hiding fabric burn spots

Pin It now!

Several years back we gave a brand new bedsheet set to the laundry for a simple wash, instead of doing it at home. And it came back with a few burn spots! 

 My solution was to embroider around the spot burns in white buttonhole stitch (single strand) to prevent any possible fraying. I'm sure you can spot them in the image above, now that you know.

Then I tried to replicate a sense - a simple impression - of the printed part of the bedsheet, using freestyle brush strokes in a subdued colour.

Painted white circles to copy the 'burnt berries' on the twigs.

And done! Oh, I did a similar one on the plain panel on the other side of the printed one. I didn't take a pic of it, since it was a bit out of reach and I was lazy ;-P

Quick fix solution! This sheet has been on my bed for a couple of weeks now, before I thought to take pics and share. Hence the creases, if you will excuse them. 

passing fancy

Pin It now!

 

As if I didn't have enough 'pots boiling', I let myself be carried away with this! I finished the 12 florets for the bracelet mentioned yesterday. And they simply called out to adorn a tree. 

Can't say how many years/decades it's been since I painted something. But this is on my laptop using a Inking Stylus Pen (a Windows inking device for HP). I've tried the pen in the past weeks for a spot of this or that, but this is my first real experience.

Took me a couple of hours of relaxed brush strokes. So little to show for it.

Requires a Huge amount of practice and patience to improve (it is so much easier to mix and merge colours in oils and water paints, and so much paraphernalia to set up). But I'm not looking for perfection - only some fun (despite some cringe-inducing areas on that tree!) ;-D And I totally forgot the shadow!!!

Oh, and this is how the 'tree' looked before. We've all seen a barren tree, but have you ever seen a missing Tree Trunk  full of foliage and flowers?! Now you've seen it all, LOL.

These are in my flag colours - saffron, white, and green.

Now I must get back to assembling them into a bracelet like a proper tatter!

quick art attack

Pin It now!

When I started this blog, it was meant to be about a lot of things around the home – both creative and practical. But very soon it lost it’s way becoming almost exclusively a tatting blog. Well, let’s take a break from that T word that seems to dominate my life!

Change of seasons means switching clothes and reorganizing the closets. And this time I found 2 of my art books (yes, even my clothes almirah has a huge shelf filled with books and also that T stuff – see the T invasion there?!!!) and was pleasantly surprised at some of the ‘artwork’ I found within. Totally forgotten and neglected all these years – that is the power of T! Aaargh, see there it is again! Before it manages to squeeze in further, let me quickly upload these scans.

First off, it was tough to get a good impression despite setting the scanner to highest contrast, lowest brightness and a higher resolution. I do have a tendency to sketch and colour lightly, yet it is a tad better than what shows up in these scans. I added the black 'frames' with MS Paint.

Colour pencils, June 2010

This scene is partially from some story published in a newspaper or magazine.

Sketch pens, April 2008 

This was a phase when I was watching Neil Buchanan’s show Art Attack 

and was inspired by his excellent command, creativity and quick artwork!

I made faint pencil outlines which were later erased.
Those squiggles in the base of the bowl add a cute little touch,  methinks. 

Water colours, March 2012

This is the kind of stuff I go for – freestyle. 

I’ve used the technique on greeting cards, sarees, home linen, etc.

The above 3 were done on fairly smooth A4 sheets from this art pad. 

They came loose while scanning.

The next 4 below I found within the pages of this smaller art pad 

(I’ve cut/paste the specifics in the image. click on image to enlarge).

The sheets held together during scanning.

Mixed media, April 2008

There is charcoal, chalk, crayons, & colour pencil. 

Bummer about all these light scans - 

those roiling clouds actually came out pretty good using blue chalk.

Pastels, April 2008

I’d bought a set of 24 pastels and was eager to give them a try.

Pencil, April 2008

Another of my favourite theme for sketching : bare trees (and roots)...

 with a bird (there are 2 in this sketch if you can spot them!) or solitary leaf (O Henry’s story is among my favourite) or some such to add a spot of 'life'. 

I absolutely love the way bare branches and twigs enmesh together, yet each has a distinct identity. Leaves I do like, but they mask the unspoken majesty of bare branches.

Water colours, March 2012

Trying the wash technique.

I realise they all look quite amateurish and need a lot more details/background. 

However, they were all accomplished in single sittings! 

So a nice breather from that domineering T (major oops again!!!) in blogging? 

Do you think I should organise more frequently? ;-P

lazy or smart?

Pin It now!

When was the last time I posted something unrelated to tatting? Hmmm, probably a year back for the Pinterest Challenge in December – that cute little bird. It still sits on my bedside cabinet with pins stuck in it!

This time I'm sharing a very quick mixed media project involving painting and embroidery, done sometime around mid-2000.

These pics were taken quite a while back, hence not as sharp, bright, rich and clear as I’d like them to be. Apologies for the poor quality.

The background is a light yellow but not as washed out as it looks here.

I’d wanted to embroider a bedsheet for ages, but was fearful of it becoming an UFO. Once during our summer vacation we forced our Mom to give us separate bedsheets to embroider and she succumbed despite her valid fears of us not completing them. The sheets did get finished but only after she sat alongside and embroidered the remaining motifs over the months following the vacation ;-P

Going by that experience, I decided to do something quick but covering a large area. After scouring through my pattern collection, I zeroed in on my favorite book – Creative Stitchcraft. It has a beautiful Bouquet of Roses Quilt – red stem-stitch embroidery on white background.

I went for colours, but a mere stem-stitch outline would look too barren. So after I had enlarged the template – drawing manually, since I was excited to start immediately – and transferred it to the cloth I looked in my fabric paints box – I use Fevicryl acrylics.

I had a few left over from painting a free-hand saree border for my MIL earlier.

Diluted them and did a quick wash. A thicker coat of paint could've caused some stiffening of the fabric making it difficult to embroider, and taken longer to dry obviously.

There’s a bit of yellow paint in the rose petals, too.

I deliberately didn’t ‘stay within the lines’, keeping it a bit random with some unwashed areas or some overlapping of colours, to give it a natural shading.

Then simple stem-stitch along all the outlines.

I kept the stitches very short, using 2 strands of Anchor embroidery threads throughout.

Manoeuvering becomes easier when stitches are short. Abrupt curves, sharp ends, pointed ends, etc. can b e neatly managed. 

Mary Corbet has some excellent tips & tutorials which I had already figured out on my own. 

There is also a lovely Morning Glory border in the original pattern which I did not use here. This seemed fine on its own. 

Yay, it was all over within a week – from enlarging to the very last knot! 

Is this multimedia project smart or sheer lazy? You decide :-D

Bouquet of Roses pattern from the book "Creative Stitchcraft". (Better Homes and Gardens) Murdoch Books. 1991.