September 8, 2009 | Posted in: Miscellaneous, Projects
Ahh goldwork. So pretty, so shiny. I mentioned Tracy Franklin’s book yesterday, or just go and check out her website. Tanja Berlin does more flower-type designs and has a lot of kits which are definately pretty, shiny and a great way to get into the technique without having to try and source all the specialty threads (and instructions!) yourself.
I’ve been collecting goldwork threads and books in a very magpie-like fashion for a couple of years and have been slowly incorporating them into my pieces (the threads and techniques I mean, not the books). But there’s one technique I hadn’t yet [...]
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September 7, 2009 | Posted in: Goldwork
I’ve got a few embroidery books and magazines on my shelves. Okay, it’s heading into “more than a few” territory, so I figured I may as well give some small reviews of them. Just in case anyone else here is interested in getting as addicted to purchasing stitching books. Because reading about stitching is almost as good as doing it. Which, now that I think about it, is probably how many socially inept young chaps feel about sex.
With that charming introduction I’ll go onto the first book: New Ideas in Goldwork by Tracy Franklin.
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August 20, 2009 | Posted in: Events, Miscellaneous
MrXStitch is going to be one year old next Thursday (well, the site is I mean. Jamie, judging by his zucchini, is older) and he’s celebrating with giveaways and new patterns and all kinds of stuff. If you don’t know the site yet, go and check it out – he and his trusty sidekick Beefranck manage to find amazingly cool embroidery from all around the ‘net.
Here’s the full deal on the birthday bash (there isn’t a world-wide video conference call thing organised as far as I can tell, but maybe we can pressure them into it?)…
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July 20, 2009 | Posted in: Miscellaneous
You may have already noticed the banner on the right-hand side of this website for Kiva. This is not at all a paid-for ad, it’s something I’ve put on my site because I think it’s a great cause and want to support it in anyway I can.
Kiva is a not-for-profit which enables people to make microloans – starting from as little as $25 – to others around the world who need a little bit of funding to start making their own lives better. This isn’t donating (although you can donate to support the running of Kiva itself), this is lending. [...]
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July 15, 2009 | Posted in: Featured, Miscellaneous, Projects
Y’know sometimes, when you just get so damn excited about something working out, that you go ahead and try and expand on it and totally screw it up?
Yep, well that happened to me with temari.
I tried my first temari and it worked out better than I expected (after the first few failed attempts). So then I decided to branch out a little. To get a bit experimental. To just wing it.
my first temari - from detailed instructions
That, I ‘ve discovered, is not a good idea. Especially not with three-dimensional geometries which make even me pause to think about it- [...]
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July 10, 2009 | Posted in: Events
Things have gotten unusual but exciting here in Berlin. Tomorrow there’s a crafting vs hacking workshop called Chips with Love at the new coworking location Studio 70. What’s crafting vs hacking? Well I’m glad you asked because I’m not entirely sure myself, but it appears there’s going to be a lot of playing with arduino and the like. They’ve already decided on a few projects that we’ll attempt to make during the day: a ballerina doll which reacts to/interacts with her environment; a baby onesie which will measure and document the baby’s temperature and sound; and a remote controlled penguin [...]
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July 8, 2009 | Posted in: Featured, Stumpwork
Last one from the tattoo themed exhibition. This one used a lot more goldwork techniques (oh, the couching!), something which I’m still learning but loving.
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July 6, 2009 | Posted in: Events
I’ve been lucky enough to get together with a bunch of fantastic crafty people here in Berlin, something that’s actually kinda tough. Arty, fashiony… all these things are ultra-mega-cool, but crafty is still considered the height of spießig-ness. Especially stitching. Only great-aunt Rudolphina embroiders.
So finding folks such as Linkle, La Bastellerie and Cold Snap Bindery has been great and we’ve started forming a very loose collective of German crafty businesses (akin to the Craft Mafia or Church of Craft) called the Bastel Brigade. It’s probably unsurprising that of the five people involved, only one is German, but we’re hoping it’ll [...]
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July 5, 2009 | Posted in: Featured, Stumpwork
Now I’m playing a little bit of catch up here – this piece (and the one which’ll go up in the next few days) have been blogged about before on my old blog and on flickr. Apologies to all who’ve already seen it, but I really want this blog to be the home of my embroidery activites and so I’m going to put up these few pieces from my recent exhibition.
Like the heart, this was inspired by kitschy flash tattoos. I didn’t keep the same style going through all pieces though, as [...]
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June 30, 2009 | Posted in: Events
This Saturday, July 4, there’ll be a clothing swap and remake event in Neukölln. I’ll be there, helping out (and playing around) and it’s hopefully going to be a huge thing. bring clothes you don’t want/like/fit into and swap with others for stuff you DO like. And if it doen’t quite fit, or isn’t quite your style – mod it! there’ll be sewing machines and Linkle is there to help. La Bastellerie will be offering all kinds of dyeing and stencilling stuff and I’ll be there if you want to embroider stuff.
Here’s the official info:
Fashion Reloaded
THE EVENT
We faced the [...]
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