Inspired by Moby and Alice

Once a fortnight I attend a craft club at my local library and every so often we tackle a book related craft project.  Our first project was based on Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" and our second and most recent has been Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland".  Its entirely up to us as to how we interpret the theme, we just use the story or characters as our inspiration.  The club has only been running for a few months so far, but its lovely to get together with other crafters, enjoy the company of like-minded people, learn from each other and it's great to see how everyone else interprets the themes.

I meant to blog about my Moby Dick themed project a few months ago, but looking back through the posts I've published, I've realised Moby got away from me somehow, so here he is now...

I still need to get some dowels so the wall hanging can actually be hung up, but I was quite pleased with the finished piece even though I've never tried anything like this before - at least not in felt!  It made me realise my abilities to work a sewing machine need a lot more work, but it was fun to do.  Some of my inspiration for this piece came not just from the book, but from a piece of stained glass that hangs in my bedroom window.  Years ago before problems with my hands made it impossible to continue with the hobby, I used to love making things with stained glass and while most of the pieces I made were given away as presents, one of the pieces I will never part with is the glass panel in my bedroom.  Although I can't see the sea from my window, it faces the sea which is about half a mile away and is roughly east facing so it catches the sunrise.  Its not very often these days that I'm awake as the sun rises but I do love to watch dawn breaking when I'm able.  I used black thread for all the stitching apart from attaching the beads and anchor at the bottom, it was a deliberate choice because I wanted to make the borders between the felt pieces stand out like the seams on a piece of stained glass - I just wish I'd managed to get them a bit neater!

Apologies for the bad photo, but this was just a quick snap of the glass panel taken on a very dull day!  You've probably already noticed a few of them, but there are four fishes swimming around in the sea.  Most of the panel is made from transparent water glass which is made with gentle ripples which gives a sense of movement; the seagull is made from opaque glass to make it stand out from its background.

My first thought for our current theme was to make a white rabbit, but I haven't yet got around to sitting down with pencil and paper to make a pattern for my bunny, I'm not giving up on the idea but I wanted to be able to produce something for our last meeting so I made a bracelet.  I've had the card charms for some years and the bunny charms for a couple of months, though I did have to buy the rose charms and the dark grey/black glass pearls in order to put together the bracelet I had in mind.  Several times I wasn't sure it would work out but after a couple of false starts I finally figured it out.

I have very chunky wrists so sadly the bracelet doesn't fit me, but one of my daintier friends has tried it on and I was pleased with how it looked on her.  I could have made it bigger but it would have ruined the pattern, it was made for the exhibition we will eventually have at some point, so it doesn't really matter that it doesn't quite fit my wrist, it wasn't really intended for me anyway!  One of these days I'll have to make a start on that bunny and maybe then I'll be able get the song "We're Painting The Roses Red" from the Disney film, that was the main inspiration for the bracelet, out of my head!  :)

A First Attempt at Making Jewellery

Earlier this week, I went on a workshop with a couple of friends to have a go at making a bracelet.  It was a very enjoyable morning and while one of my friends and I took longer than everyone else to complete the task, I - for one - am very happy with what I achieved.  It was quite a challenge to make this, as one of my hands doesn't work particularly well, but then I find making miniature bears a challenge for the same reason... but strangely enough, small bears are easier because there's less fabric to manipulate - I tried making bigger bears years ago and found them almost impossible.

Its taken me several days to get around to blogging about it because its taken several days for my poor hands to recover, but I think the pain was worth it.  I would never have dreamed of buying such a bracelet for myself but I love it.  It makes lovely jingly sounds as you move and I love the colours.

When we began, we had to choose a bag of assorted beads.  The bags contained the larger Indian Glass Beads in co-ordinating colours, then we could pick out seed beads etc. to match.  I have to admit I did "borrow" one or two darker beads from my friend Mary as she was making a bracelet in slightly darker tones than me, but I did wait until after she'd finished.  We had to start each head pin with a seed bead as it would stop the bigger beads from falling off, but I decided I liked the look I got when I finished with a seed bead too - it wasn't until I came to trim and attach my pins to the chain links that I realised 

the seed beads at the top were all going to try and make a bid for freedom - sigh!

Being a person with a somewhat obsessive/perfectionist nature, I had to count the links (64) of my bracelet before I started attaching the carefully organised pins to every third link.  I had tried to make some of my pins in pairs so I tried to position those in such a way to give some balance, but none of the pins are exactly alike because there was such a variety of different beads in my selection.

My favourite pin was the very first one I made - the little fucshia-like "flower" (directly above the copyright symbol), sadly this was the only bead like this that could be found despite searching through some of the other spare bead bags.  Never mind, I still love my bracelet - just the way it is  :)

I hope they do more workshops soon, as I love learning new skills - even ones I suffer for!

PS.  If you'd like to see the bracelet my friend Clare made, you can find it here...