Thread painting & Needle Felting

Today, I practiced my thread painting . I can do waves and loops and general free motion movements; but smaller more refined areas ..well I still need lots of practice.
If your not familiar with thread painting, it is the art of using your sewing machine to create paintings out of thread. A good person to check out is Terry White. I have taken a class from her, she is amazing. Here is her book that I have  and a couple of pictures to show you what thread painting is.

This is a piece I did in her class. The book tell how to do it. As you can see I have not finished it.

It is amazing that you can make all these really cool shapes out of thread, its additive. I use some aspect of it on every clutch I make. From the last blog I posted , the Desert Mini Clutch has lines on it to represent the rock formations you might see in the desert.

the two circle are just free form items I did while practicing in her class. The one on the left is a little distorted, because if you run around in circles your thread begins to draw up forming a cone. Interesting..huh? I have seen some really cool necklaces using that technique.

I ended up with this cute little dragon, when I finished .. I know he really needs legs, but this was practice after all. I think he is cute, and is now my craft room mascot.Since I made him flat (except for the beaded eye), I think I will put him in a glass free picture frame.

Hope your Sunday was creative, until next time....

-Tnfrmgrl

New Clutches at Etsy Site

A couple of newly made items featured at my Etsy site.
I have alot of fun coming up with names for each, my husband recently asked how do i do it. Well it really goes with what the theme is that I am working on.  we have been planning an extended vacation out west spring of 2013. so thoughts lately have been on things we might see.

Art Camo Clutch  with tie flap closure

Like the desert. As for the camo clutch, well i had made a couple of small belt snapped ones for my nephews to use at the farm, this one was a little more grown up . Enjoy.

the walnut just shows you how small this  Desert Mini Clutch is.

-TNfrmgrl

Laughable Signs

Came across this great sign the other day.
What is so funny about it our neighbor about a mile over from us at the farm has a similar one, but more refined and legal telling people NOT to enter his bovine (cattle) field because they will not be held responsible it they are hurt by such bovines.
Since this is a new sign, I suppose he had individuals cutting across his property to get to the swimming hole that runs through his land or what ever. Do people really think...'oh, that's such a cute bull, he won't hurt me. Or my favorite, that bulls are slow & dumb'. Come on now. What do think is going to happen if you tease, slap them or try and tip them? You see people doing stupid things in the movies, I guess some just need to try them out.

Here's the picture, gotta love the sense of humor it invokes.

-TNfrmgrl

Metal Detecting at old school foundation

Chloe-girl hidden almost by over grown weeds, at the picnic area

There was so much we could have been doing this weekend at the farm. We had started out weed-eating the picnic area and along the creek, but after an hour so in such high humidity we were whupped and back to the house we went for lunch.

Rain Clouds? Alas no...

The clouds had started coming in, rain again or so we thought, a light breeze picked up so after lunch out we went again to pick up where we left off. I didn't make it. The call of doing something something fun like digging for treasures won out.

In the back behind our old farm house stood a school house in the late 1800's, the foundation is still there, how do we know this .well about a year and a half ago we were tearing down an old deer stand shed in the backyard, when much to our surprise the door had writing on it, along with dates, school children's names and a poem or two. After much research and talking with several local historians we found our quaint little farm had once been the home of Highland School. (An newspaper article with a picture of the door was recently written up in the 'Hartsville Vidette' Thursday June 28, 2012 edition  By John  Oliver ). read it here  www.hartvillevidette.com
A local one room school house that had about 10 -15 children, probably all ages.

Our door had its original forged handle and door brackets on it. The writting done in pencil was so old and faint, but the words .."it rained today.. Sept. 30, 1898  were still legible  on it. It now sets in the Hartsville TN, Historical museum for all too see.

Back to detecting. Our backyard behind the farm house is kind of wavy. With rocks jutting out where at one time they had rolling down the hill side and lodged, or they had stacked them up when they built the school; the ground is very uneven and soft in places.. There are still two large rocks which we think were the stepping stones up to the doors and about four foundation stones in and not so square layout. We trip or sit on over these things all the time.

