Whilst I was on my travels I had quite a lot of time sitting on trains, (four days worth according to the interrail app!) both my daughter and I spent some of the time stitching. I used to stitch on lake shores too whilst keeping an eye on my daughter swimming, several people stopped to see what I was stitching. I had packed some of my bird alphabet patterns and made sure I had lots of thread.
Before I went I had just finished the letter P, so I took the sheet of patterns which had Q to T and I just about finished the four letters over the six weeks.
I think birds portrayed are a yellowhammer, a warbler (R could be any number of little brown birds but as he is singing I’m plumping for a warbler!) a blue throat and long tailed tits.
As you can see I’ve already stitched the back-stitch edge round each one, I use this to whip-stitch the pages together. I might start making the pages soon so I’m not left with a big pile at the end. I’ve been stitching U since I got back home and it’s almost finished – I feel I’m on the home stetch now.
I’ve a new grandchild due later this month, a little girl this time, so as soon as I came back from my travels making a baby quilt was a priority. I found a simple but pretty quilt on Etsy, it’s called Heart Hug quilt, it has a central heart with half square triangles around it so nice and quick to make but pretty too.
The instructions said I would need half a metre of the light pink and a metre of the darker floral fabric. I found two pretty pink prints in my stash but I had less than half of each one. I found the darker one on ebay and ordered another metre. I also found some plain ivory which would do for the plain triangles, even if it wouldn’t stretch to the border.
The pattern makes the half square triangles by stitching two large squares round the edge and then cutting the block into four, corner to corner. As the pattern says this is a quick way of making a lot of half square triangle blocks, the disadvantage is that the edges of the blocks are on the bias, so not as stable.
Despite having less than half a metre of my two pink florals, I managed to cut all the necessary pieces, just changing one set of four from needing a large square to four smaller squares. The basic quilt went together easily and fairly quickly. My issues started when I came to stitch the borders on.
I found some white on white heart fabric in my stash (well, ivory) which was just big enough for the four borders. Now I’ve always been a bit lazy when stitching borders on, I just cut a long enough piece and stitch it on, taking care not to stretch either piece when stitching. In all the quilts I’ve made I’ve never had an issue with wavy borders…until now!
I knew I had to be careful due to the bias sides of the blocks, so I was very gentle so as not to stretch the triangular blocks. I stitched them all on and then put my quilt on the design wall, the borders would not lie flat. I did wonder if I would be able to press or quilt it out but in the end I decided I was going to have to unpick all the borders. Of course that had it’s pitfalls too as I could have stretched the bias-cut blocks whilst unpicking. I was very gentle!
I gave the quilt a good press with lots of Best Press and did it properly…I measured across the centre of the quilt, cut my border to the same length and made it fit with lots of pins to hold it in place. It worked, the borders now lay nice and flat.
On Sunday I sandwiched it with some Frankensteined batting (remnants stitched together) and in my dress-making stash I found a pretty daisy print which I’m using for the backing. It’s a bit frustrating that I bought some extra fabric but I’ll probably use it for the binding. Otherwise the whole quilt has been from my stash.
Last time I shared my progress with my phenology wheel was at the beginning of May, I had just started stitching catkins for February so I was already behind!
The French knots were taking forever, not helped by the fact that I was using a single thread of DMC. When I returned from my travels it was one of my priorities so I started stitching it on an evening.
I changed to two threads of DMC instead so it grew a little quicker and I don’t think it’s that noticeable. I used a second shade of DMC variegated which is slightly darker so the three catkins wouldn’t merge into one blob. It still took more than an evening to do one catkin, I nearly left it at two but I decided to spend one more evening stitching the third one. I’m pleased with how they have turned out.
As you can see I’ve also stitched March, some primroses, we have some near our pond in the garden and there’s also a few up the back lane. It still needs a good press to remove the Frixion pen marks but I thought I’d stitch April first. For April I’m going to stitch brunnera, I’ve got several brunnera plants in the garden, I love the sprays of intense blue flowers in spring and good foliage ground cover the rest of summer. It does mean more French knots though!!
Hopefully in three weeks time when I share another update on my wheel, I’ll have almost caught up.
Please follow the links to see what everyone else has been stitching…
Having been home a week I thought I’d better post about the last couple of weeks of our adventure round Europe.
Last time I posted we had just arrived in Tirano, Italy. Tirano is the start (or end!!) of the Bernina Express, one of the famous scenic rail journeys in Switzerland. It is stunning, both the scenery and the engineering involved. The train winds it’s way up the alps, zigzagging up the mountains and doing loops to gain height, the mountain sides are pretty sheer and you can feel the steepness of the track. There are panoramic carriages available at a price, but each train also has standard carriages which have the advantage of windows that open, much better for photos and great fun to just look straight out.
