My foragers journal is coming along nicely, three weeks ago I was up to date waiting for the next instalment to arrive from Pretty Fabrics and Trims...

When my September parcel arrived I was pleased to see it was of blackberries. There are quite a lot of blackberry bushes on the back lane and I often go blackberry picking with the dog – I think she gets a bit bored but then she’s happy to go slow and sniff at times too! I put cartons of blackberries in the freezer so I can make blackberry and apple crumble in the winter. This summer I also made summer pudding with them which was delicious. This year the blackberries are quite small due to the lack of rain, a friend of mine grows them in a pot up a wigwam, he gets loads and they’re easy to pick – I’m tempted to try this!

I’ve stitched most of the letters, I tend to do a threads worth then do a bit of the picture, then another thread…then I’m not left with all the writing to do at once. The stem and the leaves were stitched first, split stitch for the stem and fishbone stitch for the leaves.

The blackberries are stitched with French knots in four different shades of red, purple and grey. I’ve just used two shades so far. Some of my blackberries are coming out a bit square so I think I need to round the off a bit. I’ve done the French knots a little bigger than the instructions – three threads rather than two and I’ve done two wraps on most of them which I think gives a nice plump effect. There’s six blackberries altogether – you can just see the outline of the sixth one under one of the leaves.

The border round the blackberries is fly stitch if I remember correctly, so that should be fairly quick to stitch.

October’s design isn’t due until the end of the month, so hopefully I’ll be ready and waiting by then. I think this will be the last page to stitch before November and December when I reckon we will make the cover and put it all together.

This Hand Quilt-a-long is organised by Kathy, we post our progress every three weeks, please follow the links and see what everyone else has been stitching. We are delighted that Sharon has rejoined our little group again.

Kathy, Deb, Sharon, Karrin, and Daisy

I’ll also be linking up to Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday.