Nothing like a challenge to get me creating

I have been back from France for weeks now and still hadn't done any crafting/creating at all. Until yesterday. Thought about it, of course, and in my mind I made oh so many lovely things. Somehow, they never materialised. My friend JJ is still in Portugal and without internet there, so she couldn't give me the needed kick up the butt, and I was finding all sorts of excuses for not starting anything. But last week, Mary from Green Paper came to rescue! I had missed her previous challenges because I spent the summer in France, but I had promised myself to go for the next one. And her October challenge was just what I needed to get me going again.

This was the challenge, to take all three images, or parts thereof, and create something with it -


As I was somewhat immersed in lace and ribbons ( trying to tidy up all the laces ), it didn't me long to decide on a fabric collage. At first, I was going to make a wall hanging, and use one of Dorthe's beautifully tactile driftwood pieces for a hanger. But somehow I ended up making a cushion. No idea really how that happened.

I started by making a digital collage with parts of the three images provided. The girls, of course, they were easy enough. Then I cut out the flower motif from the little image at the bottom and used that to put 'lace' on the girls' collars. I used the wreaths from the green ticket (?) to make a faded border. I added the Eiffel tower as background and the 'Young Parisiennes' title, printed it out onto fabric and that was the start of this cushion -



I had so much fun making this cushion, choosing the laces, the embellishments etc. The top is stitched by hand. I found it rather nice and relaxing to handstitch the laces and embellishments to the backing, much nicer than using the sewing machine. Some of the laces are antique, 19th C laces. I also used sweet little antique mother-of-pearl buttons, crystal bicones, freshwater pearls, tiny little glass beads, single lace motifs and a capiz shell to embellish the cushion.



Now I want to make lots more little fabricy things, sigh, when I really ought to be sorting out the lace and linens etc. and listing them in the blogshop Hmm, we'll see what happens. In the meantime, a big thank you to Mary for the lovely challenge and getting me crafting again!

Toodlepip xxx