Four Lakes Walk

Posted on September 27, 2017 by craftycreeky

My friend and I aim to do a long distance walk each year, we started about five years ago with the Six Dales walk, which goes from Otley (where I live) up to Middleham in the Yorkshire Dales, crossing six dales during the 38 mile walk. We take these walks at a fairly easy pace of about 10 miles a day. The following year it got a bit longer, 84 miles of the Dales Way from Ilkley (just up the road) to Windermere in the Lakes. During the two years following we did the Bay2Bay walk, this is a walk starting in Grassington (further up Wharfedale) , one year we walked to the east coast to Robin Hoods Bay and the year after we walked west to Barrow in Furness in Cumbria, 100 miles each way, so we have actually walked across Britain!

This year, for various reasons, neither of us was fit enough to manage a long walk, so we decided to do the Lortondale walk in the Lake District. It’s a three day walk, the web site said 10, 7 and 9 miles each day, they would carry all our bags to the next B&B and the best bit…we were provided with a taxi to take us to the top of the first hill!!! That sold it!

It was sunny when we drove up to Keswick so we went the scenic route up through the lakes, rather than whizzing round them on the motorway. It turned out a bit more scenic than we planned as the main road was closed near Keswick so we drove over the Kirkstone Pass to Ullswater, the view from the top of the pass was amazing! You can just make out the road snaking down to Ambleside and Windermere.

The hotel for the first night (and the last) was in a perfect spot in Keswick, overlooking the park, five minutes walk from the lake, this was the view from the dining room window…Catbells!

Continue reading →

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Memories in my Stitch Book

Posted on September 24, 2017 by craftycreeky

View from our hotel!

I’ve just had a few days away in the Lake District, walking the fells with a friend. We had a great time, if somewhat tiring! Of course I had to take a little stitching to keep me amused in the evenings! I decided to take another double page spread of my stitch dictionary.

I started this project a couple of months ago as a small portable bit of stitching. It’s not quite as portable as I envisaged as inevitably I need to be near a mobile or my computer for a lot of it to get the instructions off Pintangle. Sharon on Pintangle has created an amazing resource with her stitch dictionary, hundreds of different stitches with easy to follow instructions and lots of examples!  I’m trying to stitch all 100 TAST stitches in a fabric book, I’ve put them all into stitch groups so this time I started with a page on cretan stitch, number 4 of the TAST stitches. I used DMC 4515 for all these stitches. Continue reading →

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Lizzie Stitch-a-long

Posted on September 17, 2017 by craftycreeky

Lizzie Stitching WalletI’m doing two stitch-a-longs at the moment, the Lizzie Stitching Wallet by Faby Reilly and my stumpwork and silk ribbon flower lattice. I’m posting about both today so if you are looking for the flower lattice SAL, just scroll down, it’s the post before this one!

The Lizzie Stitching Wallet is a very pretty design with hydrangeas and lisianthus, with slots for scissors and needles etc, perfect for me to take to Embroiderers Guild meetings. Faby Reilly, the designer, is releasing a new section of the pattern every one to two weeks, I’ve just finished section 8 in time for the new section to be revealed tomorrow. Continue reading →

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Stitch-a-long 15

Posted on September 17, 2017 by craftycreeky

Well at this rate I might have a happy dance by Christmas 🙂 It’s three weeks since I showed you my silk ribbon and stumpwork flower panel, I’d just finished the panel with a dragonfly on.Stumpwork and Ribbon Embroidery

I spent another few evening stitching the next panel, an orange tree in a wicker basket…

The first part to stitch was the wicker basket, this was done on a spare piece of cotton, the top edge is a wire oval couched down, it does give a nice firm edge to the basket. The main body of the basket is woven, so I stitched a few long straight stitches and then wove the thread from one side to the other. I used a variegated perle thread which does give a nice effect.DSC_0002

Once stitched I then had to make a small running stitch around the basket and then cut it out close to the gathering stitch and right next to the wired part. It’s meant to be padded with toy stuffing but of course I couldn’t find any in my sewing room so I used a couple of circles of batting scraps instead. I gathered the edges in and then stitched it to the panel with the batting just giving it a gently rounded look. Continue reading →

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Elephants on Parade

Posted on September 16, 2017 by craftycreeky

It’s nearly happy dance time!! I’ve finally finished the top for Helen’s elephant quilt, it’s sandwiched, ‘just’ needs quilting and binding!Elephant Quilt

Last time I showed you this quilt I was just starting to stitch the elephant blocks together and was arranging a meeting with my friendly stitch ripper to sort out a miscreant elephant block the following morning. Luckily it didn’t take too long or too many seams to sort out.

Having stitched the five rows of blocks together I tried it on Helen’s bed and decided it really needed a bit more length. I couldn’t face another six elephants so I decided to do a piano key border top and bottom in all the bright batiks, followed by a grey batik border to give it a bit of stability. I think the piano keys work brilliantly, they’re about 4.5″ deep and they really bring the colours out in the quilt.

DSC_0021 (2)I went shopping in Skipton for some backing, I was looking for some dress-weight batik, I’ve used it a few times and it makes a nice soft back, it’s also considerably cheaper than quilting batiks! I’ve seen loads over the summer, but of course now I want some there’s none to be found. I went in the two main fabric shops in Skipton, nothing! The assistant in one shop suggested I tried Boyes. They had a batik there which had blue and green background, a bit subdued, but the main pattern was pink and orange elephants!!! It’s not a perfect match colourwise but I decided it was meant to be!!DSC_0001

 

My original thought was to have a scrappy colourful binding, however I decided with the backing a simple grey one would work better, so I’ve cut out all my binding strips ready.

This morning I sandwiched the quilt on the lounge floor using 505 basting spray, I love that smoothed out perfect look when it’s all pinned to the floor!

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I’ve just got to quilt it now. I’m thinking of doing my usual all over pattern of waves and points. It’ll be one of the biggest quilts I’ve tackled on my sewing machine, so I don’t want to make things complicated for myself. It’s Helen’s birthday on Monday so I’ve no chance of finishing it for then but at least she knows I’m nearly there 🙂

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Swishy Tails and Beady Eyes

Posted on September 11, 2017 by craftycreeky

I’ve been trying today to get Helen’s quilt top finished, but it’s not going to happen today, I’ve got myself into a slight pickle with it which will need a fresh head to sort out, not a midnight head!!

I’ve been hand-sewing all the tails, eyes and little spikes of hair today. I decided to use perle thread as it’s a decent weight and I also happen to have a box full of lovely colours! I used chain stitch for the tails, the pattern (Elephants by Laundry Basket Quilts) has fabric tails, but I felt having the tails just hanging straight down made them look a bit miserable, by embroidering them I could make happy, swishy tails. I had quite a bit of fun embroidering the tails, there’s one on each line holding the next one’s tail, some swish upwards, some curl downwards, inwards, outwards….The coloured elephants have tails in co-ordinating colours whereas the grey elephants have either a light or a dark grey tail, which ever would show up best.

I spotted some small black buttons on Otley market yesterday, when I said I wanted thirty she did me a deal, so that worked out well! I did debate when to stitch them on as I’m sure they are going to annoy me when I try and quilt near them however I didn’t want black thread showing through to the back and it would have been difficult to avoid it. I stitched them on and with the last stitch I added a tiny silver bead to add a little twinkle in their eyes. 

The elephants all have three spikes of hair on the top of their heads, just made with a few straight stitches in the same perle thread. I think they look pretty cute!

I finally finished all the hand-stitching so I decided to stitch the rows together, planning to buy my backing and batting tomorrow in Skipton. The bottom two rows went together easily. As the stripes inbetween are random lengths I didn’t have any direct seams to match up, this made it easier but also made me lazy with pinning and checking!

The third row seemed to be going on fine but when I got to near the end I realised I would be about 2″ short!! I checked a few squares and they were all 11.5″ so I decided it was just tension between the top and the bottom. Out came my friend the stitch ripper. I pinned but it was still out, when I double checked my blocks, one is way out at the top, like 3/4″ out, it doesn’t look like a trapezium but it obviously is!! The pink one is the guilty one, it’s ok at the bottom, just the top edge needs sorting. It shouldn’t be too hard but I want a clear head to sort it out.

I’m linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, why not have a look what every one else has been stitching.

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Summer Review

Posted on September 10, 2017 by craftycreeky

I started the year really good, remembering to do a review of each month, but for the last few months I’ve remembered half way through the next month and then it seems too late! Let’s face it, we’re almost a third of the way through September!! I’ve decided to do a seasonal round-up instead, so here’s my review of summer here on the Crafty Creek… I’ve got quite a few things on the go!

Quilting

My Down the Rabbit Hole quilt has come on leaps and bounds (sorry for the pun!) In the middle of June I had just finished making all the houses having got a bit behind, it looked like this;

Over the summer we finished the village border with some suns in the corners and then moved onto the next deep border where the suns became sunflowers and they were joined by large dresden flowers which caused a few consternation’s in the colour planning department. I’ve learned alot stitching this quilt and it’s certainly pushed me out of my comfort zone more than a few times. This month we’ve got a narrow border of elongated hexagons to stitch, I’ve not even started cutting out yet!

