Some new photos by my wonderfully creative daughter

I sit

 

I stand

 

Sometimes I get bored

Aren’t they wonderful?

Still hanging in there

Well, my bjp pages are going slowly but I am getting there. 

2 things have been impeding my progress. 

The biggest obstacle has been a mental one,I think , as this is a project about Weight watchers and my progress.  Basically, my progress has been going backwards.  From losing 36 lbs since joining Weight Watchers in August 2006, in the  last year I  actually gained 14lbs   The good thing is that working on these pages has forced me to refocus on my goals and since I started actually tracking my eating, my pages have been coming along faster.

The other thing that has impeded my progress is a bad case of tendonitis which I think was cause by combination of cutting fabric at work over the Christmas period and sitting at the PC too much.  Of course, sewing  and beading doesn’t help but given that I really haven’t done that much recently, I don’t think its the root cause of my problem but it does mean I have watch I don’t over do it .

Anyway, here are the 5 pages I have done recently.

About 6 months into taking notes at the WW meetings, I began to simply copy the slogans being used by the meeting leader and they become less like doodles.  However, as this project has been moving along, my notes have reverted back to the doodle approach  and become more personal.  I think this is an additional factor in my current success with my weight loss as I am actively thinking about the process rather, sitting back.  I think that when my doodles became less personal and only focused on what the meeting leader had written down, it had less meaning and really didn’t belong to me, I was only half occupied by the intent of the message.  Writing down the topic of the day and personalizing it, is reinforcing what I want to achieve from this, health and fitness.

Below are 2 recent doodles.

The other decision I have made is to  do less beading on the actual drawing, instead I will bead the flags when I make them up.  This will mean the project might end later than August but to keep the integrity of the drawings, I decided this was the best way forward.

BJP update and Chicken Scratch

Well, I finally beginning to kick in with the BJP and know that the 52 pages will be achievable before the end of August.  I now beginning to think about the design of the flags and whether I will actually bead or embroider on the back of the flag.  I thinking  a spiral to symbolise the never ending journey of life,  symbols for  Man or Woman, life, basically very simple symbols in keeping with the notion of the flags.  No doubt colour will come into the equation to although I already know the sequence of flag colours – blue, white, red green and yellow.  The page sizes are approximately 8.5 x 5.5 and the flags will be about 14×12 in the end.

Like a lot of you I am a follower of Sharon B and this year she is doing a monthly challenge called Stitch Explorer where she invites people to explore  a slightly unusual or lesser known stitch, or a style of embroidery.  This month was Chicken Scratch.  Being fairly new to this line of work, I thought this would be a great way to spend some of my spare time when BJP wasn’t beckoning me.  So I might not do every month but I gave it a try this month.  Below are my attempts so far.

I think I am going to move away from the check fabric tonight and try some free hand designs.

One thing about the BJP pages, despite working on them most nights recently, it doesn’t seem to be helping in the battle of the bulge, far from it, having gained about 5lbs in weight since beginning it.  It will be interesting to see what my weight is like at the end of August.

First showings of new 2008/9 pages and more beaded Christmas Cards

Well, I will begin with the beaded Christmas cards.  In the end I didn’t managed to get all the cards done, as I was being way too ambitious but at least I got the ones I wanted to give out, done, which was about 20 all together. Here are 4 more to the ones I have shown:

As can be imagined, these took up most of my December and then holidays came along, so not much progress has been made with 2008/BJP.  Then with my daughter moving back home for a while as she looks for her lst graduate job, I had to move my stuff into the games room. So it has taken awhile to get use to my new space but I am getting there.  This time I am there to stay! 

However, whilst looking for Christmas gifts I had a sudden inspiration on how to present these pages (hopefully 52 in total by the end of the year)  Basically they are based on the notion of prayer flags which is a buddhist tradition from Tibet.  But it also can linked into the idea of  prayer beads which are common in many religions.  As I see it, beading for me (or creating) is really my way of mediating and my notes from the WeightWatcher  meetings are way for me to concentrate on the ideas of WW rather than the notion I am dieting, so they have become my mantras.

To be honest, I have been struggling with this project but I realise it partly to do with what these notes are about, my struggle to eat healthily and figure out why I sabotage my own efforts in this area.  Without a committment to the program, I couldn’t commit myself to this project.  Having just gone up to my highest weight in 2 yrs, I am now even more determined to get back on track. Hopefully working on these pages will be rosary to success!

Beaded Christmas Cards

they are still not complete but hopefully by Friday they will all be finished, trimmed and mounted on some mat boards as that is when I leave Joann’s.   Here are the  first 8 and I have another 2 finished upstairs. Several are at the half way stage so achieving another 6 in that time, doesn’t seem impossible.

This was done entirely in bead and sequins leaving just the shepherd from the original fabric design.

With this one I decided to do only the edges in sequins and use the “o” from the word Noel as a halo which I satin stitched (badly). At the top of the halo, I used a metal finding from a pot luck bag I got from Firestone mountains and in the middle of that I attached a heart shaped stone.

This one I kept simple with star sequins and satin stitch.

Here I beaded around the edge, satin stitched the halo and then I added star sequins to the sky.

Part of the problem of using this fabric design was the inclusion in the back of one letter  from “Noel” in each scene.  Here it was the letter “N” .  As you can see I satin stitched a good part of the back ground, leaving some of the sky visible . I then added sequins to the edge and stitched the star at the top.  I have no idea what stitched that would called, as I just followed the star shape around until it was finished.

This one I decided to keep very simple.  Around the edge I used transparent gold beads (no 15) with twisted gold bugle beads.  In the middle I used a gold plated finding from my bag o’ goodies top by a single red fabric rose

By this point, I was beginning to realise I need to find a quicker way of filling the background.  My sewing machine has a few basic embroidery stitches on it.  This is one of them.  I had never tried to do machine embroidery before and I was quite pleased with the result.  The border is edged by one line of  size 6 gold filled red beads.  The star is from my stash of goodies and the rays are size 11 or 15 white and gold seed beads.

Last but not least the first card I started with, very simple with red beads (size 6) around the border and blue beads for the sky.  The tree is made in satin stitch from  cotton yarn.