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Archive for the ‘embroidery’ Category

A Happy Week-End Ahead

Posted in embroidery, felting, felting class, general inspiration on May 3, 2013 | 4 Comments »

My box (with materials) and my little suitcase (with clothes and toothbrush) and my bag (with a selection of about 15 books and magazines) are all packed, as I am off early tomorrow morning to attend a three-day workshop with felting artist Lisa Klakulak. I can’t believe I’m going!!! I can’t wait to meet her in person and to learn fabulous new things. I have admired her wonderful work for quite a while now and am so thrilled to be part of this workshop!

The theme of the workshop? “Resist-based Pendants: hollow forms, found object inclusion and dimensional surfaces (intermediate, advanced)” – music to my ears. Can you hear it?

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All the following objects are pictures taken from the book “1000 Artisan Textiles“  – not to be confused with anything I ever made, as I bow in awe of her craftmanship and artistic talent (actually any book on felting and textile arts has images of  STRONGFELT’s works in them).P1130941

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Apart from the various bags and boxes (see above) I will also bring my still unfinished embroidery piece and after 6 hours of felting I will sit down in my cosy Bed & Breakfast and do some stitching. I am not quite sure how realistic this is…but, the occasions when I go away by myself for such a treat of a week-end are very rare. Very rare, indeed, and I am determined to enjoy every minute of it.P1130942

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I’m still here…

Posted in crafts with children, embroidery, Free Embroidery, wool felt, tagged on April 28, 2013 | 4 Comments »

Nothing had changed for the Tuesday craft this past week. We were still working on the mother’s day gift, i.e. rolling paper beads, while the kids were being entertained by me reading some books to them (among others my all-time-favorite “The Gruffalo”…, but this is beside the point).

Other than that I am busy with more visitors from Germany who I want to show around hoping they’ll have an interesting stay here with us. This leaves not a lot of time for crafty things. One thing I started, though, was the April assignment for my embroidery class. This month the subject is raised stitches and three-dimensional work. First I prepared my surface by attaching felt circles, buttons, small pompoms and plastic gold coins to the pink felt square. This was all covered with a piece of silk organza and now I am busy stitching….in reality I am further than the photograph below (and in reality I have only two days left to finish!). As anticipated I thoroughly enjoy this type of work, seeing where it takes me as I go along with no fixed ideas about stitches and arrangement of stitches. All in all I will make 6 panels of the same dimensions and in the end assemble them into one wall hanging.

But let’s stay in the present moment and finish the first one first.
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A Pleasant Day

Posted in craft show, crochet, embroidery, felting, greeting cards, sewing, soap-making, spring, wool felt, tagged , , on April 15, 2013 | 2 Comments »

This was my  test set-up in the living room, which I always do to have a better idea how the real thing might look. Also, just in case I’m running late I could set up really quickly on the day of the event.P1120805

And here is -with slight changes – the actual table at Panama Pottery’s Spring Bazaar. I was lucky, because I was able use this colorful gate to hang the bunting up, which looked great. Behind me, behind the fence in the parking lot two food trucks (all the rage here in town right now) were catering to people’s needs, you could purchase Kombucha on tap (another very popular thing here) and there were a few other vendors. The ceramic artists had openend their studios, music was good, weather and people stopping by to chat were very pleasant…

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P1120812I earned a few dollars for my daughter’s class selling the soap we made with the students.

This was my view from behind my table:

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The first picture was taken before the whole thing opened, but you can see in the second picture that there were not exactly streams of people passing through. I had plenty of time to sit and needle-felt when I was not talking to passers-by.

P1120820 P1120825Amy, a fellow vendor and textile artist who makes and sells quirky stuffed animals liked the little landscape so much that she and I swapped some things at the end of the day. All in all I can’t say it was a financial success, but I had a really good day and enjoyed myself.

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All wound up

Posted in embroidery, Free Embroidery, tagged , on March 30, 2013 | 2 Comments »

I am getting ready for the intermediate online class in Free Embroidery with Anne Lange that is going to start on April 1. I have already received the beautiful embroidery threads for the first three months of the class. And, oh, I can’t wait! Just look at the colors…to me this is bliss made visible.

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Dolls coming alive

Posted in embroidery, school projects, sewing, tagged , on March 14, 2013 | 1 Comment »

We (8 women) finished half of the dolls (16 out of 32) in two hours, not bad! I am glad I did the preparation work, that helped a lot. One more fun meeting and they’ll be done. Here is the first lot, one prettier scarier than the next…or as Ms. M., the teacher and initiator of this project, summarized it, mumbling to herself while picking out eye buttons: “Oh, these clash really well!”.P1130732 P1130733 P1130734 P1130735 P1130736 P1130737

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This and That (and a little advertising)

Posted in embroidery, sewing, tagged , , , , , on February 26, 2013 | 6 Comments »

No Tuesday Craft today, since the kids are out of school early all week for parent-teacher conferences. I have been working on this and that, but not much altogether, feeling kind of lethargic. I know that if I was more creative, I would feel better and less lethargic…but well, it’s a bit of a Catch-22 situation.

