I am so pleased that my folding vase is finished. Yesterday I sewed on the last snap fastener and was sick to the back teeth of it. I worked out that it had taken me 24.5 hours to make, including fighting with my sewing machine which refused to sew buttonholes on the darned thing and just produced bird’s nests of thread on the wrong side. At this point I changed my mind about how the closing was to be and used velcro and snap fasteners instead.

Today I feel more friendlily disposed towards it. I even risked life and limb (well almost) in the garden cutting down the one bulrush and various other seed heads from around our frozen pond to put inside it for the photographs. Here are the first 3 photos. The first one in front of the fireplace to give an idea of scale. It’s actually quite a large vase being about 35 cms tall.

This one is taken against the wall to show off the seed heads to their best advantage

And this one shows a bit more detail and some of the quilting:

Well I achieved my goal of finishing before I go back to work. I am a bit disheartened at the length of time to took to make. If I was to only pay myself 10€ an hour for my time it would cost 245€ just on the time alone. OK the materials were pretty cheap but even so, no-one is going to pay that sort of money for a fabric folding vase that doesn’t even hold water. Guess it will just remain a hobby.

Today was a miserable good and grey day. A good enough reason to not venture out of the house but stay in and make more progress. I finished off the needlepoint cushion cover I started last year at about this time It is now on stretcher bars becoming square again. I can’t work with frames because I like to curl up in a chair and sew. So the finished object is almost always nowhere near square and needs the spray water treatment. I’ll try to get a photo when the light is better.

Well a day has gone by since I started this post. I was doing my needlepoint whilst watching the New Years Concert from Vienna yesterday. It has become quite a tradition for us to watch it when we are at home. This year Daniel Barenboim was conducting.

I spent some time in the afternoon on the folding vase. First of all I added some finishing touches to the exterior fabric.

When I was ready to start making my quilt sandwich I was a bit stumped to begin with because the pelmet vilene was being a nuisance. It had been rolled up in a fairly tight roll and was refusing to lie flat. In the end I decided to iron the interior fabric onto it and hope that helped. Luckily the heat and steam was enough to flatten it so that I was able to start quilting. I first sewed in the folding lines as I had done a bit of experimenting on a spare piece of pelmet vilene and decided that the sewing line acted rather like scoring cardboard. I hope it will give nice clean folds. Then I did a bit of outline quilting around some of the shapes. I used monofilament thread for this as it is all with the aim of securing the 3 layers together ready for the quilting as part of the design.

It is actually quite tricky getting the thing under the needle sometimes. Having successfully flattened out the vilene I then had to start rolling it up again! How’s that for perverse.

I hope to get some more done today. My goal is to have completed the vase before I go back to work on Monday. It’s looking achievable now.

Last weekend we went to buy a frame for Dad’s portrait, but came away without one. We were sent off with stretcher bars instead and were told to come back when I’d finished all the sewing and attached it to the stretcher bars.

So I thought I’d better get on and finish the sewing today. I had done most of the quilting on the actual portrait and spent about 2 hours last weekend tying off all the ends of the monofilament thread, which I hate doing. Today I tried to make some of the wrinkles deeper with not much success and quilted the background. I also used monofilament thread for that, but only had 4 ends to tie off.

So here are some photos. First of all the finished portrait.

And here’s one to show the most successful wrinkles. I think in the other places there were too many layers of fabric and steam-a-seam, so that the quilting didn’t make much impression.

Here’s a close up of the background. I decided to use monofilament thread because I didn’t want it to be too prominent against the actual face.

I have been slaving over a hot sewing machine this weekend. I think I’ve spent about 8 hours on the thread painting so far. It makes a difference. The portrait is getting to be even more lifelike. Although Dad looks quite a bit younger on this portrait than in the original photo. I am hoping to add the wrinkles with the quilting.

Here’s the full view:

And here’s a detail:

I reckon I’ve spent about 20 hours so far on the fabric collage part of this portrait. Today I’ve added the clothes and the chair Dad is sitting in. I thought I’d finished apart from the background, but when I looked at the image I realised I’ve not put the glasses on yet. I only intend adding the side arms of the frames and the thicker parts across the top and the bridge of the nose in fabric. The frame around the lenses will be done with thread painting.

I shall have to do some practice at thread painting before I attempt anything on the portrait. It’s not something I’ve done before.

I’ve finished the main part of Dad’s portrait now. I wasn’t going to work on it last night as I was quite tired. But I went to have a look at the progress I’d made the night before and the bug bit. I ended up working until 11:30 p.m. and got his hair on!

Today I’ve added the ear and finished off the neck, so the features are all done now. I “just” have the clothes and the background to do. And then the sewing starts. I shall probably have to make a trip to the haberdasher’s shop in Frankfurt next week to pick up the various colours of thread I shall need.

Despite it being a slow process making this portrait, I’m hooked. I’m spending about 2 1/2 hours an evening working on Dad’s portrait. It is quite satisfying to see it taking shape under my hands.

Here’s what I’ve achieved so far. It’s starting to look like him now.

Having spent all week using excuses like catching up with the washing and ironing after the holiday (how pathetic is that? ) to not get started on my fabric portrait, they finally ran out this weekend. I made a start yesterday (but also spent nearly 3 hours on the phone chatting). I have done some more today. It is slow work and extremely time consuming. I hope the end results are going to be worth it.

Here are is a photographic progress report.

Today I pasted together the pieces of the line drawing to make one image and then made the traced copy using vellum. I then tried unsuccessfully to transfer the markings to the muslin. I only had yellow dressmakers carbon paper and that really wasn’t good enough. I can just about see half of the markings but the dotted lines didn’t show up at all. I shall have to get a darker colour carbon paper tomorrow and have another go. We used to have some typing carbon paper but I haven’t seen it for years. It may even never had made it to this house. I’m not sure the typewriter did

Here are a couple of photos of my wasted effort: