Hi, all! I am working now on rather complicated Pentagons division of temari tutorial, but it will be logically correct to do tutorial on making temari base first.

Please, consider this tutorial as one of many ways to do base. When you try it out, you’ll feel where you can make changes to improve process for yourself. You can use other materials, of course, mine are not obligatory.

I like the idea of recycling in crafts. I am as an environmentalist always thinking about giving new life to old things. I always use plastic bags and waste cloth to make temari base. In this tutorial I’ll show you how I use them.

Take plastic container of chocolate egg with surprise. Put some noisemaker like button, coin or sea shell into it. Read the rest of this entry »

To be continued, over 50 temaries to go…

Here is my very first cross stitch project:

It was a kit of russian manufacturer Riolis. I wanted to choose small kit or pattern with cuddly cats, but liked the cunning face of this vulture very-very much ;)

This is my second finished cross stitch project.
I was invited to wedding party of my japanese teacher and her fiance – Japanese too. They are working here, in Russia and decided to have wedding party without returning to Japan (I bet it was much and much cheaper then it costs to run such a party in Japan). So I’ve made this album cover (click to enlarge):

Cover is made from dark blue fabric and linen stitched cloth as an applique. Here is a close-up for cross stitch:

I took this scheme from the italian magazine Susanna. But I had to do some changes. In the first place it was a scheme of a framed picture for the wedding registration table like Name & Name & Date & Today is wedding which is placed near the guest book. I’ve changed the scheme to apply to the photo album. Also I’ve decided not to do backstitch. It is not about time. Actually this linen fabric is equivalent to smallest size even weave cloth, so I had to stitch in 1 thread (I’ve almost broke my eyes). Stitches on this project are very small, so backstitch would come out rough and inaccurate. I’ve kept backstitch on faces only and made the contour for the scroll.
Newlyweds was happy to receive it and promised they’ll put wedding ceremony pictures into it ;)

I was asked in the cross_stitch community of LiveJournal about my current cross stitch project and thought I should make a post about it. I am fond of Rob Gonsalves pictures, they are fabulous! Look at my favourite:

It looks like my childhood dreams, and I adore this autumn colors!
So I’ve took demo version of Pattern Maker program and made a cross stitch scheme from this picture. It is 304×220 count and rather big. 50 colors. Next post will be picture of current progress, I cannot do it now coz I’m not at home.
Wish me good luck please!

I’ve bought some interesting thread for upper layer of wrapping mari! It is no-name sewing fiber for stockinet. Sorry, if I didn’t find proper name in English, but I have a picture:

If you release a thread from a spool, you can see it is not woven, it is just fiber. Careful, it becomes entangled easily.

The best way is not wrapping upper level right on the yarn, but do some ordinary thread layer (maybe from the cheaper thread and not very fine) and wrap this fiber over the thread.

The result is very fancy: it is like hatching on the charcoal drawing.

I like it! I’ll try to stitch a pattern and will show the result here, so, please, stay tuned ;)