Goodness me!

I just realized I won a contest at Sew What's New, a large and authoritative sewing board on the World Wide Web. I entered the contest without any real hope to win - I started sewing a little more than a year ago and the ladies over there are so experienced. We had to sew a 3-piece outfit and I entered my corset with the circle skirt and a matching peasant blouse. I did my little best of course, but... I didn't imagine I'd run first!
Oh my. I only just learnt it and my heart won't stop racing, nor my hands trembling!

Details are here (contest announcement), here (entries) and here (winners announcement).
I never told you because I didn't want you all to go there and vote for me... I wanted to see how I'd rank without any help!

I still can't fully believe it.
Anyone got a recipe to stop a fluttering heart and trembling hands? I can't stitch with trembling hands!

One of the gifts I've been working on...

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a nice week-end.
Here is one of the gift I was working on lately - I gave it away on Sunday.

(click on pic to see it bigger)

Yep, you got it. Another mini-quilt! This one is different though: the rose is appliquéd over stipple quilting.
The satin is the same as my sewing case. The lilac brodacloth for the appliqué and the binding is leftover fabric from the very first dress I made.

San's Birthday Gifts

San's Birthday is next Saturday... And a little bird told me she already received my gifts. Can't believe how fast the parcel traveled. I mailed it out on Monday and she got it yesterday! It's as quick as within France. How wonderful is that!

(click for a bigger pic)

When I decided what I wanted to make her, I had several ideas in mind - but in the end I couldn't think of anything more appropriate for San than a needlework set! The scissors fob was mandatory - when I stayed at her place in April, I lost them in the living room... Remember San? This should be handy to track them more quickly, even for her who seems to lose things less easily than I do!

I felt the pansy theme suited San too - her home decoration is in those colours, and she has such feminine taste... I hope it suits your taste San!

A new dress to celebrate summer!

Pheww! Summer is kicking off hot in France (as in the rest of Europe). It is... a bit difficult in Paris, because there is no air and the pollution rate is very high. But I don't feel the heart to complain too much - I love the sun!

I started a dress yesterday... Finished it this morning. Had to wait till tonight to make pictures, when Seb was back from the lab !

Here's my new dress, in one of my favourite colours - lilac!

It does not define the waist as much as I'd like - I think tomorrow I'll undo the seams a little at the sides and add some ties to the top of the waist.

Back: you can see there's a pair of little straps over the shoulder and another pair around the neck (I really need to get a strapless bra! )

This last photo is just for the prettiness... I love ruffles and I LOVE eyelet lace!

This was a "sew n'wear" dress: I put it on as soon as it was finished! The fabric is broadcloth, and therefore very comfortable and fresh to the touch.

After I finished the dress this morning, I made a sandwich and took my book and a blanket, and headed to a park in search of freshness.I sat on the grass in the shadow, near a pool. Fragrant roses all around me, the laughter of children playing... Simply delicious.

I've also stitched quite a bit over the past few days, but... can't share pictures yet!

Have a wonderful Summer everyone!

My sewing case / huswife

Sorry I've been away for a while... I was offline most of it. My little sister's exams to graduate from medical school were over on Thursday, so I left for Lille on Friday morning to spend as much time as possible with her. We have a kind of twin relationship (she's just one year younger and we used to do everything together before I left to work in Paris); she has always been my bestest friend and we have found it difficult to be separated since I left to live in Paris, and not to spend much time together because of our work. We did spend a great weekend together. And she's to come and visit me in Paris soon!

Hope you all had / are having (for the Americans!) a wonderful weekend. It was so hot here, I was truly grateful to be in the North instead of stifling Paris!

Before I left, I had put the finishing touches to my sewing case. I was inspired from a dear French friend's creation . I absolutely loved adding a pocket here, a detail there... and choosing the embroidery. I had a rose-printed fabric in my stash (1 euro/metre) which I loved, so I decided to go for a total bullion rose theme.

Here's the front, when the case is closed:

(Pochette means "case". Cousette is a French nickname for "little seamstress". That's my nickname among my family and the friends who know I sew! )

2 sides open


All sides open; the largest pocket at the left can hold sewing patterns.

Fourth side: pockets for pen, seam ripper, etc.; enveloppe to keep tiny notions (buttons etc); pincushion (it is attached with Velcro, and therefore removeable). In the top left-hand corner there is another piece of velcro so I can attach a needle-case later.

Detail


another detail (with my initial! )

All I bought specifically for this project was the satin I used for the outer fabric - synthetic satin at an oriental fabric shop for 1.5 euro/metre, of which I used half a metre. I didn't mind about it being synthetic since this wasn't to make a garment! I did prewash it and it looked as great after as before.
So let's say the total cost (thread + fabric) was 3 euros. But it took me 3 days to decide about the embroidery, the pocket placement, and of course to put it together!

