Friday Photo Challenge

Posted on February 2, 2018 by craftycreeky

The theme of the photo challenge is set by Postcard from Gibraltar, this week it is green, a nice easy theme, but still not easy to pin it down to one photograph!

One thing I love about living where we do is the changing of the seasons and one of my favourite times is the beginning of spring when we get that wonderful vibrant fresh green growth, everything suddenly comes alive. Plants that you’d forgotton about because they completely disappear in the winter suddenly appear as if from no where.

By the time it gets to the end of February, we really have had enough of the winter with it’s short days, cold damp weather, but even now we can feel the days getting longer and green shoots are starting to appear. 

I still can’t pin it down to one photo, these photos were taken in the garden last April as the hostas, iris leaves and primrose leaves were looking all fresh and everything was intermingled with the spring flowers…..not long to go now 🙂

 

Posted in Garden, Photo Challenge, Serendipity | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Eighteen for 18

Posted on February 1, 2018 by craftycreeky

It’s the first day of February already, so how have I done in the first month of my Eighteen for 18 challenge…

  • 1 Etsy store opened; Nothing done but have been thinking!!
  • 2 Tutorials; None as yet.
  • 3 Sessions a week in the garden; This is working really well, I keep telling myself to just go out for 10 minutes, invariably it turns into 20 or 30 minutes (except today when it was flipping freezing!!) I usually manage to fill a feed bag with weeds and dead stuff. The garden is looking noticeably better for a little bit of attention and I’ve noticed all the bulbs appearing.#postcardfromgibfridayphoto
  • 4 Quilts; Nothing finished but I’m progressing fairly well on my Down the Rabbithole quilt and I’ve nearly finished a bright and colourful Kaffe Fassett quilt which is for a wedding in March, and here’s a quick peep of the final layout!Kaffe Fassett Quilt Radiant quilt pattern
  • 5 Craftsy Classes; I’m waiting until after my holiday!
  • 6 New Patterns; Not managed any this month
  • 7 Kits stitched;  None, but I’ll probably take one or two on holiday.
  • 8 Pages in my stitch sampler book; I stitched one page on Chevron stitch.TAST stitch sampler, Chevron stitch
  • 9 Pounds Lost!!! Depending what mood the scales are in I’ve lost about 4lb, I’m happy with that, February should be better as we give up alcohol for the month, I know a lot of people do Sober October or a dry January, but 1st January I’m still in festive mood…and anyway February is shorter!!!
  • 10 Mini Embroideries; Two completed; The travelling sketchbook is still going round in our Embroiderers Guild, so I stitched a daisy in a stained glass window for a book on William Morris. I also embroidered a postcard of Catbells for a quilt block for the Signed, Tealed & Delivered quilt. 

  • 11 Letters to friends; None as yet, overdue writing one post Christmas, so I’ll try and do that this weekend.
  • 12 Boxes or Drawers sorted in sewing room; Yesterday I sorted out my button box, it’s been a big jumble up to now, not easy trying to determine how many of a certain button is in there. I used safety pins to hold little buttons together and perle thread for the bigger ones. I’ve tied matching buttons together, but all the odd ones I’ve linked together by colour, so if I just want an odd dark blue button I can find them!…and no I have no idea why I have so many plain cream buttons!! I’d already got some little jars for craft mixes of buttons and vintage pearl buttons. My button jar is organised 🙂Organising my button box
  • 13 New Recipes; I tried a recipe from the Hairy Bikers Diet book, chicken with chorizo sausage, very nice!
  • 14 Less Lengths in my stash! One less from the coatigan I made and I haven’t bought any!
  • 15 Posts a month; I manage 20 this month, a busy time!
  • 16 cross-stitch smalls; Two, just!! I made the January Joyful World pillow and finally finished a snowdrop that had been sat in my workbox for about 30 years!!
  • 17 items of clothing made.; I finished the Coatigan which I started during a sew-a-long day with my daughter Helen.Coatigan
  • 18 Walks; We just managed to get a walk in, though it was touch and go! Our aim is to walk on a Sunday at least once each month but the weeks went by with various commitments and it came to last Sunday, our final chance and it was wet and miserable. However we decided to brave the weather and had a short walk on Otley Chevin, probably only about 3 miles, but we did it!!

So not a bad start to the year, just got to keep it up!

