Making fun

I've busied myself yesterdaywith lots of creative bits.

I started with my first attempt at a Free Standing Lace (FSL) item.  This is made using a soluble stabiliser (I used Fabri-Solvy), which is washed away when the design is complete.

Turns out the hanging loop isn't in the hen's centre of gravity (I'll need to see if I can correct that, it means editing the source design), so I had to lie her down on some black stuff to photograph her.  

 I have 9 more hens and 10 cockerels in the set, and I expect I'll make them at Christmas. The two sets were from embhome.com

Next, I tried my hand at a couple of mini snowflakes.There were 10 in the set, again from embhome.com.  These came out really well, and I'll be making more for the tree (or maybe for cards) at Christmas. I think I'll try metallic thread for them. 

That was enough FSL for today,  so I turned my attention to some of this month's birthday cards.  I made this for our granddaughter, who is learning to play the harp.  The phone camera doesn't pic up the detail. I had some Barbie-pink netting with some silver glitter spots on, so I put that over the card and embroidered the design on top.  I then cut away the excess.   I think I should have chosen mesh  (or Organza) populated more densely with spots, but it's OK.

Next, another version of a card for my niece.  This is my second attempt... With the first, I didn't want to use spray adhesive on the card (it gums up the needle and gets over the hoop),so I used magic tape.  When I peeled the magic tape off it wrecked the card.

With this second attempt I used spray adhesive to float the card, and I floated a layer of tearaway stabiliser on top of that too so I had two layers of stabiliser. The stitching was too dense to put straight on to card really, but it looks OK. Mostly. Well, if you don't look at the poor placement of the "r".   The original version had stars in several colours, I decided to just use one colour here.

I've left the small needle in the machine (must not forget that!), as I have another card to do.