In The Red Corner

I bought a number of sheets of various shades of red wool felt from FeltCraftStudio on etsy. I was lacking this popular colour in my last batch. So I've been busy making red fantail brooches. I've listed them on my Featherstitch Fantail blog along with a few new necklaces.

I'll be at Rose Street Artists Market tomorrow, Anna is kindly giving me a lift because I don't like cycling in the rain! I'll also be at the skirt and shirt market at the abbotsford convent on Sunday. Come down for a hot chocolate or visit handsome Steve in his house of refreshment on the balcony!

Here's the red team.

Two New

Since discovering that I can buy felt balls and realizing I can get them online from here or here I've been making a number of fantail necklaces. They have been received well at market, especially the red ones! Here are two of my most recent pieces.

Also, today on the way back from pilates class I saw an Eastern Spinebill, I think a male. I just looked him up in the bird book now. He was very handsome with a lovely long curved beak. (The photo is not mine, just an image from the internet)

Fantail Flock

After much thinking and working out of finance I decided to buy a new computer instead of trying to get the old PC working again. I thought that if it was going to cost $500 to get the old sluggish thing to work for a few more months, then I might as well spend a bit more on a new computer. So here I am on my new mac. It smells lovely and new and I've already got the Martha Wainwright cd that I borrowed from the library onto my itunes and downloaded BBC radio 4 podcasts! (one of the things I miss most about not living in UK is Radio 4)

So I thought I'd better get on and post on my blog. Here are a few more fantail brooches I have made while the computer has been down.

Also, just to fill you in on the wildlife around here - the Tawny Frogmouth has left his old tree. I don't see him anymore which is sad. Instead I've started seeing yellow tailed black cockatoos over the house and ganggangs over the river, which for inner suburban melbourne I thought was quite surprising. I've also started to see rats in and out of our house which isn't so nice even if I do think they look a little bit cute.

Evolution

I've just been looking at my inactive listings on etsy on my bridbird shop and I found these. They are my very first fantail brooches, before they were fantails! They've all change quite a lot since then, changes that I didn't actually realise while I was making them! I find it interesting to see the evolution of a design.

The first brooches were made with synthetic felt, the colours were more limited and I wasn't so keen on the feeling of the synthetic felt. I stopped making them for a few months, but then I found wool felt sellers on the internet that had a wonderful range of colours and I started making them again. I always thought I'd make these brooches for a short time only, my attention span is sometimes quite short and I don't like repeating the same design too often. I decided I'd keep making them until I got bored of them. The birds soon became fantails because I liked being able to decorate their tails, as well as their wings. 

Now the birds have become more stylised, their heads aren't so rounded and I feel the stitching is more confident. I still love making them, I think because each one is different. I'm not going to stop making them any time soon, only when my eye sight starts to go!