Saturday, February 18, 2012

giveaway reminder, birds and stitching

I just want to remind anyone who might have missed it, to go to my February 14th post and make a quick comment if you want to join in for the magazine and the bookmark.I'll make the draw tomorrow.
 A couple of weeks ago our apple tree was inundated by a flock of winter robins. They took an afternoon to clean out all the frozen apples left on tree.
There were two lone apples left, and yesterday I watched this one robin's shenanigan's as he bounced away on a flimsy branch while pecking at an apple.

This morning he succeeded in knocking it off and then he rolled it all over the fresh snow while attempting to finish it off. A few minutes ago I took this picture of the robin back on the tree having a go at the last apple.
After lunch, my husband and I went out into the woods with our snowshoes to walk a bit and to feed the chickadees. I'm sure some readers may get tired of seeing similar pictures, but it is always a thrill for me to have them on my hand. Everything was white and sparkly after the fresh snow.  It was mild today and I was actually wearing one less layer than normal, so it was lovely to feed the birds.

This little fellow was very interested.

 The rest of my day was spent with my head and hands in my sketchbooks rendering more quick sketches of the corn flowers. Some of these I've done on tracing paper. I wanted to use it as a pattern for some free motion sketching on a fabric piece.
 I got so wrapped up in it that I had to bring my tea and bran muffin into my machine.

In the past, I've use water soluble stabilizer but was not completely satisfied. I found that not all the bits would dissolve and I didn't like the feel of it afterwards. Perhaps there are better ones . I have tried only one or two. I have read that one could use tissue paper so I tried it.

It sews well but is not that easy to pick off in between fine lines. For larger bits it's perfect. After picking at this for a while I finally soaked it in water to get the rest off. This is done on a strip of fabric that I cut from Margaret Applin's fabric for our collaboration. I've decided on something else for the larger piece so I think it's OK to show this.

2 comments:

Margaret Applin said...

Ohhhhhhh your flowers are gorgeous!!! Beautiful and exciting!!!

elle said...

Great Holly. Nice collaborating. I never heard of a winter robin!