This weeks photo challenge by Postcard from Gibraltar is Cosy so I chose a photo of Helen getting all cosy in a new quilt.
This is a quilt I made Helen nearly three years ago, she wanted a black and white one, we added a few shades of grey to add interest. If you want to see the quilt properly have a look at my original post here.
Well I’m two months into my year long challenge, so how have I done;
I’ve not done bad this month, considering everything that is going on outside my sewing room, and of course it is a shorter month!
It’s our wedding anniversary whilst we are away, last year I made a cross-stitch card, this year I decided to do the same but to make it in such a way that I could make it into a ‘small’ afterwards, a bit like I did with his Christmas card.
I saw a design on facebook by Subrosa which I thought would be perfect, she is a Hungarian designer who sells patterns on Etsy. I made a couple of alterations to the design, first one was because I made a mistake on the very first row, the key staff, it was too short by about four stitches! I think it was a case of too much chatting as I started it when I was visiting my mum! I was already half way through the leaves when I realised my mistake, too late to start undoing, so I made the key head round instead of oval. 
I think this design is based on a traditional design as there isn’t an alternative alphabet included if you want to change the letters. Luckily it wasn’t too hard to change an R into a K and an M is just an upside down W!!
It was a nice simple design to stitch, I used four DMC colours from my stash, there’s no half cross-stitches or back-stitches so it was finished fairly quickly. It turned out a little bigger than I anticipated so I had to change my tack regarding the design of the card.
I had a look on Twisted Stitcher for some ideas on making it up and eventually decided on a flat padded card. I wanted however to be able to write a little message on it so I came up with the idea of putting a pocket on the back. I found a lightweight taffeta in my stash and made a pocket. Before I stitched it on I decided to decorate it with a little heart, so I embroidered one with backstitch and then stitched it onto the pocket with a simple running stitch. The actual pocket could then just be machined to the backing fabric.
I wanted the card to be double mounted, so I laced the embroidery over a piece of card, with a layer of wadding in between. With the red taffeta I just glued it over the edge of a second, larger piece of card, checking that the pocket was nice and central first.
I had some cream mini pompom trim in my stash which finished it off nicely, I hand stitched them round the embroidery, added a fold of ribbon and just glued the top and back together, leaving it overnight with a heavy box of fabric on it.
I’m pleased with my ‘card’, I can take it with me to Bali and write a special little message to pop inside.
Last summer I saw a few blog posts about the Ogden Cami pattern by True Bias.
I decided to buy the pdf pattern, much as I hate sticking all the sheets together, I reasoned that there can’t be that many pages for a simple cami! There were still nine sheets but that’s fairly manageable! I have to admit it then pretty much sat in my computer, forgotton about!
I was originally planning to make up one of the fabrics I bought in London into a little summer top. I suddenly remembered the Ogden Cami, managed to find it on my computer (A feat in itself!) and decided it looked nice and quick, which was just what I needed. I also felt it needed to be in a fairly soft cotton, the one I had in mind to make was just a little too crisp. I dug around in my stash and found this really pretty length of cotton, I think it might be a Liberty one, it certainly feels soft enough. It’s a really pretty pattern, looks floral but actually it isn’t!!
It’s a very simple top with just a front, a back, two straps and facings. I used french seams for all the side seams and it was made in no time at all.
The front is officially the side with the higher neckline, I actually prefer it the other way round. It’s lovely to wear and I think it works either tucked in or loose. It goes great with a silk skirt I made a couple of years ago.
I finally got round to sewing some clothes for our holiday, although ironically I didn’t use the fabric I bought in London with holiday in mind, I’ve actually used some from my stash!
I
looked through my patterns for holiday wear and found a Burda pattern which I think I got at one of the sewing meet-up swaps, it’s Burda 2943, labelled as ‘super easy’ and I have to say it is a pretty easy make.
It’s a midi length shift dress, there is literally just a front, a back and binding strips in the pattern, it’s an over-the-head fit, so no zips or buttons. It looked a nice, easy to wear, everyday summer dress.
I decided to use some cotton I bought at Lucky Fashions in Dewsbury at the last meet up. I bought this in two colour ways as I liked it so much. I think it was called acid etched cotton, the pattern looks very subtle until you hold it up to the light, then you can’t quite believe it’s not see-through! It’s a light weight cotton and it was lovely to sew. I’m looking forward to making a shirt from the white version now!
I had my usual fitting issues of measuring myself, checking the final measurements on the pattern,making it up and then finding it’s far too big. It did cross my mind today that maybe the problem is in the first sentence, ‘measuring myself’, but what else can you do when no one else around sews!
I took it in a fair bit at the sides, so my neat french seams are now a bit chunky. I decided rather than edging with bias binding I would make a facing, I think it made it easier and neater.
Having tried it on and tried to walk in it I decided I needed a couple of slits at the sides, it wasn’t too easy to get a neat finish because of the french seams. In the end I decided to put a triangle at the top of each split, I used bondaweb and satin-stitched round it on the machine. This had two advantages, it strengthens the seam at a potential weak spot and it also covers up a messy top!
I hemmed it just with a simple machine straight stitch.
Apologies for the photos, definitely a bad hair day, this was the best of a bad bunch, hence no full length photo!
I think it’s great as an everyday summer dress, a sort of wander round the market dress, comfortable, cool, easy to wear and easy to pack for a hot holiday too 🙂
It seems a while since I did a proper garden post, not a lot happens over winter! However things are starting to move, spring is on it’s way!!
I was away for a couple of days last weekend and it seemed in that time that all sorts started to spring into life..
The snowdrops have been around for a little while, but they looked particularly pretty at the moment. At this time of year various country houses open their gardens for snowdrop walks, my WI visited Austwick Hall on Thursday to see the snowdrops.
I have a camelia next to the conservatory and over the weekend several flowers appeared, interestingly it’s just the ones near the actual window that have bloomed. I always smile when I look at my camellia as I rescued it from my mum when she was moving house about 12 years ago, it was just two twigs dried up under a privet hedge, still in it’s pot. Camellia’s were out of my budget at the time so I rescued it and now it is a 5′ high healthy and beautiful bush.
The early daffodils are just starting to flower, though the are having to compete with three dogs! Daffodils have a surprising long flowering season if you’re careful to select different varieties. I particularly like the shorter ones (more robust) and the highly scented ones.
I spotted the hellebores in flower up by our pond, they need a bit of a tidy up, or rather the crocosmia that’s flopped dead in front of them needs a tidy up.
Having just got used a a little bit of warmth, a Siberian blast is heading our way, back down to -7, so glad we’re off on our hols to 30′ heat 🙂
A couple of years ago I started a craft club with my Womens Institute, we aim to meet once a month, at the moment there’s just a handful of us so we meet in each others houses. Usually we just take our own craft and sit and stitch (or knit) and chat, it’s a lovely social coupe of hours. Of course, being WI, we usually partake of tea and home made cake as well!!
Every few months someone volunteers to run a mini workshop, we’ve had quilting ones, felting, silk painting, and last week Hazel volunteered to do a flower arranging workshop.
We spent a lovely couple of hours learning how to make a small table decoration, with two candles and a supermarket bunch of flowers One thing we all noticed is that trying to buy flowers just after Valentines Day is not a good idea, there’s hardly any stock or choice. I ended up with some very pretty pink/cream roses, a bit more than I wanted to spend, but only a £1 more than lots of mediocre flowers. The foliage came from everyone’s gardens.
Craft Club is a great time to socialise, as usually at meetings there really isn’t that much time to chat. Hazel, as usual,had done some baking, so we had homemade scones and lemon cake, together with a cup of Yorkshire tea.
I was really pleased with my flowers, it made a lovely table decoration when my kids came round for tea this evening.
This time last weekend I was in London visiting my penfriend. Sam and I started writing to each other around 1977 when we were 12 years old. We connected through the Girl Guides, she lives in Brisbane, so about 12,000 miles away. We’re pretty proud of staying in touch for so many years, it’s waned at times but we’ve kept going! It’s helped that now I’m married to an Australian we’ve been over a few times and managed to meet up. Anyway Sam is now in London for six months so we’re having several weekends together, this time it was my turn to go down to London.
I traveled down on the train, it’s only just over two hours, plenty of time to catch up on some cross-stitch.
Sam is living in south London, I happened to notice there were a couple of nice fabric shops within walking distance of her house so of course we had to pay a little visit!
First shop was Fabrics Galore, it’s certainly well named – it’s a good sized shop full of beautiful fabrics, some interesting ones too, like cork fabric (apparently it’s good for bags!)
I was trying to be good and aim for plain fabrics, as having analysed my stash a bit I realised I’ve lots and lots of patterned lengths but hardly any plains. I treated myself to a length of fine cotton with the idea of making some culottes, and also a heavier cotton in a pretty shade of lavender, which I am still hoping to make into a wrap skirt for our holiday!!
Another 15 minute walk and we were at Sew Over It, the shop that goes with the sewing patterns! It’s only a little shop, but it did have some very nice fabrics. Obviously it stocked the full range of Sew Over It patterns, but it also had a rail of clothes made up from the patterns, which I thought was very helpful. There was obviously a lively sewing class going on downstairs too.