 

Posted in Dressmaking, Eighteen for 18, embroidery, Garden, Serendipity | 14 Comments

Two January Smalls

Posted on January 31, 2018 by craftycreeky

At the eleventh hour I’ve just completed two little cross-stitch smalls for January! I finished piecing the centre of my Kaffe Fassett quilt this afternoon and having decided I really didn’t have enough scraps to make a piano key border, I’ve ordered some extra fabric  instead. Whilst waiting for it to arrive I decided I could do some finishing of little projects.

First to be finished was the January cross-stitch with a cute fox on. This is part of a 2016 stitch-a-long called Joyful World, it’s by Maja Matyas of The Snowflower Diaries. She has kindly made them available for free, I found the easiest way to download the patterns was to join the Joyful World SAL page on facebook. The patterns are designed to either be stitched as one big calendar or lots of little ones, there’s even fancy borders available too!

Joyful world January

I’ve kept it nice and simple and just stitched the basic design, mainly because I wanted to keep it small. I’ve backed it with a coordinating fabric which I had left from my splendid sampler quilt, it’s a perfect match. I was hoping to put some mini pompoms round the edge but the ones I had in my stash were creamy and it looked wrong against the white of the stitching. I tried white ric-rac, but that was too white!! In the end I just stitched it into a pillow and then made a cord from two of the embroidery silks to finish the edge. I felt it needed a little something at the top by the loop, I tried a little ribbon bow, but that didn’t look right. I’ve stitched a little button on, I’m still not sure about it so it might get changed if I spot something better.Joyfulworld January from Snowflake Diaries

Cross-stitch snowdropMy second finish (I was on a roll by then!) is actually a UFO from about thirty years ago!! I did about three of these from a booklet. It’s been sitting in my workbox ever since whilst I decided what to do with it. I’ve been looking at it over the last few weeks and suddenly realised what was wrong with it…

…it’s not a lily it’s a snowdrop!! Well it looks more like a snowdrop to me! Of course snowdrops puts it right in season for my dispay of cross-stitch smalls!

Late this afternoon I unpicked ‘lily’ and stitched ‘snowdrop’ instead. I did it freehand, working backwards so I didn’t run out of room! I always have to concentrate when I’m ‘writing’ backwards as otherwise letters end up back to front or words mispelled.Cross-stitch snowdrop

I then got a bit carried away. I wanted to make it an oblong pillow so I decided to add a few embroidery stitches on the side. Now Sharon from Pintangle has just started a new series of TAST (Take a Stitch Tuesday) where everyone learns a new stitch every Tuesday, this weeks is herringbone, so I decided to stitch a row of herringbone. I then thought I could add fly-stitch which was week two…and lazy-daisy which was week three. In the end I decided I may as well add running stitch for week one!! So I’ve stitched the first four stitches of TAST in one little pillow!Cross-stitch snowdrop

To finish the pillow I stitched a strip of the same soft green fabric I used for the fox. I hand stitched a length of lace and added some beads. I was planning to add some vintage pearl buttons but I decided the lace was sufficient.

I’m really pleased with how my snowdrop has turned out, especially as I was just making it up as I went a long. I’ll put them both on display for a few weeks, they go nicely together too!

Posted in embroidery, Serendipity, TAST | Tagged , , | 25 Comments

Bright and Cheerful

Posted on January 30, 2018 by craftycreeky

I’m making a quilt as a wedding present, I  need to finish it by the end of February so I’m putting other projects to one side to concentrate on it. The happy couple asked for a bright and cheerful quilt in reds and oranges…not my usual palette as many of you will realise!

I chose a fat quarter bundle in reds and selection of yellow prints too. The pattern is called Radiant by Cosy Quilt Designs, I’d seen a couple on facebook and loved the effect. It’s actually a pretty simple quilt to make, just a set of squares in red and blue and another set in yellow and cream. They are then stitched across the diagonal to make two squares of half triangles.

The finished squares are meant to be 9″, I trimmed them to 8.75″ to square off any imperfections in my blocks! There’s 64 blocks altogether so it seemed to take forever to get through the pile of squares, but at least I know they should all go together nicely.

All I had to do was arrange the blocks in the pattern! I very quickly decided to just concentrate on the red block fabrics and pretty much ignore the yellow. I love how the pattern works out, you get a sort of Wow feeling as it appears in front of you with every square you put down. The one fabric I did hesitate over was the plainer looking red, it is a Kaffe Fassett print, but it’s from a different range, in the end I decided to place that one fabric more regularly, rather than random like the others. I think it’s worked ok.