Just at the end of summer I’ve started another quilt for Helen, Elephants on Parade, hopefully that will be finished in time for her birthday in the middle of September.

Embroidery

I think over the summer I’ve been most pleased with my progress on my Flower Lattice which I’ve been stitching as part of the stitch-a-long. I’d only done a little ribbon work before and stumpwork was completely new to me when I started this project. It’s taking a lot longer than I anticipated, mainly because it’s not very mobile. At the beginning of the summer I had stitched just five of the diamonds, I’d just finished the one with yellow irises on…

Over the summer I’ve managed to stitch another four diamonds, I’ve just started stitching the basket ready for the orange tree so watch this space. With just three diamonds left to stitch the end is in sight so I’m starting to plan my next big embroidery project!

I also started another stitch-a-long, this time with Faby Reilly, we’re stitching a Lizzie Stitching Wallet, I’m planning to use it for my embroidery needles and scissors when I go to my Embroiderers Guild meetings. Over the summer we’ve stitched the outside and now we’re stitching the inside, it’s looking really pretty, decorated with lisianthus and hydrangeas. Faby releases a new section every one or two weeks.

As if I didn’t have enough projects I’ve also started a fabric stitch book, I started it as something I could pick up and put down, a portable project. In reality it often isn’t as I’m basing it on TAST on Pintangle where Sharon has a list of 100 stitches, she’s been releasing one a week but I’ve come in at the end, which means I can do a page on each group of stitches. I find I often need to be by my computer for the instructions! She’s started a new facebook page on Fabric Books which has whetted my appetite to do some other books. In the meantime I’ve stitched two double page spreads…

Over the summer I was also working on my entry for the Travelling Sketchbook, I stitched a little hardanger sampler with bilberries on, finished a silk ribbon poppy and embroidered entries for my Embroiderers Guild sketchbooks.

Dressmaking;

I have managed to do a little dressmaking as well, not as much as I wanted but I did finally manage to make a pair of trousers, a pair of Ultimate Trousers no less and they have been a great success, they are so comfy to wear and have been greatly admired as well!The dress of the summer was definitely my shirt-waister with the red flowers on which I made over Easter, I’ve worn it so many times and still feel special in it. I liked it so much I made another with the same pattern, this time using a silk/cotton mix which feels wonderful on. I still haven’t managed to find the perfect belt for it but I did manage to improve on the buttons with some mussel shell buttons from Duttons, they’re really light and thin with a lovely sheen in inky blue colours.

Stash Report!

DSC_0001It was May when I last did my stash report! I have managed to use more than I bought, so it’s still going down, albeit rather slowly! I’ve only succumbed to one length of fabric ( I don’t count quilting stuff so I can still get my fabric fix!) I went to the Northern Quilt Festival with my Mum last weekend and I fell for a jacket length, well I think officially it might be curtain weight fabric, but I think it will make a gorgeous autumn jacket! It’s linen / cotton mix so it’s washable, myself and a lady next to me were oohing over it, she was making curtains, but when I said I was thinking of a coat I think she was very tempted!! I’m thinking of another Coatigan…

Stash at end of April     53 lengths

Fabric used                     2 lengths

Fabric bought                 1 length

Total at end of summer 52 lengths!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Down The Rabbit Hole, Dressmaking, embroidery, Serendipity | Tagged , , | 23 Comments

Elephants on Parade

Posted on September 9, 2017 by craftycreeky

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been busy working on a new quilt, I was hoping it would be pretty quick to make, I’m making good progress but it is taking somewhat longer than anticipated!

Last December my daughter Helen decided she would like a new quilt for Christmas. She had just moved into Army accommodation to start her three year nurse training and it all looked very drab. She wanted a colourful quilt to cheer it up. Of course I said yes, but pointed out that I wouldn’t have time to even start it, let alone finish it in time for Christmas…and the weeks went by…

It’s her birthday mid September so I have a new date to aim for! These months have not been completely idle with the project, we’ve been working out exactly what she wants and I’ve been working out how to do it!

She wanted an elephant quilt in Bohemian colours! For the design I found two contenders, Paisley Splash by Windham Fabrics and Elephants by Laundry Basket Quilts. She chose Elephants but wanted it double bed size. I made the Paisley Splash pattern up for a charity quilt in the spring.

