Finger Puppets

The little surprise that went into the pockets of my grandchildrens' pants before they were posted looked like this.

One set of finger puppets went off to Brisbane and the other identical set went off the Bangkok. Now that they have arrived safely at their destinations I can share the photos with you without spoiling any surprises on the other side of the Indian Ocean.

Each child had one finger puppet in each pocket.  Either a frog and a dog

or a fox and an owl.

I found an overwhelming number of ideas by searching for 'finger puppets' on Pinterest and also on Google Images. Although I bookmarked a number of interesting sites, I don't seem to have made a note of which ones inspired these. I will gladly credit the source if you can let me know where they came from.

Till next time, happy stitching!

Feedback on Kimberly House Post

Today's quick post is one that I started writing a while ago. Regular readers may remember that my niece Genae has recently joined Kimberley House, a small company that makes a wide range of beautiful hand embroidered items. You can read more about them in a previous blog post here.

Hand embroidered tea towel by Kimberly House

Genae sent me some feedback I'd like to share with you.  Not long after I posted the blog she received a very nice order from Europe. It was unusual to receive an order from that part of the world because her customers are generally from the USA where Kimberley House is based. The order was eventually attributed to one of my blog readers. Genae was delighted and so too was I.

Little surprises on the back of my kitchen tea towel

I'm often amazed when I see the list of countries that my blog reaches especially as many are not English speaking. It's a humbling thought, and all thanks to the internet. I can only imagine that Google Translate makes it possible for even more stitchers to read my posts.

Patch Pockets

Children love having pockets on their pants. I thought patch pockets would be a lot easier to sew than those that you let into the side seams.

After scanning some free patterns and tutorials I based my pockets on this excellent tutorial found on Dana-made-it.com

Here's a peek at the contrasting lining I chose for my two year old granddaughter. It's a lovely tactile silky satin in an unexpected sky blue colour.

Next time I'll show you the little surprises I made to put in the pockets.

Hedebo Tea Cosy - Drawn Thread

I haven't done a lot of stitching recently, but I have made a little progress on my Hedebo tea cosy. The surface embroidery has been completed and the drawn thread work is well underway. You can read more about this project in previous blog posts here and here.

Below you can see that the pretty little pulled work border around the sides is complete and I have started cutting threads and filling in the openwork areas. I started with the small less important areas, leaving the central motif until I had had a bit of practice.



Each openwork or drawn thread area is outlined by the two rows of chain stitch so characteristic of Hedebo embroidery.



In these drawn thread areas, I cut 2 threads and skipped 2 threads in both directions. I strengthened the grid with ordinary sewing machine cotton because I wanted the whipping and the underlying grid to be unobtrusive.

For the large rectangular area of drawn thread work at the bottom I carefully counted and tacked over every 2 threads to mark the threads I wanted to cut. Its's a big area and I didn't want to miscount somewhere and have to fix up any threads cut by mistake. Why the blue and red tacking?

I started with the pale blue thread but that didn't show up too well, especially at night. The bright red was much easier to see. I won't leave it in the embroidery for too long in case there is a transfer of it's strong red colour to the linen.

Also, when I changed to the red thread, I began at the side by going under the first two threads to be cut, as you can see above. The plan was to slip the point of the scissors under each pair of threads where the red thread lay underneath. Anything to make the cutting easier and more foolproof!

I have eased out the cut threads one by one and trimmed them off close to the satin stitch border. Next I'll strengthen the grid as before by whipping over the grid intersections with machine sewing thread. Finally I'll weave in the decorative filling.

The end of this piece of embroidery is in sight. It will be good to finish it but I still have to decide if it is actually going to be a tea cosy or if it's eventually going to be something else.

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On a different note, I am back from a long anticipated reunion of Rod's family. It's been a few years since the four siblings and their spouses were all together. We met up in Sedgefield on the beautiful Garden Route and spent a very happy time taking long beach walks, having fabulous home cooked meals, and catching up and sharing fond memories. With the family scattered all over the country, and the globe, getting together is difficult but we all left Sedgefield with the firm intention of having another reunion before too many years have passed.

Winter arrived surreptitiously while we were away and being back home in Cape Town has been a bit of a shock weather-wise. Temperatures have dropped and the first big, but very welcome, rains have fallen. Perhaps with the cold weather here it's time to stay indoors, keep warm and take out the embroidery.

Till next time, happy stitching!

Art quilts

Shared Sky is collaborative exhibition of art quilts and painting on linen by two groups of artists, one South African and the other Australian. It runs until 26 May 2015 at the National Gallery in Cape Town.