I bought a dress pattern and a remnant of flowery cotton, so my resolve to buy only plains didn’t last too long!!
I loved their sign outside as well, I think I need one of those outside my sewing room!
In the afternoon we visited the Horniman museum, which was a bit more child orientated in places than we realised, but it did have an amazing collection of musical instruments of all kinds, from all over the world, I never new there were so many types of brass instruments! There was also an amazing view over London from their gardens! It was lovely to see a museum that was so busy and bustling with families.
On Sunday we spent the whole day at the Victoria and Albert museum. I must admit I haven’t been for years, probably decades!! I was amazed, it’s a wonderful place, especially for anyone interested in textiles. The V&A is a museum of art and design, so we saw wall hangings woven in the 1500’s, clothes embroidered in the 1600’s, handmade lace, old samplers, needlepoint, as well as furniture, stained glass, sculpture, crafts from all over the world. These gloves and the embroidered casket were absolutely beautiful.
We decided to do one of their free tours at 12.30. Our guide was great, he chose about a dozen items all around the museum all on a certain theme. Our theme was lacquer, so he explained all about the process of applying lacquer (very time consuming, like some pieces would have taken years!) and then showed us lots of very different examples and explained why they were special. We were so impressed with the tour we went back for the 2.30 one! I would certainly recommend these tours as otherwise it’s very easy to just wander round thinking ‘Ooh, isn’t that pretty!’
All in all it was a great weekend, more time with Sam, fabric shopping and a day at the V&A, perfect!
It’s photo challenge time again, this weekly challenge is organised by Postcard from Gibraltar and today’s theme is Movement.
I was tempted to use one of the photos from the windy day when I was trying to photograph my Feel the Sunshine quilt, but instead I’ve chosen a series from a visit to Harewood House last year when the Victoria exhibition was on.
There’s a penguin house at Harewood and I took lots of photos trying to get one of a penguin diving into the water. In fact it was actually quite comical flicking through the photos on my computer, I must have taken them on sports mode as it was just like watching an old-fashioned cine film with them waddling towards the water.
…trying to pluck up courage.
…mid dive
…Splash!
I must have taken about thirty photos to get that shot! I actually prefer another shot of a little one trying to pluck up courage to jump, this one kept trying different jumping spots, trying to find the easiest one 🙂
Next weeks challenge is ‘Cosy’, so there’s a few tacks I could go down with that one 🙂
Somehow or other I seem to have ended up with three little cross-stitch projects on the go, which is a lot, even for me!
Last month I stitched ‘January’ from the Joyful World series by Maja Matyas, I think it’s really pretty and soon after finishing it I started February, my idea was to get a bit a head so I would have the embroidery finished in time to display for the appropriate month.
February is particularly cute with two ducks on it, I stitched the drake but then mislaid the project bag with everything in. I was beginning to think I’d lost it as it’s often in my handbag to snatch a few stitches here and there, maybe it had fallen out…
Whilst I was waiting to find it I decided to start March, so I’ve stitched the stork over the last couple of weeks…
In the meantime I decided to stitch a wedding anniversary card for our anniversary in March. I chose a design I’d seen on facebook by SubRosa. It’s turned out a little bigger than I anticipated so I might make it into a fabric card rather than just mounting it on a card. I made a couple of changes to the pattern, some intentional, some not! I chose four DMC colours which I think work really well together.
I started the embroidery whilst I was visiting my mum, I stitch and chat with her and clearly there was a lot of chatting and not much concentrating as the very first row which was the shaft of the key was about four stitches short!…only I didn’t realise until I had already stitched the head of the key and started the greenery! It was certainly too late to start unpicking it. It did make the key a little short, so I decided to add another twirl on the top of the key head, make it more round. I think it works pretty well!
I think these designs are reproduction ones as the initials were W and R with the date 1776 and there wasn’t any alternative lettering with the pattern. I wanted it to have our initials on and really I was very lucky. It was fairly easy to turn an R into a K for Ken, and what’s an M but an upside down W! I’ve just got some floral corners to stitch and it will be ready to make up.
Last night the February duck waddled out from behind the piano! I was very relieved to find it.
Now for some exciting news!
About a month ago an e-mail came through from Sew and Sew which mentioned the National Needlecraft Awards. There are several categories including ‘Needlecrafter of the Year’, all you had to do was send in a photograph of an embroidery you’re particularly proud of and write a bit about it. On the spur of the moment I filled it in and sent a photo of my flower lattice.
Well I found out today I’ve been short-listed, I’ve to post it down to them for the final judging and I think it will be on display at the Knitting and Stitching show in London next weekend – exciting stuff!! Such a shame I can’t go as I’ll be on my way to Australia!
thecraftycreek 