New brooches

I realise I've been very quiet on the craft front lately, but I have been busily working away on several ideas and experimenting. My focus has been on developing the 3D felt brooches and playing with colour. This first one is a design that started with the colour combination. It's a birthday gift for my friend Sally, an artist who specialises in colourful abstractions. This watermelon colour is her favourite...

For this one, I wanted to see how I could incorporate fabric into the design. This, in turn, meant that I had to finish off the edges properly to minimise fraying, so the joins for the felt had to be more substantial as well. I hand-stitched all of these together and I think it has a marine, coral-like look to it...

From there, I became interested in the idea of the 3D felt pieces being like a patchwork and hand-stitched the joinery in this manner with embroidery thread. I think I went a bit overboard with the embroidery thread, doing little bits and pieces everywhere, but it was fun ;) I added the printed paper and white felt as a base to provide a plain foil to the heavily stitched front.

My daughter was playing with femo and I had an idea of making femo base plates for brooches, with holes for stitchery etc. We had fun making our shapes together but I think we need a lot more practice at developing sustainable structures! This one managed to hold its own and I decided to crochet a section onto it. It has sort-of worked but I'm still thinking about what it needs to be finished...

AND... last but not least, colour again! I was having a look at the lovely Tiel's work on her blog Tsk Tsk, and, feeling very inspired by her gorgeous triangle colour combinations, decided to have a go...

This 3D brooch actually has some very nice, unexpected variations to its form. I rather like it :)

So, what have you been experimenting with? If I don't already know you, leave a site address so I can visit your site for a peek :)