I have gotten further with my online sewing class at Craftsy to a point where I have to make changes to the muslin for the second fitting. P1130648

Made a trial doll for a friend whom I am helping with a bigger project involving 32 of these dolls…P1130647

And I am working on the English translation of the pdf-instructions for a German online embroidery class, which I mentioned here. If you are an English speaker and would like to take the class (I believe it starts April 1) I can highly recommend it. It is Anne Lange’s beginner’s class in Free Embroidery and I took it nearly two years ago. The follow-up intermediate class  will start soon, too, and I am taking that one, too. I stitched the following pieces following the instructions for the beginner’s class. Every month you work on a different subject (different theme, different stitches) and interpret it your way. You can share pictures and discuss things with your classmates and teacher in an online forum. I loved it!P1130651

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And the winners are…

Posted in crochet, embroidery, felting, home-made healing, sewing, wool felt, tagged , , , , on January 19, 2013 | 4 Comments »

Today was the day to draw the winners of my blog anniversary give-away. All the lovely commenters’ names on little pieces of paper…

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got added to a very neutral empty jam jar…

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and a very neutral and official-looking young man helped with pulling three names out of that jam jar.P1130392

The winners are:

Elke (without blog) for the bottle holder and pin-cushion. Your prize will be on the way to you by the beginning of next week!P1130389

Eclectic Lamb (eclecticlamb.wordpress.com) for the Dream Pillow and flower brooch. Congratulations! Would you please email me at eva.klaraluna@yahoo.com, so I have a street address to send your prize to.

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Sunny (without blog, but with wonderful preschool!)for the meditation weights. I will bring them over when we meet for our next crafty get-together.

P1130390Congratulations everybody! That was fun!

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First Blog Anniversary and Give-Away

Posted in crochet, embroidery, healing plants, home-made healing, sewing, wool felt, tagged , , , , , on January 9, 2013 | 15 Comments »

One year ago I started this blog, to accompany my equally young craft business, to keep far-away friends and family updated, to keep myself inspired and motivated (and tell you about it) and to be able to look back on my hand-made journey – to name just a few reasons. In a recent article I found the following:

Crafting is, above all else, a source of pleasure – and pleasure in a number of forms. First, turning the mundane (a piece of wood, a hunk of clay) into something beautiful or delicious provides the maker with a sense of accomplishment, which activates a pleasure center in the brain known as the nucleus accumbens, says Maurer. (…) If you then give your creation to someone else, you experience a second form of pleasure. “Doing something for others can light up the posterior superior temporal sulcus,” says Maurer. Like the nucleus accumbens, that region is also a pleasure center: When stimulated, it signals the release of the happiness-producing neurotransmitter dopamine.

With this in mind I would like to thank all of you for my happiness, faithful readers and occasional drop-ins, first-time readers and people who have followed Klara Luna from day one. I selected three prizes you can win by doing the following: please leave a comment with this post within the next 10 days (until January, 19). All names will be thrown in a hat and I will have an unbiased little person draw three winners. Please indicate your preference for prize #1, #2 or #3. Good luck!

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#1: A Water BottleHholder with crocheted bug embellishment and a Small Yellow Pincushion

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#2: A Dream Pillow, filled with soothing herbs and a Pink Flower Brooch made of plant-dyed wool felt

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#3: A set of two sand-filled Meditation Weights (or Pincushions, or Paperweights, or..)

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I am looking forward to your comments…

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Felted Hanging Vessels

Posted in dyeing, embroidery, felting, home improvement, wool felt, tagged , , , on December 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

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These are some wet-felted vessels made out of two very different types of wool for our school event at the beginning of this month . For the top one I used a Polwarth roving, the lower one was Merino. The Merino was way too soft and fragile to keep its form well, so it got a make-over with plant-dyed wool felt circles and I actually like it better that way. I imagine their down-to-earth job to be car-key holders, practical swallowers of small things on your way out of the house or on your return home.

In real time I am busy working on Christmas presents for my own and my extended family, or else I am gathering beautiful things that I will use as presents – I would love to show you some of them, but I will wait until the week after Christmas. Don’t want to spoil a surprise.

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Happy pincushions

Posted in embroidery, felting, tagged , on December 3, 2012 | 9 Comments »

I always start making felted balls by roughly needle felting the white roving into place and then overlay with a color, also needle felted briefly. Only then do I start the wet felting process. Keeps the wool in place much better. The embroidery is done once the balls are completely dry and since they are glued into the little metal bowls I could hide the knots of the embroidery floss by starting and ending at the bottom of the ball. In case this is not obvious these balls/pincushions are about one and a half inches in diameter –  happy and cute!

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