Stitching

The photo has nothing to do with this post. It's a shot from the winter of 2010 up by Windsor, Nova Scotia. Bald Eagles doing their thing on a grey day. This time of year it is a struggle between feeling like a grey sky or flying free. Today, I wish I was an eagle. Maybe I'll go slip on some ice and fly through the air that way?

I'm listening to a de-stressing audio of rainstorm/thunderstorm (here) while the cat insists on sitting on my lap as I type. The laptop is barely balanced on the thin arm of the chair. I am hoping I don't drop it. The cup of tea is out of reach, for fear I may let the laptop slip. They all cancel each other out.

I liked listening to the rain at our camp, and a little thunder off in the distance added a piquant flavour.  I like thunder, even in a tent, but I don't like the lightning. Luckily, an audio file doesn't show the lightning. I listened to this audio while falling asleep last night and it was lovely. Steve complained he had to pee more often.

Two Karen Ruane classes ago she showed us how to make a lace cloth made up of strips of lace, sheer fabrics and free motion embroidery. I made one at the time and didn't like the end product. I did like the concept and made another one using cottons.

This class, we are working on patch pockets. I haven't been on task too well, I'll show that picture at the end. But .... (the audio file just switched over to the most idiotic Doritos ad ever. Obviously I fell asleep before that happened last night. Looks like some ripping of the good sounds and making my own file is in order).... I have been finishing the cotton strip piece.

A gathered strip of cotton, suffolk puffs stuffed with scraps of the coloured fabrics and french knots.

A few of the other rows (sidewise view). The background fabric is a synthetic that has sheer polka dots.

A cluster of appliqued clamshells. The pinky fabric is from the 1960's, I think. I love the muted pink.

The inside of the pouch. The top is open. A pillow form could go inside or this could store larger pieces of lace fabric, or stockings in my dresser drawer, or larger photos.

It can be folded up as well and used as a folio. This is the back view. It turned out a little nicer than the front view, but I didn't make any decisions about how to fold the piece until after it was all embellished.

The slightly less attractive front view. I kept the ragged edge of the selvage. Why the hell not?

The inside of the pouch has french seams and some button hole lace stitching.

Here's a non-sequitor. We installed the old tv so that I could watch my videos from Karen on a larger screen. Before, I had to be glued to the laptop screen, now I can move about.

Which is what I did while I cleaned up the mess. I need to get an after shot.

And now my attention returns to finishing this piece.I hope you all had a bit of eagle today.