Sue Bleiweiss

Felted vase and Terri's page

My page swap partner for July is Terri and her theme is nature.  Well after much stress over what to do for her page I decided I wanted to do some handstitching which for me is a huge deal.  I confess to be a lousy handstitcher.  It is definitely not one of my strong points.  But I stuck with it (ha ha pun intended and I have the poke marks in my fingers to prove it) and made this little needlepoint canvas which I mounted to linen fabric.

And meanwhile I've been continuing to experiment with felting and making 3d objects for the new wet felting class I'm working on:

This is a hand felted vase standing about 9" high at the highest point and about 7" wide.  The colors are fairly muted shades of pink and green.  The wool is a blend of coopworth wool and silk.

fabric pages

Remember that sneak peek I gave you of the page I was working on for Mags for the page swap this month?  Well here's the finished page:

The grid is done with red wire and the flowers are red organza.  I used some yellow glass beads for the center of the flowers and then added the red sequins around the edge of the grid.

And today I started thinking about the next page I have to do for Carol for June.  Her theme is "just creamy" and wants pages in shades of cream.  Well I got a major flash of inspiration today and even though I'm way ahead of schedule for having this done I thought I'd post it now anyway.

I used walnut ink dyed linen stitched to a linen base which was then washed and dried to distress it.  Then used the embellisher to add some very cool novelty yarn that doesn't really show in the photo.  I added some fun cream colored fish and some wood beads.  I love that elephant bead.  He's been in my stash forever just waiting for the perfect moment to come out and play.  Today was his day!

Blue and Green

This month my partner in the fabric book page swap is Emmy.  Emmy's theme is blue and green, two colors that I am very comfortable working in.  I wanted to do something with my embellisher so I created the center blue and green medallion in this page using soy silk fibers on wool felt using the embellisher.

The buttons all around the edges are actually  blue and green shell buttons.  They don't show up very well in the photo unfortunately.  I've sewn them on with blue and green embroidery floss.  Notice the dragonfly in the upper right of the page?  I was doing some research on symbolism of the dragonfly and found that they are often used in Japanese paintings to represent new light and joy.  The colors of the dragonfly are a result of the reflecting and refracting the power of light.  So the dragonfly serves as a reminder that we are light and can reflect the light in powerful ways if we choose to do so. "Let there be light" is the divine prompting to use the creative imagination as a force within your life. They help you to see through your illusions and allow your own light to shine in a new vision.  I hope she likes this page I certainly enjoyed making it for her.

I also put together a couple new surfaces to work with.  The first is done with torn sheet music, soy silk, angel wings and novelty yarn

 and this next one is done with soy fibers, mulberry paper, angel wings and old postage stamps.

I've got a couple of ideas for these surfaces so stay tuned!

 

Fabric book page swap

I am involved in a fabric book page swap and this month I have been paired up with Diane whose theme for her book is Art Nouveau.  After much internet surfing trying to dig up some inspiration for what to do for her page I decided I wanted to do her initial in an art nouveau font.  I ended up buying one of those Dover books about Art Nouveau Initials (which I think is going to come in handy for some future projects), found one that I liked and used it as the template to create her page:

I created a bunch of layered surfaces this morning until I had one that I liked, cut out the initial and then appliqued it to a piece of silk.  Let me tell you it was no easy task to satin stitch around all those corners.  Then I appliqued the silk to a piece of black wool felt.  I think it came together quite nicely and I'm pleased with it.  The colors are much more vibrant in person than what's coming across in the photo.  I hope Diane likes it!