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So the elephant bit wasn’t too difficult to sort, but what would you call bohemian colours!! To me it is dark backgrounds with bright, jewel-like colours, deep pinks, purples, blues, I tried googling it to check but that didn’t help at all so I showed her a selection of fabrics and she seems happy! As it happened I had quite a few suitable fabrics in as I was planning to make a pansy quilt so I’d been collecting batics in pansy colours, the pansy quilt was obviously never going to get made so Helen’s quilt was the perfect project to use them on. I also had a layer cake from Hannah’s Room in dark pastel shades, some of which looked suitable. We also went to Embsay to get a background fabric and I spotted three batiks in elephant grey! Perfect, I thought!! With hindsight we might have been better with a darker grey, but elephant grey seemed a good choice for an elephant quilt!

The elephants are all on a 10 x 12″ background. My design has evolved whilst making the quilt as I saw how the colours worked together. The grey muted the colours a lot more than I thought it would, some of them are pretty bright batiks but actually the lighter ones worked better than the bright ones.  My plan now is to have five rows of six elephants, two of the rows are bright backgrounds with grey elephants and the other three are grey background with a bright elephant. In between each row is a 2″ strip of grey and another of colours, this gives me a bit more length for  the quilt.

I stitched the coloured elephants first. I used bondaweb and a narrow zig-zag stitch round them. I happened to have two reels of a pink/purple/green Gutermann variegated thread in my stash, so I decided to try it. When I was stitching the first elephant I really wasn’t sure as it does come out a bit stripy, but when I stood back I liked it, it’s almost like a binding edge around it, even better it brought all the fabric colours together, I could use it on all the elephants as a unifying factor. The basic elephant shape took about 10 minutes to go round, which doesn’t sound too bad, except there are thirty of them so that’s about six hours!!! The grey elephants are stitched with a grey variegated thread which just adds a lighter outline to the dark elephants.

My first major dilemma was the ears!! Do I try contrasting ears or co-ordinating ears! I’d managed to find eighteen different fabrics for the eighteen coloured elephants and I’d cut a body and an ear out in each so there was an unlimited number of variations!! I took a photo of each and asked on the quilting page on facebook, both photos were liked but it did help me decide on co-ordinated!

My original thought with the grey elephants was to do a pink row and a blue row, but having arranged them they looked much better mixed up. The strips are varying lengths of 2″, this way I didn’t have to worry about matching seams or trying to co-ordinate colors again, I could just stitch them on!

Last night I arranged all the squares on the floor, played with them a bit and stitched them into rows. Looking at the photo above the picture really doesn’t bring the colours out, it’s a lot more colourful than it looks!!

I’ve decided to embroider the tails on to the elephants. Somehow I think the long fabric tails hanging down in the pattern make the elephant look sad, mine are going to have twirly, swishy, happy tails with two of them linking up on each row. I’ve got a big box of colourful perle threads so I’m using those and chain stitching the tail with straight stitches at the end. After the tails I’ve just to stitch the eyes (probably beads) and maybe a little tuft of hair on their foreheads.

DSC_0011 (2)Helen saw it last night and she likes it, especially the tails 🙂

 

 

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TAST Stitch Sampler Book

Posted on September 3, 2017 by craftycreeky

TAST2012logoA couple of months ago I started a stitch sampler book, I’d recently discovered TAST (Take a Stitch Tuesday) over on Pintangle where Sharon has an amazing stitch dictionary. She’s made a collection of 100 stitches from this and the idea is that you learn one a week, she’s up to about 95, so almost finished, but she’s starting again in the new year if you’re interested. Sharon has also just started a new Facebook page called Fabric Books, within days there were hundreds of members and some amazing work to see. I posted a couple of photos of my first set of pages and got several questions, so I said I would try and write a more detailed post about my fabric book. Please remember though this is the first one I’ve done so I’m making it up as I go along and apologies for those of you who will have seen some of this before!!

I’d seen pictures on Million Little Stitches of Maya Matthews fibre books and also Sharons 30′ long stitch sampler, both of which helped me formulate my ideas;

I decided to do a page on each stitch group, I’ve now gone through the TAST list and some groups are clearly going to take two if not three pages, like chain stitch, there’s dozens of chain stitch variations!! I’ve managed to get them into about twelve groups.

I’m edging the double pages with back stitch, making a ruler as I go along to make it easier to count, each double page spread measures 90 by 130 stitches, I’m using 32 count even weave linen. The back-stitch will be used to stitch the pages together, using a whip stitch, I’m hoping to put a few beads down the edges as well, make it look pretty!! I’m leaving a border of about 8 stitches around each page, on the second one I tacked a line down to mark the inside edge, I found this a lot easier than trying to count each time, much as I hate tacking!!

I’m using the book to record a few other things as well. I’m using different coloured linens, this ones called French Lace, I’ve got four other colours plus ivory. I’m also using a different variegated DMC thread for each one and recording the number as part of the page. I do like the DMC varigated threads and I thought this is a good way of seeing how different colours stitch up.

