Sunday, February 17, 2008

it works!

I am happy to say that the transformation of my old sewing machine into an embellisher/felter is complete, and I'm relieved to say that it works quite well. Here's the attachment holding the 6 felting needles, screwed onto the bar that formerly held the sewing needle.
The machine's "guts" have been removed and replaced with a piece of firm foam rubber.

This is my first attempt with the embellisher. I started with a piece of felt and added silk velvet, a piece of scrap scrim I had dyed for another project, sheer blue fabric, and a piece of dark blue chiffon headscarf my mom picked up for me at the charity thrift store she volunteers at. I trapped a bit of embossed paper between the top layer and the rest of the piece, embellished around, not through.

I moved on to pinks and reds, this time using felt, hand dyed silk habotai, pink wool roving, angelina, and a top layer of red chiffon scarf. I will make these pieces into postcards, I think.

For some reason my family was hungry at dinnertime, so I had to stop playing and produce food. This is a baked pasta in basically a mornay sauce, recipe here. The recipe calls for ham, but if you are vegetarian inclined or don't eat pork I think it would taste perfectly fine without it. I did add a topping of seasoned bread crumbs mixed with cheese. I'm one of those recipe tinkerers.

And finally, since I didn't post a photo of my kitties on cat blogging Friday, here is Tiger sleeping off the effects of his unmentionable surgery. He and his brothers all seem to have forgiven us!

1 comment:

Aussie Jo said...

Housework and cooking really get in the way of art sometimes!! Mornay looks good, I make one similar but add tuna or salmon. Love your postcards and great idea with the felting machine.