Bienvenue Dans Ma Cuisine

It is finally done! The kit I bought in France over 5 years ago!

I thought it would be easy and fast and it turned out not to be. I needed something for the wall in the kitchen. The walls are painted a light purple by someone who lived there years ago. I have never had a purple kitchen before, but over time I have grown to really like it.

The kit, which included the felt and background fabric and floss, did not contain purple so I had to figure out how to add it in.

I wanted a border for it and that turned out problematic. Fabric that matched color wise had a design to it that took away from the look of the felt work. Finally I found the perfect fabric, but it was in a kit. I thought about it for about an hour before I went back and bought the kit. The kit was expensive and was made up of hand dyed and then stamped linen. It was supposed to be a kit for a pillow. I have tossed the directions and the picture of what it was supposed to make in the trash and proceeded to extract the specific color of purple I needed from the kit for my wall hanging. I will find other uses for the other hand stamped pieces of linen.  They are all very pretty and like I have said, purple is growing on me. Here they are all together.

 

The next problem was the edging I wanted to go around the outside edge of the piece. Did you know that it is hard to buy any type of lace edging in purple? Impossible to buy a matching purple. This is not the normal type of thing I have in my stash. This is a more homespun sort of lace edging that says to me "Europe". After searching I decided I would have to somehow color lace myself. I bought several edgings that I liked and then took two shades of purple floche and wove it in as part of the design. Floche, I have almost every color, is made by DMC. It is about the same thickness as two of the 6 strands of DMC floss. It has a beautiful feel and look when used in certain types of hand work. I love using it!



 

Here is the edging I used before and after the floche was woven into the design.

 

So here it is finished at last.

 

The designer of this pattern "Bienvenue Dans Ma Cuisine" is Atelier d'Isabelle . Here is the original pattern. You can see how I have changed it. One big difference besides the color and border is that mine is reversed. It was easier to transfer the pattern pieces over.

I bought a second kit at the same time as the one I just completed. It is still in the bag untouched. It is going to stay that way for a while.