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Friday 24 April 2009

Inspirations Magazine Article - Barb Suess


Our favorite temari author, Barb Suess, has an amazing article in the current issue of Inspirations Magazine (Issue 62 April 2009). If you have purchased this magazine, and arrived here at our blog, welcome to a whole new world of stitching.
Check out our blog for links to places to buy temari essentials in Perth... if you live elsewhere (in our big land down under) I can probably put you in touch with resources in your area.
Also for Perth folk come and join us to stitch temari. Just send an email for more details. We all get together weekly to discuss temari and work on new projects.
Till next time... off and stitching...

Monday 13 April 2009

Happy Easter!!

Well 2009 is 1/3rd gone already. Can you believe it? I began making Easter egg shaped temari but then I decided to make a few teeny temari (1 inch) and got hooked on them. So here is the pic of the first egg shape I made and below is the box of bonbon sized balls. All but two were made by me. There is a yellow and blue asterisk star made by my seven year old and also one in oranges made by Miho. Mostly they are experiments in Kiku stitching. I tried different weaving and spacing etc to learn about how each would look. Hope you see something you like.



Yes it is true. All stuffed into a ferrero rocher box, 32 teeny temari of all descriptions. Below I have taken some closer shots of the box's contents.




Sorry the shots are taken sideways as you can see there are about 4 temari waiting to be stitched but I am amazed that the box is full. Every Tuesday our temari girls asked where are your new temari?? But I have only made a few new large ones lately.


I really like to play with Kiku and see how each pattern emerges. In the various teeny's I have experimented with Cottons in Floss, Perle 8, Perle5 and even a polyester Gutterman thread which comes 30m on a green spool (I think it's for embroidery) Miho's ball is in the picture here (bottom right in red orange and yellows)


I picked up a box of 40 Perle 8 threads from ThreadArt (in USA) and they work quite nicely for stitching this size ball. You can use a tissue as the base for this size (and make them even smaller) but I have used a 1 inch foam core and when I purchased a bag of 20 I spent a few nights wrapping them in yarn then thread ready to be stitched.

OK, did you spot the little face? I was just about to mark the ball up and my son grabbed it and started sticking pins into it. He asked me to stitch it up and this is what we came up with. We think this is how he looks 1st thing in the morning - before we wet his hair down! Also in the top right of the same picture is his 1st temari.

So the egg idea didn't take, but I did get into the chocolate thing for Easter by using the chocolate box. I have a bunch of egg shapes wrapped in the wool layer so maybe I will try again in a few months.... and be ready for next year....
Rebecca