Tonight I’m planning to stitch all the squares together, so if anyone thinks something needs moving, please shout out quickly 🙂

The quilt will have a narrow cream border and then probably a piano key border to use up all the leftovers. Hopefully I’ll be quilting it by the weekend.


Update!

Thanks for everyone’s comments and help, especially Claire and Kate, it always helps to have extra pairs of eyes and ideas. Claire suggested continuing the red triangles into the centre, it works so much better, just looks balanced. I’ve spaced out the greens a bit more evenly as Kate suggested, though  I might have one last go at that green in the top left hand corner!

So here’s my new layout, please excuse the photo, I’m taking it standing on a little stool with my arms stretched out over the quilt, not a great position for someone with no balance 🙂DSC_0016 (2)

Posted in Quilting, Serendipity | Tagged , , | 24 Comments

Down the Rabbit Hole HQAL 4

Posted on January 28, 2018 by craftycreeky

It’s three weeks since I showed you the hand-stitching on my Down the Rabbit Hole quilt, I’m working on the deep applique rabbit borders and they do seem to be taking a long time! This is where I was three weeks ago…

Down the Rabbit Hole Quilt

Since then I’ve been stitching more stems and leaves on, these leaves seem to go on forever!! I haven’t got as much as I hoped stitched as I decided I really needed to concentrate on the quilt I’m making for a wedding which needs to be ready to gift by the end of February.

My plan is that once I’ve finished a side I will stitch it on to the main quilt and then do a final length of vine curling round to the leaping rabbit as my rabbit isn’t really jumping high enough to have flowers growing underneath it!

DSC_0001 (4)

I took it with me to my Embroiderers Guild meeting which meant I had a good few hours stitching it…but still a long way to go! I’ve finished the first length and I’m about half way through the second length of vine. Once this side is stitched I have to repeat it all over again for the final side!!DSC_0002 (3)

It’s getting increasingly difficult to photograph this quilt as it gets bigger and bigger. To give you an idea of size these applique sides are now about 84″ long, two widths of fabric! I’m going to have a big push to get these leaves finished over the next three weeks, so we’ll see how I do…

This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another.  If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.
Kathy, Lori, Kerry, Emma, Tracy, Deb, Connie, Deborah,  Susan, Jessisca,  Sherry, Nanette, Sassy, Edith, Sharon and Bella.

Linking up with Kathy’s Quilts (a different Kathy!) for Slow Stitching Sunday too. Follow the link for even more hand-stitching to inspire you!

Posted in Down The Rabbit Hole, Quilt-a-long, Quilting, Serendipity | Tagged , , | 34 Comments

A January Small

Posted on January 27, 2018 by craftycreeky

INVITATIONLast year on pinterest I saw a collection of little cross-stitch designs, one for each month of the year. They were very pretty and I eventually traced them back to the Snowflower Diaries the designer is Maja Matyas. The series is called Joyful World and they are designed to either be stitched separately or as one big calendar. Further investigation led me to a facebook page called Joyful World SAL, all the patterns are free and downloadable from the facebook page, if you fancy joining the facebook page, just be patient as they seem to add new members every couple of weeks or so.

I’m planning to stitch them all as individual ‘smalls’, ideally I need to get a month a head so I can have the appropriate month on display!

Maja uses The Gentle Art thread which are probably very slightly variegated, however she kindly gives the DMC alternative too, so I’m using that.

Of course despite having a large collection of DMC threads, I still needed to buy a few more, whilst I was at Hobbycraft I was tempted by yet another pair of embroidery scissors, well they are such a pretty colour! The design includes some white flowers so to make them stand out  I decided to stitch it on Permin ‘rain’ evenweave linen, I bought it for my etui box, it’s a lovely soft green/grey shade, perfect for a wintery scene.DSC_0003 (2)

I managed to stitch January over the last week or so. The bottom row of stitches are eyelet stitches in alternate shades of green, the rest is in cross-stitch. The design includes a border too but I decided it was big enough without adding another 1″ of border for what I wanted. I just need to make it up into a pillow or mount it on cardboard.

I think they’re lovely designs, simple and cute without being twee! They are also a perfect size for popping in my handbag to stitch whilst I’m visiting my mum. Next months is gorgeous, two ducks, I’m looking forward to stitching it.DSC_0001 (2)

I’m linking up with Kathy’s Quilts tomorrow for Slow Stitching Sunday, a celebration of all things hand sewn, why not follow the link and see what everyone else has been creating.