We stopped for a break in St Moritz, we walked around the lake, Helen went for a swim in a nearby small lake which is set up for outdoor swimming – it was very cold according to one German lady who was trying to get in – sometimes you don’t need to speak the language to understand what they are saying 🙂
We stayed overnight in Chur in a former prison – the rooms still had the metal cell doors on. It was clean and comfortable and more spacious than we thought it might be.
From Chur we took the Glacier Express to Zermatt, beautiful scenery but not as awe-inspiring as the Bernina. I was really looking forward to Zermatt and it didn’t disappoint. Yes it was busy, yes it was touristy, but not overly so. My parents came here several times with their youth club back on the 1950’s so we had heard alot about this car-free town in the alps. I had some old photos my parents had taken and with a little help from Google we managed to find the chalet they used to stay in, now a private house. I thought about my mum a lot inZermatt, it seemed strange to think she would have travelled up on the same train, walked round the same streets, we even found the English church just down from the chalet and I’m sure they would have gone to a service there.
We decided to treat ourselves to the train ride up to Gornagrat and it was definitely worth it. We had perfect weather for the views of the Matterhorn and we even managed to get that perfect refection photo when we stopped by the tarn on the way down. Stunning!
After three days in Zermatt we travelled over the alps to Chamonix, it was another stunning train ride, as awe-inspiring as the Bernina but it’s a route you don’t particularly hear of. Chamoix Mont Blanc is a lovely place, not chocolate-box pretty but relaxed and friendly. Helen had booked us a spa evening so we had quite a treat there. We took the train back up the valley a couple of stops so we could walk back through the trees, it was a pleasant six mile walk.
From Chamonix we travelled to Annecy. a pretty town with a few canals and a lake. The lake is a lot bigger than it looks, we went on a boat ride and what we thought was the other end was only about a third of the way down. We had our only really bad accommodation in Annecy, we’d booked an apartment through Airbnb, were always careful to read the reviews, whether they didn’t appear or somehow we missed them I don’t know. Within an hour of arriving the toilet wouldn’t flush, then three door handles fell off, the host wasn’t answering messages despite having read them. In the end we contacted airbnb support and to cut a long story short, we moved to a hotel at 10pm. I was quite impressed with Airbnb, they didn’t quibble, they tried to contact him, when we said we wanted to move they immediately refunded our money and gave us 30% off our hotel bill.
Our final stop was Paris. We had a few things booked for our three night stay, we went to the Palais Garnier which was beautiful, we visited Notre Dame and climbed the tower. The cathedral is beautiful, they have done such a good job restoring it after the fire.
We climbed the steps to Sacre Coeur, even inside the cathedral it was 35’C! We wandered down to Montmatre, we missed the artyfarty bit, but we found the fabric quarter, it was a bit like Goldhawk Road in London, rows of fabric shops! We found one particularly nice shop, three floors of fabric, I treated myself to a dress length 🙂
We also had a day in Giverny, to visit Monet’s garden. It was beautiful, the waterlillies were coming into flower and the borders were full of roses, poppies, hollyhocks, all sorts of flowers.
And that was the end of our big adventure! We travelled back on Eurostar last Friday, just before the heat got so bad they cancelled trains. It was a magical holiday and so special to be able to spend nearly two months travelling round with my daughter.
I’ve been back from my travels for a week now and having brought the sunshine with me it’s been so hot I’ve just been chasing the shade round the garden, sitting stitching, trying to finish one of my holiday projects.
Before I went travelling with my daughter I decided I wanted to do some sort of travel journal in stitch, try and do a little stitching to record the places we went to. I found a length of over dyed linen in my stash which was long and narrow and even better it was overlocked down each side. I’ve no idea where it came from, it’s a softer linen, more like a dress weight. It wasn’t cut quite straight so I pulled a thread out to mark the two long edges and also tacked cotton along what would be the page edges. This proved very useful as however crumpled the piece was, I could always see where the pages would be. My plan was for a concertina book, so it could be folded out to show the whole trip.
I packed a little bag with some threads, little oddments of lace, tape and scraps of fabric so I could break up the pages if I needed to.
From the start I was a bit behind! I decided to embroider the major place names and of course that first day we had Otley, London and Ghent so by the end of the first stay in Ghent I was already behind. In my defence I was also trying to keep up with a written journal with little paintings in! I’d probably done my usual of over-committing with craft projects!!
I embroidered the star to represent Eurostar, the train between UK and Europe. In Ghent and Bruge there was lots of wisteria growing up the houses and other buildings, in fact it became one of the quotes from the holiday, “Ooh look, wisteria!” Of course Bruges (and Belgium in general} is also known for it’s lace, I had a scrap of lace in my bag so I cut the leaf motif off it.