I want this to be a journal as well as just a stitch sampler.so I’m adding entries about where I’ve stitched it, or special days, I’ll include news events as long as they’re fairly positive! So my Fly stitch sampler was started in Skipton and I started embroidering the blanket stitch page on August 1st, which is Yorkshire Day.

I’ve only just finished the blanket stitch page, this is stitched in DMC 4506 which is a lovely skein in green, blue and yellow, I think it’s really fresh and ‘springy’. This is the second page of buttonhole variations so this time I’ve stitched the following;

From top to bottom;

  • Barb stitch; I like this one, it’s two rows of buttonhole stitched back to back and then whip-stitched together.
  • Bonnet; Not so sure on this one, it looks a bit clumsy to me…
  • Wheel cup; I like this, it’s basically a buttonhole wheel with a second row of buttonhole stitched onto the circle, you can carry on with more rows if you want a deeper cup.
  • Feathered Up and Down (going down the left side); I can see this being quite useful in flowery embroideries.
  • Fancy Bobbin Edging; first attempt! It’s sort of got a twist/knot at the base of each stitch.
  • Fancy bobbin edging; second attempt. I used thicker thread and varied the height too. It definitely looks better in the thicker thread.
  • Alternating up & down; I liked stitching this one, it sort of has a nice movement as the second stitch moves down!
  • Beaded hebedo edge; This starts off with a base of long and short cross-stitch, the long stitches are used as the base for the buttonhole ‘swags’ and the beads go over the cross-stitch. Very pretty.
  • Buttonhole cable chain; My favourite I think on this page, I had to learn to do cable chain stitch first, this is the base stitch, I then buttonholed over the bottom edge of the chain. There were lots of variations, like buttonholing both sides, or alternate sides.
  • Shisha mirror; I first used shisha mirrors just a couple of months ago, I’m still not confident I’m doing the stitch right but it feels like a variation of button hole stitch. I used a simple buttonhole as a second row around the edge.
  • Buttonhole wheel; Nice and simple, a circle of buttonhole stitch.

I’m beginning to think I need to make an index for this book, either a stitched one at the back or a written one separately. I’ve still not decided how to do it so any suggestions welcome. My issue with a stitched one at the moment is that I’m not stitching in the order they will go in the book, as I want the coloured linens mixed through the book. I don’t want to be left at the end with a huge index to stitch, so really I would have to do a small index for each page, cut them out and collage them together…as I say, suggestions welcome!

I’m linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, why not follow the link and see what everyone else has been stitching.

 

Posted in embroidery, Serendipity, TAST, Textile Books | Tagged , , , | 18 Comments

Lizzie Stitching Wallet

Posted on September 2, 2017 by craftycreeky

It’s nearly two weeks since I showed you my progress with my Lizzie StitchingWallet, the Stitch-a-long organised by Faby Reilly. At that point we had just finished the outside of the trifold wallet, so now we’ve moved on to the inside…

We’ve started on the right hand side, we had to stitch a three sided outline at the bottom, so something is obviously going to get attached there at a later date. The main stitching is a very pretty lisianthus flower and bud. It took me a couple of evenings to stitch, or rather I could have done it in a couple of evenings if I hadn’t been distracted by pinterest and facebook, so it took me nearer three!! This is how it looked with just the cross-stitch…

Next step was the back-stitch, it still amazes me how Faby does the back-stitch, I have to count it in threads, one up three across, one up four across… These photos really show how the eye sees what it wants to see, the photo above clearly shows a straight line of stitches up the right hand side of the flower, compare that to the photo below with the back-stitch, where we see a pretty, curved petal.

I thought of the back-stitch this morning when I took my mum to the Northern Quilt Festival. We had a lovely morning looking at quilts and fabric.One quilt that particularly took my eye was this one, when I first looked at it I thought, wow! all those curved seams! But actually when I looked closely it is actually made from long hexagons, not a curved seam in sight. The petal shape is purely from the quilting, but that is what the eye sees. Apologies for not getting the name of the quilter, if anyone know please let me know so I can give credit, it’s a beautiful quilt.

The final stitching was the little beads, I’m hoping I’ve got enough of these, they’re just from my stash, there seemed to be plenty when I started but I’ve only got eleven left!! Oops!

The next pattern comes out on Monday, we’ll be stitching the middle section I think.

I’m linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, why not follow the link and have a look what everyone else has been hand-stitching.

Posted in embroidery, Serendipity, Stitch-a-long | Tagged , , | 15 Comments