Empty Garden

I joined the online community of TextileArtists.org and have been joining in their online workshops, which are given by renowned textile artists. The first workshop leader was Debbie Lyddon. We had to look for a story through 3 found objects and make textile containers to store these items.

My 3 objects I found in our garden. They reflect my observation of my empty nest experience as a very personal one and at the same time as something universal with links to our past, to previous residents and to the future, our future and the future of the house. Life as a random accumulation of possibilities and transience.

I made containers out of a pair of old linen trousers. The cut pieces I painted with acrylic paint in a rusty brown colour. Because of the holes in the containers you can still see the objects within, and they are reinforced with wire and embroidery.

I made the openings on top of the containers small, as if to make sure these memories would not escape.

The form of the container is adapted to the form of the respective object.

These are the objects :

- a marble that was left behind by a previous resident

- a rust screw (what a beautiful colour!) of our former picknick table, at which we had so many family meals

- a pebble from the garden path. My son used to play with them.

I found this exercise really inspring. It made me see a whole lot of new possibilities in working with textiles. And I also found it very healing.

I am quite happy with my "objects". I think I will put them on a small dark wooden shelf  in the living room, that's how much I like them.

The owl that didn't like flying

There was this little owl that didn't like to fly. He was more of the observing and the thinking kind, let us say. And so he found other ways to move around, which made him quite a content owl after all!

This is a tiny knitting project with fiddly bits that takes more time than you would think, but the result is fun! You can find the pattern in Mini Knitted Woodland  by Sachiyo Ishii.

He travels by hot air balloon:

Or by cable car:

or gets simply carried around by his human!

There is even some video footage of one of his travels here: https://youtu.be/McY9zydPxAA

Vintage oven mitts

I really love vintage children's fabrics and for a time I collected them fervently. The idea was to make useful objects from these fabrics and  I started with these really handy oven mitts.
I got the pattern from "Het grote singer naaiboek". The fabrics used here show the Dutch illustrations "Heer Bommel"  by Marten Toonder and "Fabeltjeskrant"  by Leen Valkenier.
I'm not that strong with the sewing machine (hence the wonky bits). It even scares me a bit, to be honest. But I keep on trying, hoping to get better at it!