12th December already.

I really wanted to just take a moment or two to say thank you to all you lovely, lovely people for the emails and messages following my second bout of surgery recently. The surgery went well and I just have to be patient now and give my shoulder  plenty of time to fully recover. I have to say that I am really not good at sitting at home doing nothing, I am bored silly and it is sooooo tempting to head out to my studio and starting playing with all the fun stuff that is lurking in there. I have managed a little dabble with a little bit of hand sewing though, just ten minutes at a time. I've been working a piece that has been hanging around since the summer and it has finally turned into something that I really like.

I painted a piece of Egyptian cotton with some Dye-Na-Flow fabric paint when I was still working on my City & Guilds projects. I filed it away in the "not needed now" pile but knew that I would use it one day as I loved the vibrant colours. When I did finally pull it out again to use, I decided it was a perfect piece for a spot of Sun Dyeing. It's so easy, I couldn't believe my eyes. All you do is position a few items on top of the fabric and lay it in the sun. I used some of my Green Pepper Press masks and a heap of buttons and trinkets. I have no idea how or why this works but the colour underneath the objects gets bleached out and creates such an amazing effect. so the brighter and more vibrant colours of paint will create a better contrast than pale, pastel colours.

Some of the larger leafy images had quite a large blank area so I placed the matching stencil over the image to create a mask and used some Archival Ink to stamp some script and patterns on the foliage.

After placing my fabric on a piece of wadding, I started to hand stitch around some of the larger images to create a quilted effect.

Then I turned to my sewing machine and randomly stitched gold thread all over the background. This took FOREVER!!! It was one of those things that I wished I hadn't started but I couldn't ditch the idea and un-pick it as the stitches would have marked the fabric, so I had to continue. Luckily, this part was finished before my shoulder surgery.

Now for the embellishments. All the little beads and trinkets have been attaching with some pretty gold thread. Positioning everything was the hardest part as I didn't want to completely cover all the sun dyed patterns but I wanted to create a dimensional garden.

At the moment, the piece has a simple bias binding edge but I think I will mount it on another piece of fabric before framing it. Just need to find the right fabric now.

I really can't believe that it's 12th December already. I have been very organised with gifts this year, I knew I had to have all gifts purchased and wrapped before my surgery and I have to admit it's a nice feeling not to be in panic mode for the first time ever!