My grandson has been getting very impatient with me because poor Findlay Bear and Flora Panda don’t have anywhere comfortable to sit in their little house.
For more than a month, I have been telling him that I am working on a pattern for knitted armchairs.
He just raises his eyebrow now. He’s not sure that I really am on it.
BUT….
Findlay and Flora finally have comfie armchairs!
They celebrated by sipping a cup of tea together and basking in their new chairs.
While they were sipping their tea, they heard a snuffling sort of a sound….
eeek! Chihuahua alert!
Suddenly, an interested Chihuahua loomed up on the horizon!
Findlay and Flora raced into their house and slammed the Fairy door behind them.
Tea is getting cold….
They peeked out and saw that the coast was clear.
They huffed and puffed, and hefted their lovely new chairs up into their house….
Many of our friends are in the process of selling and buying houses, and moving to new homes.
We’re holding them in our hearts and wishing them the most joyful time in their new ‘Home Sweet Home’.
So, it’s natural that my tapestry diary would be about home sweet home.
I had an ‘aha’ moment when it struck me that using the ‘Home Sweet Home’ tapestry diary piece as the front cover of a needle book would be a fun thing to do.
What’s a needle book? It’s a way of storing and carrying your craft and sewing needles so they don’t get lost in a project bag or box or disappear inside a pincushion.
So…. tahdah!
A ‘Home Sweet Home’ needle book woven on the Thumbelina loom…
In order to weave the spine of the needlebook, you need to be able to weave a narrow rectangle on the Thumbelina,
so, I made a video on how to make the Thumbelina Needle book.
And, the video shows how to weave the narrow band:
Here’s the needle book open:
Here’s the video:
By the way, you don’t have to weave a little tapestry for the cover of the needle book…. plain is fine, too!
I have been enjoying weaving tiny tapestries on the Thumbelina loom so much!
A tiny heart tapestry on the Thumbelina loom.
People have been asking me to show them how to weave tapestry techniques on the Thumbelina.
Little heart tapestry with vertical and horizontal stripes
Here’s a YouTube video that I made to show some techniques and tips for weaving tapestries on the Thumbelina Loom.
I hope that this video will inspire you to try some fun things on your Thumbelina loom!
Here is the cartoon for weaving the heart shown in the video:
Print it so that each little template/cartoon is about 2 1/2 inches tall by 1 1/2 inches wide.
Here’s the link to order them from Dewberry Ridge looms. I designed the Thumbelina, but I don’t make or sell them. That’s not my strong suit… designing fun things to make with the tiny looms is! LINK
Thumbelina has her own page on Facebook, and you are invited to join:
This is an homage to a very small dog that we are caring for while his people are dealing with tough stuff.
Raeleen has had a liver transplant and other surgery, so we are helping out by caring for their darling little dog for as long as they need us to.
We have fallen completely in love with him, and he is doing just brilliantly.
It will be hard to have him go home again, but it will also be perfectly fabulous, because it will mean that Rae is well enough to be back at home!
We live in amazing times- medical expertise is astonishing, and our friends are going to have more years together because of that, and I feel blessed.
I was thinking about the miracles around us, and about the love that connects us all- to friends, to animal companions, to family in all the ways it is created. It fills me with gratitude.
To put those thoughts into stitches, I wove this tiny tapestry of a small dog who brings much love into the world, using my Thumbelina loom. LINK
I tried something new- I added a twisted cord (I used the Thumbelina loom to make it… I must show how I did that!) to the outside edge.
And, then I pressed it. Derp.
STEAM tapestry – don’t PRESS it! the lovely corded edge went all floopy from being pressssssssed. sigh.
I know that! I know that….
Trying to get the detail of a Chihuahua face into that small a space proved verrrrrrrrrrrrrry challenging.
That’s okay…. that’s part of the ‘permission form’ with Tapestry diaries:
Feel free to try things and see how it goes- even if it’s not technically perfect, it’s still a learning time, and a time out of the day for quiet contemplation and meditation, so Win/Win.
The other day, a friend mentioned to me that she has been checking my blog and was concerned that I haven’t been posting lately.
Well, one of the reasons is because I have been working night and day for months, on a new little loom that I have designed- the Thumbelina.
(I also have been working on a ton of other things, and will definitely get around to blogging about them soon)
One of the things that has really captured my imagination with the Thumbelina loom is weaving tapestries on her.
Weaving very tiny Tapestries has some challenges- working my way to achieving a ‘thumbnail’ image that reads clearly what my intentions are can be tricky, and is a fascinating process.
I am utterly hooked by working on such a small scale- I love the sketching process, and then am always surprised by how the weaving and then the embroidering afterwards makes the tiny tapestry so engaging.
Because of the immediacy of weaving at such a small scale, it is the perfect way to weave tapestry diaries.
Tapestry diaries are usually woven in small units of a larger tapestry, as a reflection of the day to day life of the weaver.
Weaving Thumbelina tapestry diaries is kind of a reverse… I am weaving tiny tapestries that I will then be attaching to a larger piece to make them part of a cohesive unit.
Tiny Tapestry Diary pieces woven on the Thumbelina loom.
The first 3 tapestry diaries that I have woven have been meditations on my life this May….
Nature in her abundance (apple blossom beauties),
Tiny Tapestry Diary of May apple tree flowers woven on the Thumbelina loom.
Nature in her ferocious destroyer aspect-
terrible fires (and my prayers for rain),
Tiny Tapestry Diary of a prayer for rain woven on the Thumbelina loom.
and a response to a marvelous dream that I want to remember
(the fairy door).
Tiny Tapestry Diary of a Fairy Door to remember a lovely dream, woven on the Thumbelina loom.
I made a video that shows more of the process of weaving the raindrop tapestry:
Thumbelina is available from Dewberry Ridge Looms: (I designed and made the prototype, but Gary and Donna have the engineering skills to produce and ship them all over the world. They are great at that and I am not. I am good at designing, so that’s what I stick to 🙂 ) LINK TO ORDER THUMBELINA LOOM
Tottie Talks Crafts Blog 