Well, I hope you all had a nice Christmas and are now looking ahead to all the things that are in store for you next year. Our celebration was really nice - Skyped with our #2 son and his family on Christmas eve and had the joy of watching our 1 year old grandson Theo open his gifts from us. Christmas day we drove, very carefully because the roads were pretty dicey, to have a late lunch/early supper with our #1 son and his family. All in all, a wonderful time.
Before I show you the progress I've been making on the latest barn project, thought I'd share the cute gift we got from Theo....
It's hard to get a decent picture of a coffee mug, but at least you can see his sweet face!
Yesterday I got back to working on my latest barn and hopefully you can see some progress from what it looked like at the beginning...
....to now....
I'll explain a little bit of what I did so you can see that, yes, Virginia, there not only is a Santa Claus....but I DID do something to it!!
The areas circled in pink show where I have simply added a little bit of netting to soften the colours of the underlying fabrics. The area circled in red was created using Texture Magic, which 'bubbles' the fabric up into the most amazing textures (looks a bit more tree-like than the flat fabric did). For the areas circled in blue I created some fabric lace using my sewing machine....placed cheesecloth really tightly in a hoop; dropped the feed dogs; and stitched, trying to use mainly circles to create a lacy effect with the cheesecloth. Then I added little snippets of the green fabrics I used elsewhere in the grass and stitched them on. Cut and appliqued to the areas on the grass where I wanted them. The barn itself has been painted and I also used Sharpie markers to add definition. The fence, after much thought, was created out of a pipe cleaner also 'painted' with Sharpie markers.
- THIS is a really pretty crocheted cowl and there's another one HERE.
- Sometimes you come across a little tip that makes you wonder why on earth you didn't think of it yourself and THIS is one of them! And THIS is another one. And THIS is a great tip for quilters.
- If you're like me and like to make a fresh start in January and have the urge to clean (I know - it doesn't happen often here at Chez Magpie!), perhaps you might find some of the suggestions on THIS list useful.
- THIS is a really nice crocheted basket tutorial - I think I would be tempted to not add the handles though.
Today I have a wonderful quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson...."Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year" and, because this is likely to be my last post before the new year, I thought I'd leave you with this one, from Neil Gaiman..."I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes, because if you are making mistakes then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world"
Happy 2018 to you all!