It was great fun, and will be so handy to store my sewing notions. It is so hard to keep our place tidy! We have one single table (except for the desks), which is at one end the dining table/Seb's usual desk, and at the other my sewing space... Believe me it's not always easy to keep my sewing things from sprawling all over! Hopefully this will help me .

Find the cat

I'm not sure many of you know that I run a (well, the) French sewing group on Yahoo. It is a very warm and chatty group and we really feel like a bunch of friends. Of course, with some members you get to find out you share more common points than your love for sewing... That is how I made a couple of really close friends. One of them is Murielle from Belgium. I am sooo excited because I'm setting up a fabric shopping expedition in Paris in July, and she'll be there! Another close friend will be there too.

Murielle sent me awesome presents for my birthday. She hadn't been able to make and send them earlier - and very honestly I wasn't expecting anything from her - her friendship is a gift in itself. What a surprise I got when I received a big parcel from Belgium the other day. Murielle once asked me the colour theme of our flat, but it was just after we'd changed flats and I thought it was mere curiosity. Now it turns out she used the info to make me a couple of gorgeous cushion cases! Just look how perfectly they fit in with the place! I begin to wonder whether there isn't a hidden camera somewhere in the flat...

As you can see they fit in with more than the furniture! Look how happy Violette is with her new friends! Lol!

Here are the cushion covers laid flat for a better view. Yes Violette is here again - she was sleeping so well, I wasn't going to take her off the sofa, was I?

You can't imagine how perfectly handcrafted the cases are. The appliqué and embroidery on the cats is awesome!

All went well! And a Stress-Killer Skirt :)

Yes, all at went well for the defence. I really have to tell you that your words of encouragement this week-end meant a huge lot and helped me keep myself (somewhat) serene. It really went well this morning and I was quite amazed to hear my supervisor talk about my work (I was like, is she really talking about me?).
She even told me insistently to take a good rest and have real holiday - which is not the norm in academic career, and even less so coming from such a demanding supervisor (but I completely respect her demands - she is very hard-working and self-demanding too). But she acknowledged that I had actually already anticipated a good deal on next year's work. And that I really needed a rest, since I had started my work last June and didn't take any holiday last Summer.
So you all know what that means: stitching and sewing bliss!
For the moment I can't fully realize though. I'm so tired and "numb" I feel... just here (see my mood!)

Speaking of sewing... I took Carol's advice yesterday and made myself a skirt to try and forget my anxiety. I'd been wanting to make a skirt with ruffles for a while - they're so much the fashion this year in Paris, but everyone is wearing the very same skirt in a solid colour. While I am very fond of ruffles, I find it a little sad that everyone is wearing the very same garment! So here is my version of this Spring's fashion:

And here it is worn:

Yeah, I couldn't resist showing you Violette cuddling up... I can't believe how cuddly she is! just need to pick her up and she'll rub her head against me and kind of "hug" me with her little paws. The sweetest kitty... I feel so blessed to have her at home. (even if she was completely crazy last night and started playing all around the flat just as I had finally fallen asleep, around 4... but I believe she was feeling my anxiety and that was driving her nervous).

I was actually so happy with my skirt, and felt so well in it, that I decided to wear it to the defense today!
Oh, and if anyone wants to make a skirt like that, I can write a tutorial - it's really easy!

Petal Fairy first update

Here is my my fist update on the Petal Fairy, after a little less than a week's stitching... I was planning to stitch a bit more before taking a picture, but I need to work on my defence next Monday (I'm so sick with stress I could cry), and San just posted a comment, whining for a pic ... So there she is:

(click for bigger pic)

(sorry about the crinkled fabric... I feel more comfortable stitching her freehand!)

I'm not sure whether you can see well the green of the fabric?
I don't know exactly how much I've stitched on her. I keep loosing count of my stitching time! I've stitched more than 10 hours, that's for sure, but I don't know whether I've reached 15 hours. Anyway, what do you think of her?

Oh, and I wanted to put the backstitch on her face and draw her eye, but the seller forgot to include the 2 colours for the backstitching! No problem though, they weren't listed with all the other colours and the seller is sending me the missing skeins.

Hope you have a nice weekend everyone.

Petal Fairy Delight

Mandy and I are waiting till tomorrow to share our first update picture, but let me tell you I just adore stitching Petal Fairy. I thought it would require a lot of patience and time before seeing signficant progress, but I'm amazed at seeing how encouraging the progress appears already. I must have stitched 10 hours on her - perhaps a bit more, I'm so bad at timing myself even with the best intentions! Even Seb is impressed at her - when I think he told me over and over that he didn't "like" that kind of design! I'm sure by the time Petal is finished, he'll have adopted her and will be happy to see her adorning one of our walls.

