Cobi

Time to introduce myself. My name is Cobi, I'm a 48 yr old single mom. My daughter is 22 and lives with me. We have 2 cats. I live in the Netherlands, in Leiden, a city in the west of my country, not far from the North Sea. I've been ill for over 8 yrs now and its impossible for me to have a job. So I devote all my time to fabric, thread, needles and shuttles. I love crazy quilting and I try to learn more techniques all the time. I do stumpwork, Brazilian Ebroidery, ribbon embroider, needle lace and beading. I don't hesitate to paint on a block. I participate in rr blocks all the time. Right now I'm planning on learning Mediterranean knotted lace. I've learned to tat only to be able to add edgings and doilies/motifs to my cq work. I also make art quilts. I belong to an art quilt group that meets in my home town once a month. We do lots of swaps, exchanges and rr's. I cut my own stencils and stamps. I work with heatgun and soldering iron. I love to play with organza and solufleece. I dye, paint, stamps, experiment with shibori and glue resists. I use a lot of flowers in my work. I swap fabric ATCs, AA's, fabric book pages and fibercards. I participate in cq rrs, complex cloth rrs and art quilt rrs and challenges. I even paint my own thread if neccessary. I belong to the local stitch & bitch group and try to go there every Wednesday evening and knit, crochet or whatever I fancy or am working on. I love to wear stole's and I must have knitted and crocheted over 20 of them, lots of them for others, but I do have one in the right color to go with most of my outfits. I love lace knitting, cables and freeform knitting and crocheting. I enjoy crocheting lace curtains, motifs and Irish crochet. Recently I discovered knitted and crocheted tea cosies and instantly fell in love. I have to finish 2 freeform handbags before I can start exploring those. And dd has asked for a big size knitted blanket, preferrable with cables in dark grey. Here is my blog. And here are pictures of the various techniques I enjoy:

stumpwork aloë

Flower Fairy rr block, all embellishment by me. you can see the beaded ribbons I love to stitch and the pink butterfly at the top is a BE motif from a book I had just purchased. Angelina for the fairy wings.

this is a piece I made for a swap at our art quilt group. the theme was poppies.

here I first crocheted a fan, sewed it down onto fabric and applied gesso and paint and finished it off with a shiny pearl colored paint. I made it into an ATC

I love mushrooms, my yahoo name is paddestoelengek, which means "crazy for toadstools"

I take their pictures, identify them if possible and love to search them.

hello! this is me, with my 2 cats. Minoes on the left, Casper on the right. the yellow patch on my shoulder is his cloth that he needs to suck on. he's such a big baby. a mug of tea in my hands, as always. the sofa is my workspot, I have everything around me: threads, needles, books, paint, soldering iron (yes, I do that on my sofa too) beads, ribbon, you name it. cats usually throw over the carefully piled stuff, driving me crazy. used to have rabbits too, have always dearly loved them.

a sample of my tatting, shown on hand dyed fabric.

a stamp that I cut. this is Jugendstil/Art Nouveau

this is a fibercard in stained glass style. embroidered and painted. the motif is from the Arts and Crafts movement, by William Morris. the A & C movement initiated the Jugendstil.

this is a little quilt I finished. stained glass quilt made from a real stained glass pattern. adapted it for fabric and made my own 'lead' in purple because I didn't like black to go with these colors.

my handbag in freeform knitting with a crocheted flower, silk ivy leaves and the handle is handed down necklace.

One of my knitted stoles, this one is knitted from a pattern in the Estonian Lace book.

So my subject for the fabric book pages is Art Nouveau/Jugendstil. I have searched the internet for pictures and put them into this album. Hope I won't get trouble with that. Use the slideshow option, that makes Webshots less annoying to use. You can google Jugendstil pictures yourself or go to your library and look for a book on the subject. I admire the artists William Morris (Arts & Crafts movement) and Mucha.