I love my new Das Keyboard!
What has a keyboard got to do with fibre art? Well, whether you make fibre art or love it, you appreciate the feel of things. And once you feel this keyboard, you may just fall in love. And no, I’m not on commission.
I want to type long words! It feels so good.
Click on the picture or the link above to read more. I recommend the “silent” version especially if you need to hear audio while you type. Happy tapping.
Although it’s not really called Crumb Cottage – as far as I know anyway – it’s about the size of a crumb in my painting. I believe this cottage is on Pender Island, in between mainland Canada and Vancouver Island. You can see it on a ferry trip from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay.
I painted the mountains and sky, and the mist between. Then I did some very casual free motion machine embroidery to try to give the look of distant fir trees. For some of the deciduous trees around the cottage I glued on a tiny amount of lint. I’ve discovered that serger thread quickly chops up as finely as you could want.
The cottage itself was tricky. In future I might use a tiny piece of felt rather than thread. I did this in thread by hand and it was difficult to keep the stitching more or less the same thickness, and keep doors and windows reasonably straight, and incorporate some colour variations throughout. Plus, you feel kind of mean, sticking your big old needle into someone’s living room!
The water was my favourite to do. I took lengths of high-gloss machine embroidery thread and split them into strands. That way you get two thin threads that are nice and wiggly, like hair when you loosen it out of a braid. They look like water without any effort from me. I did longer stitches in the foreground (forewater?) and very short ones in the distance. Oh and I sewed some tiny stitches in silver and green metallic thread here and there, and some invisible thread, for sheen and sparkle. All done, hurray!
Click on the logo to read more about this group I just joined, who offer members’ work for sale out of the Crafthouse on Granville Island, Vancouver. I look forward to meeting this group of talented folks and showing my work in new places!
