The Postie delivered a lovely squishy package containing the above fabrics. What to do with them? I fairly quickly recalled in an old Stitch magazine an image of triangular shaped vessels which I have long meant to attempt.
I managed not to distract myself with looking through the old magazines, just the covers, as I knew there was an image on the front cover; it was issue 39, February / March 2006. It was a piece done by Helen Cowan.
I found some more threads and ribbons I could snip up to add to the mix, same colour palette but varying textures and thicknesses. Not all ended up been used, including the water-colour piece: another project sometime.
I did start following the instructions and tried out different widths of triangle, settling on the narrower one, it looked more elegant. I then drew round my template on to the pelmet vilene.
I used Inktense pencils, doodling directly on to damp pelmet vilene. It didn’t spread quite as I expected, but in this case it didn’t matter as it was going to be pretty much hidden by the snippets of fabric. Once it was dry I ironed on slightly bigger triangles of bond-a-web.
Working on the ironing board, I laid the triangles on the Teflon sheet so that they wouldn’t need moving once the snippets were in place. Then the snipping began, bits of the fabric and threads until most of the background was hidden. I ironed it as a sandwich between the Teflon sheet with an old iron, it’s too easy to wreck your good iron!!
Not all the pieces were stuck down, so I sprinkled on some bonding granules before adding the chiffon scarf, and ironing again in the Teflon sandwich.
A section of the flowery fabric had iron-on vilene added to the wrong side and I “fussy-cut” them out while talking to friends on-line. There wouldn’t have been so many otherwise.
I wanted the backs to be coloured, but not patchy, so applied the Inktense pencil with a wet brush, taking the colour directly from the end of the pencil. Some inevitably gets on to the wood of the pencil, but goes the next time it’s sharpened. They reminded me of the sugar flowers you can put on cakes, but didn’t fancy trying them, pretty as they looked.
I stitched the bigger flowers just in the centres with French knots, and the little heart-shaped pieces just at the bottom, with a tiny stab stitch, and making sure I was not too close to the edge. I didn’t want the zig-zag to catch them down.
I cut the triangles out and laid them on various options of fabric for the lining, and decided on the bottom one, a warmer, darker purple that toned well, but gave more contrast.
This is where I really went off piste with the instructions, it needed another later of pelmet vilene, and more bond-a-web, and I could only find enough bond-a-web (in the black hole with the calico) to cover one more set of triangles and that was only just. So I decided the best solution was to put the pink face down on the Teflon sheet, patchwork the bond-a-web on the back and lay the ironed purple fabric on top. It worked, but I was concerned it would move as I put the purple down.
I wanted to do satin stitch round the edges of each piece and decided to do a short, wide-apart stitch to make sure the front was well anchored to the back. I then discovered that I could change the stitch width on satin stitch with the speed control! I’ve only had the machine about 15 years!
I then cut them all out before doing another row, wider and closer together, on all three pieces and the base. I didn’t understand the instructions at this point, as they talked about a square base, but I just cut an equilateral triangle at the beginning and did the same at the sides, but with less snipping on it.
I forgot to take photos at this stage, but just butted the sides one at a time up to the base triangle and did a really wide satin stitch over both pieces. The instructions had said to hand stitch them together, and the sides, but the base folded up beautifully and I reckoned that if I butted the sides carefully together I could machine stitch from part way down to the bottom, narrowing the satin stitch at the very bottom to almost a straight stitch. It worked, with a bit of folding and manipulation for all three sides.
I then added three beads to the apex of each triangle, and curled them down.
It holds a little secret inside. When you peep in, you can see I’ve put the fancy side inside, rather than the purple lining. The fancy side at the base would only have been hidden!
As usual you can see the responses from the rest of the group on the Grasby Embroiderers Facebook page.
debbidipity 