From the catalogue of Shared Sky Exhibition
 at Iziko National Gallery

The exhibition celebrates ancient cultural wisdom and the understanding of the movements of objects in the night sky. These are the same celestial bodies that are being studied by scientists and astronomers around the world by means of the Square Kilometre Array project (SKA) and the giant radio telescopes located in South Africa and Australia.

The telescopes are situated close to the areas where the two groups of artists live. Hence the collaboration of the SKA organization and the artists at the Bethesda Arts Centre in South Africa and the Jamaji Art Centre in Western Australia.

It was raining the day I went into Cape Town to the National Gallery and you can see that my catalogue got rather wet and crinkled. I didn't want to fold it up in my handbag and I rolled it instead to try and keep it dry under my umbrella.

The catalogue shows one of the quilts at the top and a painting below.  It's just a little glimpse of what's on display as no photography was allowed in the gallery. 

In real life I thought the quilt shown above was stunning. The photo does not do justice to the colours. The work is a combination of applique, quilting, hand embroidery and machine embroidery. The paintings are worked in little dots and again the photo of the night sky painting above does not do justice to the impact of the work.

On display too is a small group of decorated ostrich and emu eggs. It's hard to grasp that some of these eggs were painted 77000 years ago.

The other exhibition at the same venue that I found intriguing was the William Kentridge installation The Refusal of Time. The multiple videos, enveloping sound and big gallumping machine bombard your senses in a way that's difficult to describe and I left feeling I'd like to go back and see it again.

Autumn at the Berry Farm

A visit to Hillcrest Berry Farm for fresh raspberries reminded me that it's autumn here in Cape Town.

Autumn is a short season and there are few displays of colourful autumn trees. 

It was a damp day but a delicious light lunch and the view of the surrounding mountains made the little excursion from the city well worth the drive. 

My friends and I were each able to buy a couple of  punnets of fresh raspberrries, just about the last of the season, and we did come away with packs of frozen blueberries that will last well into winter.

The days are short, the evenings cool and winter is just around the corner. If you are in Cape Town or somewhere down south keep warm and happy stitching!

Hedebo Tea Cosy and an Inspirational Motto

I have done a little more embroidery on my Hedebo tea cosy which I wrote about some time ago. This UFO (unfinished object) was started in 2006! I often wonder why some projects languish in the UFO or 'to do' box while others are completed fairly quickly.

Hedebo tea cosy based on a design by Hetsie van Wyk 

One of the things that bothers me about this Hedebo project is that I used perle threads for the surface embroidery and it has not given me the results I had envisioned. At the time perle or stranded DMC embroidery thread was all I could get. With internet shopping opening up the variety of threads available, I think I would now perhaps choose a cotton floche thread which is softer looking than the perle I used.

I have come across this inspirational quote a number of times recently and it prompted me to take action. After all perfection can be an enemy of progress. Can't it?

Photo: Offizin on Etsy

My tea cosy may not match up to my original mental picture of it but I really like the design and with my new motto 'done is better than perfect' I'm carrying on with the stitching. I can also practice techniques that I don't use often or haven't tried before - like the eyelets I was putting off doing.

The eyelets were made without cutting any threads and the 'special tool' I used to keep the openings all same size was a 2.75mm knitting needle. With a stiletto, awl or laying tool you have to judge how much to open up each hole, something I have found tricky. The knitting needle worked well for me and I like how you can get the same size hole each time - well almost.

The next step is to finish off the pulled work around the sides and around the border at the bottom. Then I can start cutting and withdrawing the threads for the drawn thread areas. Those are the bits I have been wanting to get to for a long, long time.

Kimberly House Embroidery - Bridal Shower Gift Ideas

My niece Genae has just visited from New York.  She is now part of the on-line store Kimberly House and brought with her some of their beautiful hand embroidered items to show me.

Genae also gave me an embroidered kitchen tea towel and a guest towel from the Kimberly House range that I will show you below. Having just been to a bridal shower and kitchen tea I thought what a lovely and special gift these hand embroidered towels would be for a new bride.

My tea towel is made of soft 100% cotton waffle-weave fabric and it is embroidered with satin stitch peas. 

It's not easy to embroider on waffle-weave cloth, but as you can see in the close up photo of the peas above the satin stitch lies neatly and smoothly on the uneven surface. I'd love to be a fly on the wall and see how it is embroidered.

You can see the rest of the range of kitchen towels on the Kimberly House website here. (Don't you like the strawberries and the radishes?)

My guest towel is embroidered with a spray of lavender on a fine white linen fabric. Look at the elegant little touch of drawn thread work on the hem.

It's so pretty that I don't want to use it and have put it away for a very special visitor to use. The guest towels are available in both white and the chic natural colour linen shown here.

I had previously seen the Kimberly House website and liked their range of embroidered items, but I was particularly impressed by the finish on them when I actually saw the real thing. If you are looking for a gift for a new baby, there is also a sweet and stylish selection of hand embroidered gifts for babies here.