Pops sitting on a step of  the old school house, with Chole girl.

So we decided to lift them up and see if what if anything was under them, ( we also know at one time there was forge/ maybe blacksmith and  or cobbler shop on the premises and two original homestead houses, one that burned near the school house the other we think in the barnyard.)

What did we find?

All our goodies.. so far!

As we lifted up the first we heard a crunch sound, sure enough we had broken a white glass milk lid, but found one more still intact after a little digging.  As we dug in other places we found odd shapes of metal, old door handles, flaking with age and deterioration, a large metal stake of some type, a cobblers shoe form, and couple of old lace up boots, glass jars, various square nails, and a selection of where through the ages this area had been uses as a burn pile area.. artifacts*(aluminum foil, coffee cans, barb wire, broken jars etc.) dating across the ages.
We haven't found  anything yet of real value ( except the door), but haven't given up hope as as our little farm is chalked full of history.  It made for a fun Sunday afternoon.

One last picture of our day, as we were driving back home , this young group of gobblers followed us as ways down the road until their mom came and showed them how to fly to get out of the way of vehicles. They took off shortly in glorious flight right after I shot this picture. It was good to see such a young  healthy group, so many flocks we see are more mature gobblers.
-TNfrmgrl

Cleaning out the bog water garden

You ever wish that you hadn't started something, but because you did , know that you got to sort of finish it at least a little. Cryptic huh.?
Well that embraces the water garden/bog project. We have look at it for months not wanting to touch it, then one hairbrain idea last weekend made me decide to try and clean it out.
Two things you must know,
1. this bog garden is just that; very, very boggy, one step and you are up to your knees in muck and sometimes with out the shoes you went in with.
2. It is over grown with Johnson Grass and Pig-weed, better known as itchy, itchy icky scatchy weed, don't get it on your skin, cause it will cause a rash worse then poison ivy, especially if the Johnson grass scatches you.
But needless to say it is the home to my much loved Lousiana Iris's , Lilies, Cannas and Glades, and Hosta, and so over grown that I had to try and clean it out on one the the hottest days of the year.!!!

We worked HK and I at pulling weeds, cutting weeds, pulling weeds, cutting weeds, trimming the Iris back, then we gave up.
Too tired to in the short time we worked at it to do much more. What was I thinking???


as I look at this picture , you can't even see the Hosta , how big it is and glowing Silvery- blue in the shade of the watershed.
I'm kinda surprised in this picture , that it dosen't look boggy, but shortly after I took it, the waster started to seep, making walking across it dangerous. I guess it just took clearing some of the weeds away....

Chloe dog investigating  something!!! in the background.

pulling, cutting, pulling cutting.

Now it sits, at least you can see a little of the water, the birds can come and kinda splash in the pool near the water shed. No more close in encounters with the unknown sort that leap                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          ap,run, slither though the bushiest of it all and make you yelp, when they move, .Yes, that may be what prompted me to do something about it in the first place.

my babies, blooming so pretty.

the Hosta, before it took off ...

a new color  this yaer, though it looks orange, it was really a soft salmon color.

The iris were absolutly gorgeous this year, so many pretty colors, the first time to bloom for some of them. ( these pics were taken in late April, when they bloomed and before it became so over grown you want to cry>)

We havn't finished it yet... i would like to lay down weed guard, then maybe river rocks on top of that. They say Johnson grass can go dormant for up to twenty five years, and the pig-weed, well it is just plumb aggresive. I don't know if cleaning it out will help will help in the long run, but one thing I do know is that I won't be doing it  mid day in July/ August. Maybe wait until the evenings are a cool 70... if thats possible. And before the seeds start to come on.
-TNfrmgrl
 Oh yaeah .. look for the  next post about our door we found, it was written up in the Hartsville Vidette paper this week. Interesting story. More about that later.