 

Posted in embroidery, Serendipity | Tagged , , | 23 Comments

Friday Photo Challenge

Posted on January 26, 2018 by craftycreeky

The Friday Photo Challenge is organised by Postcard from Gibraltar, the theme she has given us for today is  Hobby, I’ve decided to slightly retitle mine to…

More than a Hobby!

I’m thinking outside the box here so bear with me! A hobby is a type of bird of prey, it’s a small falcon, about the size of a kestrel. I think the nearest we have round here is the peregrine falcons up at Malham Cove.

What we do have round here are red kites, they are stunning birds with a wingspan of nearly 2m, reddish brown plummage and an unmistakeable forked tail. They are much more spectacular than a hobby in my opinion!

They have been saved from extinction here by one of the worlds longest running protection programmes. They have successfully been reintroduced into the wild and one of the nesting sites is at Harewood House, just down the road from us, so we regularly see them circling around on the thermals above our house or when we are out and about. I love seeing them around, it’s a bit like seeing a rainbow, how ever many you see you still smile and think ‘Oh look, a rainbow’. The kites have been at Harewood for nearly twenty years and there’s now nearly 300 in the surrounding area and further afield in Yorkshire but we still point them out and say ‘Ooh look, a red kite!’

Last time I visited Harewood they were circling fairly low so I managed to get a couple of good photos…

DSC_0277I couldn’t decide which was the best photo…DSC_0276 (2)

so here’s my three photos for the hobby challenge 🙂

DSC_0272 (2)Next Friday’s photo challenge is Green, so I think I feel a garden photo coming on!

Posted in Photo Challenge, Serendipity | Tagged , | 9 Comments

Unique Bloggers Award.

Posted on January 25, 2018 by craftycreeky

unique-blogger-awardI was well chuffed just after Christmas to be nominated by Tierneycreates for the Unique Bloggers award. It’s the first time I’ve been nominated for an award so it did give me a bit of a lift, so thank you for the nomination.

As part of the acceptance I have to answer three questions set by Tierney, at this point I nearly bottled it 🙂 …

  1. What mythical creature would improve the world most if it existed?   
  2. What would be the coolest animal to scale up to the size of a horse?
  3. What ridiculous and untrue, yet slightly plausible, theories can you come up with for the cause of common ailments like headaches or cavities?

Anyway, here’s my answers;

  1. Unicorn, everyone would love a unicorn (and it’s the only mythical creature I can think of!!)
  2. A golden retriever, though the hair shedding would be even more of a nightmare!
  3. Lack of creative activity, not enough sewing or creating in general to release tensions and stresses 🙂

I would now like to nominate some of my favourite blogs, please don’t feel obliged to continue this onwards, it’s just my way of saying thank you for inspiring me.

My three questions are…

  1. What’s your earliest sewing memory?
  2. What have you made that you are really proud of?
  3. Is there another craft you would like to try?

If anyone is wondering, here’s my answers;

  1. Sitting with a square of binca aged about three, embroidering running stitch around it, probably a ploy to keep me quiet !
  2. This is a hard one for me, as there are a few very different things; my wedding dress, all lace and beads, My Splendid Sampler quilt as I learnt so much making it and it was a pretty big undertaking with two blocks a week for a year! Recently it would have to be my flower trellis embroidery, just so far out of my comfort zone…as my mum would say, ‘there’s no such thing as I can’t’
  3. Oooh, weaving, needlefelting, goldwork, silver jewellery…but I really can’t start another craft 🙂

 

 

Posted in Serendipity | 14 Comments

A Splash of Colour

Posted on January 24, 2018 by craftycreeky

We’re going to a family wedding in March, it’s in Sydney so it’s quite exciting as we’re combining it with a big holiday. I offered to make the happy couple a quilt as a wedding present, I have to confess to slight ulterior motives here, I travel fairly light anyway and if I take the weight of a quilt with me, I know I can buy a quilt weight of fabrics in Bali, the second part of our holiday!!

