I Won A Heart! And Teachers' Day Cards

Yes! I won this heart in the Pastel Heart Aug Giveaway by umintsuru. The second heart of Martha’s Celtic heart pattern with slight modification and tatted in Olymplus thread, it is 3 x 3 inches. I have mounted the heart on a black foam cover of a notebook. Thank you, umintsuru, just the perfect embellishment for the book!

These are the Teachers' Day cards done by the children.

Quilled cards done by Ivan, he did almost everything by himself, I only helped to glue on the rolled pieces to 3 cards.

Joey beaded the flowers herself, and sewed the flowers and borders on cards with a bit of assistance.

Kristine tried the origami a few times, each time decreasing the size of the papers, and managed to fold them pretty small. She did pretty well with the sewing too.

Ivan did this piece for his school art lesson, and he was so excited to receive an A-star for it from his teacher!

And finally, the cover page for Ivan's portfolio submission, using die-cuts.

Tatted Doily For Mona

This was sent to Mona in Malaysia last week for the Doily Exchange. Square Dalia doily - pattern of Iris Niebach - the original pattern is a square. I tatted it with Flora 20, but it was slightly smaller than 5”, I went on to add another row on all the 4 sides to make the square looks “round”. Ended up with many more ends to sew in, but I thought it was worth the effort. The doily is now 6 to 6 1/2" across, depending on which side you are measuring.

Ivan's School Project and Busy at Work on Teachers' Day Cards

I had a busy week with the children, helping Ivan with his school project and the 2 girls with their Teachers’ Day cards. These are the completed index pages for Ivan’s Social Studies Portfolio submission tomorrow. There is another cover page which we’ll finish tonight. Using QuicKutz and similar dies, Ivan coordinated the colours and rolled out all the alphabets, while I glued them on.

Kristine and Joey have been doing their Teachers’ Day cards, they are now sewing the borders of the cards. This is the first time both are using sharp sewing needles. I start and end the threads for them, and occasionally, I have to help them untangle the threads. So far so good, and here’s Kristine with the needle. Didn’t get much tatting done, but I have tatted more butterflies, and more about them later.

Motif No. 13/25 - Butterfly Bookmarks, New Shuttle, Ivan's Drawing

I bought some butterfly hairclips recently and have this sudden urge to tat some butterflies. These are the first 2 I came up with - the pink one was tatted with Flora 20 threads, and the other with Manuela 20 thread. With a ribbon weaved through the body, I think they will make a quick bookmark. What do you think ? Watch out for 1 or 2 more variations. These will be part of Motif No. 13 for the 25-Motif Challenge.

Next is my latest acquisition from ebay - a 1 1/2 inch Irish bog oak tatting shuttle that used 4000 year old Irish bog oak and inlayed with a simple Celtic swirl design in Malachite.

And here's the feeding device Ivan drew from the basis sketch I talked about earlier. Ivan went through with me how the machine works (if it works, I wonder), but well, I'm still impressed!

New CQ Books, Doily for Exchange and Ivan's Alien and Machine

List mom, Sue, is going to start a CQ Challenge on the HBT group, and I want to join to learn something new. I just had to get these when the bookstore was offering a 20% sale over National Day. Now to digest them.

My latest tatting project is a doily for an exchange. Although I had intended to come up with an original when I first signed up, I couldn't resist doing something from Iris Niebach's books since I got them now. Perhaps my tension is tight and my doily is just shy of the 5-inch requirement, I went on to add my own outer round to Iris' design, and here's a peep at it. Still need to block it and it will be on its way to its recipent.

Ivan has been doing some sketching, here's one alien, and another is a first sketch of a machine. He has done another bigger one with annotation, but I haven't taken a picture yet.

Sent to Shawna for Christmas in July Exchange

While I'm still waiting for my package to come, these were what I sent to Shawna Wachs (plus 2 more balls of Venus pearl cotton threads) for the Christmas in July Exchange organised by Sue. Coincidentally, this is the 2nd July exchange I sent to Shawna , the other was a Tin Exchange in July 2006.