichlänge auf Null stellen - und dann den Stoff mit beiden Händen hin- und herbewegen - sanfte Bewegungen und Finger weg von der Nadel!

Natürlich ist es eine zusätzliche Hilfe, wenn man den Stoff mit Büglevlies verstärkt und/oder noch den Stoff in einen Stickramen spannt - Stoff flach nach unten )

Punching a flower with Australian yarn ...

I'm a very lucky person: not only that I won a beautiful crocheted cushion as a giveaway on Elizabeth's blog today, last week - returning from Sara - I received a gorgeous parcel with all sorts of textile goodies from Paula in Australia ...

Today I decided to use some of the yarns Paula sent me for an embellished flower, which I punched to my favourite background (linen on woolen cloth) and then stitched with free machine embroidery. The 'frame' is also one of Paula's beautiful yarns, fastened with a straight machine stitch.

(I thought Spring would finally come now - instead it started snowing some hours ago, it's windy, dark and rotten cold ... I'm getting impatient.)

This Bird of Paradise

I've been working on this bird of paradise lately - at first, not really planning a motif, just punching different red and pink fabrics and fibers onto a red woolen cloth, letting them blur into the background.

The left part was originally a blue-blackish fabric with a pink flower print, which I punched onto black wool and then added hand and machine embroidery to.

I sew and partially punched the fabric for the bird onto the background, forming the outlines while sewing it on, padding it here and there with some wool fibers.

Finally, I added a hanging which I made out of some black metal wire and I noticed how different a picture looks with some sort of hanging - I'll show you "My Grandmother's Garden" again, this time with the birch branch added:




For this purpose, I ironed on a suitable stabilizer as a lining for the back - it makes it hang smoother.

Whatiffing 96-104, Crafting Felt

Something completely different again: what if I'd use some colour combinations which I normally wouldn't? What if I'd use some awkward material, like this left-over crafting acrylic felt in strange colours?

What if I'd combine it with free motion machine embroidery, cutting holes in it, weaving it over and under, letting it tell stories both of dwarfs and aliens ...

Experiment with faces

I made some faces today, punched them with pink wool to the woolen punched background - and "drew" some faces with free motion machine embroidery, then coloured lips and cheeks with a red pencil and embellished it once more.

They are of course not ment to remain boldheaded, but to be integrated -maybe as X-mas angels? -with hair and body, and I'm sure they will look a lot better then!

Free Motion Faces

Today I just had to proceed experimenting with free motion machine embroidery - this time I "skitched" two faces. The background is embellished, wool, yarn, ribbons, lace on white fabric - and then machine embroidered (except for the freckles: they are french knots :-).

If you wonder about the hair of the two girls: it's a chopped-up scarf!

Flowery freestyle embroidery

This time I tried some new combinations with embellished grey wool on linen, some small pieces of fabric, wool, pre-felt, yarn and even paper - and finally I "drew" the outlines with freestyle machine embroidery. Try it - it really makes fun!

More machine embroidery

Here are some more of the machine embroidered pieces I tried out yesterday, one of them in a kind of mola technique.

Whatiffing with free machine embroidery

Yesterday I started exploring free machine embroidery, a new experience to me - what a tremendous technique!

I tried it out once many years ago and gave it up again instantly, as it didn't work out ... And now, inspired by Sara's Whatiffing, I gave it another try and yes! - my 47-year-old Singer machine could do it!

Ornaments and doodles, free and formal patterns - I'm really eager on experimenting with that as it makes such fun swirling around freehanded. I even got so overwhelmed that I produced a new series of Whatiffing pieces with nine machine embroidered, multicoloured plant doodles on an embellished background (old light-blue sweater with white wool).

Looking at them now, I realize that these are not really nine different kind of Whatiffing motives in the sense Sara described it, but rather nine variations in the same manner. I will therefore regard them as No. 10 a-i, but leave them on my pad nevertheless.