Anyway, I have a quilt to make by the end of February, so I thought I’d better start it! I asked the happy couple what colour they would like and as their home is fairly neutral they would like something bright and cheerful in reds and oranges. I was pretty excited with this idea as I keep seeing stunning colourful quilts on the internet, but I know they just wouldn’t fit in with our colours at home. My immediate thought was ‘I feel a Kaffe Fassett quilt coming on’CQD01031

I bought the Big Blooms book by Kaffe which has some wonderfully colourful quilts in, this gave my ideas on how to use his fabrics which are big and bold. I’ve decided to make a Radiant quilt which is a pattern by Cosy Quilts Designs. I bought five red prints, a blue one for contast, and six yellow/orange ones. I already had some cream in to use as the light contrast.DSC_0001

The pattern doesn’t seem to be as complicated as it looks at first glance. I cut everything out yesterday and started sewing the first couple of blocks. The design is made from two different blocks, a red one with the blue contrast and an orange one with a cream contrast. Once all these are made I will put one of each together and stitch either side of the diagonal line, cut them apart so I have two new blocks. Of course I couldn’t resist having a play with the first couple of blocks…DSC_0010

I wasn’t sure about the cream at first, but having seen it in daylight this morning I think it will look fine.

Well she asked for bright and colourful…DSC_0022 (2)

Posted in Quilting, Serendipity | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

Tall Year Square Etui SAL 1

Posted on January 21, 2018 by craftycreeky

Last year I happened to see a photograph of a beautiful embroidered etui box, I traced it back to a Classic Inspirations magasine so I ordered it immediately. My mum used to get Classic Inspirations years ago, they are an Australian embroidery magasine and they really are in a class of their own, I highly recommend them as they really do inspire!! When it arrived there were three projects I particularly liked, so I have the next three projects lined up for the stitch-a-long! Tall Year Square Classic Inspirations

The Tall Year Square etui is designed by Betsy Morgan of the USA. Each side reflects a different season with different colour fabrics and threads, the designs have seasonal motifs but also have border patterns running around the box. I ordered the different shades of Permin 32 count linen, I didn’t realise there were so many gorgeous shades of linen!!

The threads were more of an issue as Betsy uses Gloriana stranded silk. I’m sure these are absolutely beautiful and wonderful to use, but they are £5.76 each here in the UK and she uses over thirty colours!!! I decided to stick with DMC at £1 each instead, especially as I already have a large collection.I prevaricated for a while as I was trying to find DMC threads of the same variegated colour range, this clearly wasn’t going to be possible.

I decided to choose my own seasonal colours, I started with spring and thought about what colours I think of when I think of spring. For me it’s fresh green leaves, yellow daffodils, bluebells and a touch of pink cherry blossom. I looked through my DMC variegated threads and chose five as a starting point.Choosing embroidery threads

I’ve started at the bottom with a little flower border in cross-stitch.It took me a while to get my head round stitching individual cross-stitches each time rather than rows as that way the variegation is clearest. The narrow green row is a long legged cross-stitch stitched with a single strand of thread, that’s repeated several times up the side. The satin stitch triangles are stitched with two strands to give enough cover.

Second or third attempt at colours!!

The charts provided have taken a bit of getting used to as they show every thread, rather than a box per cross-stitch as I’m used to. I’ve just finished the wavy border, it took several attempts and lots of unpicking before I was happy with the colours. My first thought was to use plain thread  rather than variegated as I didn’t want to end up with too much variegation overall. The DMC website suggests that the Colaris range use four actual thread colours in each variegation. I was hoping they would specify which ones so I could use them for the waves. I couldn’t find any information on this so I tried matching from my collection, but half way into the second wave I just wasn’t happy and unpicked it all.

In the end  after several attempts I just used a different variegated thread for each one, two of them I’d used in the lower borders, and I’m sure I’ll repeat the others too so hopefully it will give it a bit of continuity.

I’m pleased with my first efforts, though at the moment it takes longer to choose the colour than it does to actually stitch the border! Hopefully once spring is completed and I have a bit more of an idea on how the colours work the decisions on the other three seasons won’t take as long. It’s actually pretty small, less than three inches across and about 7″ tall.Tall Year Square Classic Inspirations

The stitch-a-long is organised by Avis of Stitching by the Sea, there quite a few of us now all stitching our own choice of projects. Why not have a look what everyone else is stitching, just follow the links to see some stunning projects;

Avis, Claire, Gun, Carole, LucyAnn, Kate, Jess, Sue, Constanze, Debbierose, Christina,

Kathy, Cindy, Helen, Steph, Linda, Catherine, Mary Margaret,

Heidi, Connie, Jackie

Everyone is in different time scales, so if there isn’t a post when you first look, check later in the day. If you fancy joining us for the SAL, just send a message to Avis.

Posted in embroidery, Serendipity, Stitch-a-long | Tagged , , , | 52 Comments