In Maastrict we stayed on a boat, in Cologne we ate traditional sausages in a brewery. Whilst we were in Trier we went to an organ recital in the catherdral one evening. Luxembourg struck me as a very leafy city, helped by the huge gorge it’s built around.
On page two I settled down to about three places per page. In Strasbourg we saw storks on the top of trees in the park, I used blue lines of different stitches to represent rivers, canals, lakes etc so Colmar is famous for it’s canals and Freiburg for it’s fresh water rills down the streets.
We then travelled to Switzerland to Lauterbrunnen where the meadows were full of flowers. Lindau has a lighthouse on the harbour and in Munich we saw several swans in the palace gardens.
Salzburg has links to the Sound of Music film, in Vienna we saw the beautiful white Lipizzaner horses. We also had a day trip to Bratislava which is on the river Danube.
From Vienna we travelled to Lake Bled in Slovenia, we stayed opposite the island on the lake. Venice is represented by arches, there are lots in St Marks Square. In Florence we sampled the wine windows 🙂
We then travelled to Bergamo which is linked to the Bergamot orange. I’ve just realised I’ve put a T on the end which will need unpicking! Tirano is the start of the Bernina Express railway line which winds it’s way over the alps to Chur, doing loops along the way.
In Chur we stayed in a converted prison (more spacious than the boat!!) In Zermatt we took the Gornagrat train up the mountains to see the Matterhorn. Chamonix is famous for Mont Blanc, though from the town itsself the mountain is not so distinctive a shape. Annecy has both canals and a lake.
Onto the last part of our big adventure; in Paris we saw the Eiffel tower and took the train out to Giverny where Monet’s garden is.
We caught the Eurostar back to London, under the channel, before heading to home where our OH’s were waiting.
I just need to stitch a title page before making it into a book.
My daughter and I finally came back home this weekend, after 45 days travelling through 10 countries, more of that another day, but safe to say we had a wonderful time! In my absence the garden has been growing very enthusiastically, especially the weeds! My OH has been doing his best but it’s a big garden to do on your own.
I spent the weekend doing a superficial tidy up of the beds, by that I mean pulling out the worst weeds like bindweed, thistles, nettles and that sticky weed with mini burrs on! There hasn’t been any rain apparently for a good week, so the ground is too hard to do any digging for roots but at least they’re not smothering my plants now.
This is the view at the top of the garden as we’re going out to walk Bella along the back lane, I think it’s my favourite view at the moment.
The foxgloves have self-seeded themselves all over the place this year, which I love, though I have had to pull a couple up when they were right in the middle of a particular plant.
The apricot rose at the back is a beautiful David Austin rose called Lark Ascending, the yellow rose at the front is one of my standard roses, Roald Dahl. The clematis was planted several years ago, I can’t remember what it’s called but the flowers are huge this year.
The hostas round the pond are looking bigger than ever…
This is my view when I sit in the garden for my morning coffee. The patio gets the morning sun, I like to sit in my arbour in the shade. When the birds are feeding on the fat balls and the sunflower seeds they will be less than a metre away.
Hopefully over the net couple of months I’ll get a bit more on top of the garden, in the meantime it’s still a lovely place to sit with my coffee of a glass of wine 🙂
I brought a couple of sewing projects on holiday, one for quiet times and one as a record…
I brought my bird alphabet to stitch on the train, some trains I’ve stitched all the way, other journeys have been very scenic and I’ve just watched the world go by. It’s surprised us how slowly many of the trains trundle along, even on long journeys. It’s a nice relaxing way to travel but we’re used to even local trains going 70mph.
According to the interrail app we have now spent more than two days on trains, so it’s indicative of how scenic the routes have been that I’ve only finished two letters!
I think Q is a yellow hammer and R could be any of a multitude of little brown birds but I’m going for a warbler.
Apologies for the unedited photo, but I’m doing this on my phone and for some reason I couldn’t find the to upload here if I edited them!!
The second piece is my stitch journal . As you can see I’m stitching our route and adding a little stitching to represent the place. I’ve packed little snippets of fabric and lace to help along the way. As you can see, I’m a little behind! So far I have;
Ghent and Bruges; lace and wisteria, Maastricht; boat we stayed on, Cologne; sausage, Trier; music, Luxembourg; trees, Strasbourg; storks, Colmar; canals, Freiburg; rills, Lauterbrunnen; alpine meadow…
I’ve kept a list so I know what I’m going to stitch for each place, just got to catch up 🙂
Helen and I are loving our travels round Europe, we’re having such a good time together.
After Salzburg we travelled over to Vienna. We had three nights there so we could pop over to Slovakia for the day!
