My N Wall

 As promised, I am showing you my N wall, which is one wall in the alcove with my two sewing machines. The opposite wall is pegboard with sewing supplies.

I thought that I would hang my hoop art N, but it looked better propped up on the shelf. I'm also showing some my collection of miniature dress forms. The rest are scattered throughout the rest of the room.

The photo is of my grand mother as a a sixteen year old apprentice seamstress. I don't remember how I acquired this photo, but I knew it belonged in my studio. My grandmother was petite and we lovingly called her "little Grandma". She was an incredible seamstress all her life.

Here are all of my "n's" and some of my  dress forms. The spools are in a vintage box that used to hold letters for printing. I have another one that holds some of my vintage thimble collection. There are a few thimbles in this one, too.

Come back next week and I will show you my latest sewing project.

More Hoop Art

 I am enjoying working on these embroidery letters This one is for my sister, Ruthie. I used the same color palette as my N and played around with flower placement and lots of French Knots. 

Back to CT next week, where I will have access to everything in my studio, including some nice linen. These were done on unbleached muslin, easy to stitch. 

I'm linking up to Off the Wall Friday. 

Hoop Art

 I really missed my daily stitching that I did last year and was trying to come up with something else to do. While perusing Pinterest I came across a lot of embroidered letters.  In my studio in CT I have one wall in my sewing alcove that has several Ns hanging, wooden, metal, cloth, etc. I looked all over (I thought) but I couldn't find any patterns and couldn't even find an N to copy. So I borrowed ideas from an R that I saw. I have since found a vast supply of patterns on Etsy and have downloaded some.

I went to Youtube to see how to finish the back of my hoop art and found several different ways . This one was pretty easy, using a piece of felt cut to the size of the inner hoop and attaching it with a buttonhole stitch.

I am currently working on an R for my sister, Ruth. I sure wish I had baby to gift because I thought it would  be a nice one, but no babies in my life for now.

BTW I am not sure if my N is upside down or not. What do you think?

Stuff

 I'm here in Florida. I wish I could say warm and sunny Florida, but it has been a cool and cloudy January that is continuing into February. Looking at the weather in the rest of the country, I guess I shouldn't complain. We have no extreme rain, no flooding, no bitter cold and no snow storms.

I celebrated my birthday here, twice! The first one on last Friday with a group of friends. We went to a fabulous museum exhibit at the Baker Museum in Naples. Then out to lunch, of course.

 Dinner at another great restaurant last night. My cup runneth over!

Here are some pictures from the exhibit. the artist is Tamara Kostianovsky, who makes her art from recycled clothing. I am hoping to try some of her techniques in a future piece.

Several pieces were free-standing , such as this and the next one.

Some pieces were hung on the wall.

This is a technique I hope to try when i am back in CT with all of my supples. This looks like cotton T-shirt material, cut into strips. I know that it will roll on itself when cut. The large stand-alone pieces used the same technique. I'm not sure what was underneath.

This whole section was called Abattoir. The artist lives in Argentina, known for its meat. When I was there several years ago I ate more meat than I had previously eaten in probably five years.

There were several of these life size carcasses, showing the inside and the outside. 

This was a decent led tour and our docent was amazing. 

That's it for now. I'll write again when I have something worthwhile.

Stitching

 I finished December just a little late and now my whole year is finished. I really enjoyed working on it and especially liked having a theme each month, whether color or topic. December, of course, was Everything Christmas.