My ex-Zimbabwean readers may be interested to know that all the embroidery was originally done in Zimbabwe. Unfortunately the factory there no longer operates and the embroidery is currently done by hand by embroiderers in Vietnam. Genae is currently on a visit to the factory in Vietnam to find out more about it. I did drop some broad hints about accompanying her to carry her suitcase, but no luck there. I'm sure it will be a fascinating visit and I wish Genae much success.

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Photos courtesy of Kimberly house.

Disclaimer: I received a gift of two towels, but I do not benefit in any way from publishing this review.

Easter Egg Sampler of Stitches - free pattern

This is a bit of fun I am having with stitches and colours to make up into a quick card for a friend for Easter. I am going to whip the stem stitch outline to smooth out the curves and then stick it into a window card. If you are in Cape Town, Merripak keep packs of window cards.

I changed the stitches slightly as I stitched, but here is the original pattern I started with. For a free copy of the pattern below, right click on the image and choose the 'save as' option. Print it out, then use a photocopy machine to enlarge it or make it smaller to suit your card or project.

Easter egg sampler of stitches - Lyn Warner

I used a blue tailor's pen to trace the pattern and mark the position of some guide-lines for stitching. The blue lines washed out well in plain cold water afterwards. The embroidery for the card was done on a 32 count linen, but any firmly woven fabric like calico would be fine.

Colours are DMC 3844 & 3845 (blue); 726 (yellow); 3348 (green); and 349 & 350 (red). I used mostly 2 strands of thread.

Suggested stitches for the pattern were from the top:
1. Chain stitch
2. Back stitch, laced running stitch, back stitch
3. Horizontal fly stitch. Turn the work 180 degrees to work the second row of horizontal fly stitch.
4. Tied herringbone.
5. Lazy daisy flowers with small French knot centre . Make centre with 1 thread and 1 wrap.
6. Stem stitch, large French knots made with 3 threads and 2 or 3 wraps, stem stitch.
7. Laced running stitch
8. Chain Stitch.
9. Outline of the egg: stem stitch or whipped stem stitch.

If you need any stitch instructions or ideas for stitch variations, visit either Mary Corbet's Needle 'n Thread or Sharon Boggon's Pintangle and search for the stitch you want. Both websites are excellent.

Let me know if you embroider a little sampler by leaving a comment below, or email me at lynette [dot] warner [at] gmail [dot] com, using the usual format of name1.name2@gmail.com. I'd love to see your stitched version of the pattern.

'Till next time, happy stitching!

Kaffe Fasset visits South Africa

Kaffe Fassett will visit South Africa again in June-July this year. I first came across his work in his book Glorious Knitting and I was immediately hooked by the wonderful colours and designs.

With the new book Glorious Needlepoint recently out and a visit to London coming up I wrote (snail mail back then!) to Kaffe's publisher and asked if he'd be giving any lectures at the time of my visit. Yes, came the reply, at the Albert Hall in Nottingham.

Albert Hall, Nottingham

To book my ticket, we had to phone the organizer in Nottingham. When she heard we were phoning via an international call from Cape Town South Africa there was just a long stunned silence. Later when I collected my ticket from her - at this lovely knitting shop - she told me that she was so surprised by the call she had to sit down.

My biggest surprise was when in a packed hall Kaffe opened by welcoming everyone and then welcomed the 'lady who had travelled all the way from Cape Town'. Not just that, he then asked me to stand up and thanked me for coming! Overseas travel for South Africans was fairly unusual back in 1989.

Albert Hall interior

While my new stitching friend Janice Jowett very kindly kept my seat in the third row from the front, I dashed to the back of the hall to capture the moment. The gentle classical guitar music was hair-raisingly beautiful. And then, after checking his watch Kaffe, on the left in the photo above, began by sharing the story of his introduction to knitting with us.

The lecture was inspiring and there were long queues up on the stage afterwards for the book signing. My accent must have stood out because when I thanked Kaffe for signing my book, he stopped, looked up and we had a few words. I wanted to know if he had any plans to visit South Africa. But at that time he said no, not yet but maybe one day.

Kaffe Fasset

Since then Kaffe has visited South Africa a number of times and on one occasion my daughter and I were lucky enough to see some of his marvellous quilts at a lecture here in Cape Town.

Together with Brandon Mably, Kaffe Fasset will be present both knitting and patchwork workshops and lectures at the South African National Quilt Festival in Durban. He has scheduled visits to Johannesburg and Pretoria too and you will find more about the tour in the calendar of events on his website here. How I would love to be going to Durban in July! A quilt festival and the opportunity to hear Kaffe speak and see some of his work are not to be missed.

Till next time, happy stitching!