I haven't been stitching as much as I would have liked though. I've been awake very late for a few evenings, for a variety of reasons, so I wasn't my perky self.

Besides, I wanted to finish off a couple of gifts for my sister's birthday (which was a week before mine, but we haven't celebrated either all together as my brother has been too busy to come home. I did give her 2 or 3 gifts when she came to visit us last week, but I want to have more for when we celebrate her birthday at last!).

So here are a few pictures to make you wait for the Petal Fairy till tomorrow...

You may remember I stitched a Victoria Sampler's Beyond Xstitch kit a while ago? Well I still hadn't finished it off, mainly because I was not too sure how to finish it. After a good thinking, I finally did this ornament (front and back view):

(click for bigger pics)

What do you think about it, honestly? I can't decide whether I like it or not.

I also made a bowl for my sister, with pansies embroidered on some of the panels and at the bottom.

That I know she'll like. I had made a tiny lacebowl for my parents at Christmas (my first try at making lace on my e-machine) and it was so obvious she'd love to have one! So I made her a bigger, more intricate one.

Yesterday and today I've also been working on a Mother's Day-Father's Day gift for my parents. (I did give a present to my mother, and will give one to my father, but I wanted to make something for them both). It's a bit tricky, but I really hope it'll turn out nicely.

So tomorrow you'll see a first picture of the Petal Fairy and of Mandy's Feather Fairy. We seem to be stitching them in the same order, although we didn't decide that together beforehand. I can't wait to see hers.

Petal Update & things...

No, no picture today - Mandy and I decided to wait till Friday to see how far we'd be after first 15 hours! I guess I'll have made less progress than Mandy, first because this is my first big project, and second because this is my first serious try at evenweave. I'm actually loving stitching on evenweave! But it does require more time counting and re-counting, as I'm not used to it. I'm getting better though, and only had to frog a small part on Saturday. Knock on wood!

Anyway, Petal Fairy has now most of her arms and the palest hue of her face stitched. I started from the left arm and stitched up so I can stitch her lovely face as soon as possible - that's what Carol does and ever since I've seen that I've thought that was a great idea - makes you itching to give that pretty face a body and see her come to life! I hope I can stitch another 3 hours on her today.

Thank you everyone for your kind comments on my dissertation, and about Cuddly and the lace basket! San asked me about my e-machine - really this can be done on any embroidery machine, especially that basket, whose panels fit in the 4x4" (10x10 cm) hoop - the minimal requirement for any e-machine I believe. Mine is also a wonderful sewing machine (I especially love the hemming stitches - almost looks like you used a serger machine. I use extensively the various functional stitches). But I'm not sure you're too much interested in the sewing part, San?
An e-machine is an expensive investment, but I chose to buy a second-hand one - of course it was fully serviced and like new, since I bought it from a Brother dealer, and it has a warranty.

Back...

Hi everyone! Been nearly a week since I last blogged... Earlier in the week I didn't have the time to write, and after that I was simply too exhausted to spend much time in front of the puter - or to be very efficient anyway.
So... Wednesday I had 3 copies of my dissertation printed out and bound, and dropped 2 of them at uni for my supervisor and another professor who'll be there for the defense on June 13th (this is not the thesis proper, just a one-year work... I won't be defending the PhD dissertation until 2008 at best... gee does that seem a long time!)
I worked like mad to get it all done in time. Technically I could have turned it in later, but I so wanted to be through with it all! I had set June 1st as my deadline.
Only once the pressure was over did I fully realize how overworked I was. When I got up on Wednesday morning my head was spinning so much that I fell down in the bedroom! Head kept spinning all day, but my older sister was going to come from Lille and spend the afternoon and night with us - for the first time ever. So no time to loose - I had to tidy and clean everything, make a cake etc. Of course we went to bed late, we always have so much to talk about!

So I spent Thursday and Friday taking it really easy - simply resting and finishing my square on Karen's fabric, along with making a lace bowl for Seb's mother's Bday on June 6.

Hope you'll like it Karen...

The bowl is made of lace panels created on the e-machine, then sewed together using a zigzag stitch.

From now on, I'll be having a much easier rhythm. I think I'm actually going to take a full break once the academic year is over in mid-June. Which means of course... Plenty of stitching and sewing! Goody! Today, Mandy and I are starting our stitchalong on Mirabilia's Feather and Petal Fairies respectively. I'm so excited and I think Mandy is too!

Enough chitchat for today... I updated my list of finishes, WIPs and future projects in the left-hand column. Lots of fun ahead!
Have a great week-end everyone!