I liked Vienna, lots of beautiful buildings and a nice vibe. We went to the Austrian national library, absolutely stunning, double height bookshelves full of antique books and an amazing ceiling. The trompe d’oeil was amazing, we were there over an hour mainly looking at the ceiling.
Helen likes horses so we wandered through the Spanish riding school which is part of the Hoffburg palace buildings. We didn’t go to a show but we got up early one morning as they exercise a few of them early in the morning in the local park. The lipizzaner horses are beautiful.
Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is only about 30 minutes from Vienna. It’s a delightful old city, we walked through the cobbled streets and climbed up the steps of the medieval Michael’s gate. The city has some quirky statues, we saw Cumil, a man peeping out of a manhole cover!
We had our longest travel day so far when we travelled from Vienna to Lake Bled in Slovenia. We were staying in the quiet end of Lake Bled. It was lovely, we had three nights there. I tried when planning our route to have a restful place every so often and this was one such place. The lake is a lot smaller than I thought, it’s only 6km to walk round. We hired a rowing boat and rowed to the island, we sat in our apartment watching a thunderstorm whilst sewing or scrapbooking. We got up early to listen to the dawn chorus, we just chilled 🙂
After our rest by lake Bled we travelled to Italy, our tenth country of our trip!
First stop was Venice. I have mixed feelings about Venice, it’s lovely with all the canals and bridges, but to me it looks uncared for, shabby even in places. It’s also very busy. By contrast we got the ferry over to Murano as I wanted some Murano glass earrings, it was lovely, much quieter and it felt cared for…and I got some earrings 🙂 We managed to get tickets to go in St Marks Basilica, that was another Wow! the ceilings and walls are covered with mosaics, the gold on them just glows, it’s beautiful. We did our usual routine of getting up at 6am and going straight out so we could take photos of the main sites before the crowds descended.
From Venice we travelled across to Florence. I liked Florence, it has some beautiful buildings and we had a good wander round the streets. My main issue was the unevenness of the pavements, I think they are the worst I’ve seen in Europe, as I have no balance I had to constantly look down to watch my step, so I couldn’t be looking up at the buildings. I did manage to climb the 400+ steps up the top of the dome and the views across the city were worth it. We also walked up to a viewpoint for views of the cathedral. I had my first grumpy day in Florence, we had a bad night’s sleep as we were woken up at 5am by workmen in the unit below, I was eaten alive by mozzies, I was hot and bothered…. hopefully the last grumpy day 🙂
Yesterday we travelled to Bergamo. This was chosen to save us from a very long travel day so we just had one night here. It’s has a lovely old town which is reached by a funicular train, the city walls are huge, like cliffs. It was quite a busy little city but that may also be because it was graduation day for the students!
Today we are on our way to Tirano, the start of the Bernina Express.
I’m way behind with my posts, so here’s the first catch up…
After our time in Switzerland we travelled along the Golden Pass to Lucerne on then onto Lindau. The Golden Pass was lovely, it passes five lakes which were beautiful in the morning light. We only had 3 hours in lucerne in between trains but it was enough to think I’d like to go back.
The old part of Lindau is on a small island on Lake Constance, Germany, it’s only about 1.5 miles wide, it’s connected to the mainland by two bridges. We spent two nights there and it was the perfect place for rest and relaxation. My original plan was to visit Liechtenstein from there as it’s close to the border, but all reports said it really wasn’t worth visiting!
Lindau is delightful, pretty cobbled streets, cafés, artisan shops and surprisingly (for an island) not expensive, we meandered through the old town and round the lake shore. The island was perfect for us, a couple of days doing not a lot.
After Lindau we got the train to Munich, it was a bit of a shock when we reached the station, so loud and crowded, not helped by the platform being so dangerously packed it took us 20 minutes just to get off the platform!
In Munich we visited the Residence, which was beautiful, heavily ornate in places, my favourite area was the artifact room, every part of the walls and ceiling was beautifully painted. The next day we travelled out to the Summer Residence, where we had a peaceful time wandering through the gardens and palace.
After Munich we travelled to Austria, first stop was Salzburg. I must admit I was a tad disappointed with Salzburg, I was expecting a ‘pretty’ city, whilst there is an old town it didn’t feel special. We went in the cathedral which was beautiful, very pale stone which was intricately carved with a dark background. We arrived just before 12 to find they did an organ recital every day at noon. There are seven organs and they played a short piece on five of them. It was excellent.
We visited the gardens where Sound of Music was filmed, walked up the steps where they sang ‘doe ray me’. We noticed there was no info or souvenirs at all in Salzburg about the film. We googled it and apparently the city doesn’t like it’s association with the Hollywood version which is pretty inaccurate and they’re not comfortable with that time in their history. Instead everything is about Mozart and the house where he was born.
After Salzburg we travelled through Austria to Vienna, more of that tomorrow!
thecraftycreek 