Monday’s Meander Round the Garden

Posted on May 15, 2017 by craftycreeky

I was looking out of the upstairs window yesterday and I thought, actually, from a distance the garden looks pretty good, it’s only close up that I think ooh err!! We seem to have more birds visiting now too, so we must be doing something right, we’ve had bluetits in the nest box, wrens nesting nearby but I haven’t quite sussed out where. I think there’s also a willow warbler nesting in one of the shrubs, he’s hard to identify though as he’s flitting about and lets face it, they’re basically very little brown birds!!  Blackbirds and robins are nesting in the beech hedge…it’s pretty tuneful in our garden, especially at dawn and dusk 🙂

DSC_0002

Continue reading →

Posted in Garden, Serendipity | Tagged | 6 Comments

Stitch-a-long 11

Posted on May 14, 2017 by craftycreeky

Three weeks have flown by since I last showed you my flower lattice embroidery. This is where I was up to…

 

Last night I managed to finish the diamond with the alliums, hollyhocks and delphiniums. I stitched the flowers on the second delphinium, these are made with short lengths of silk ribbon, gathered along one long edge and the short ends with a french knot in the centre. Continue reading →

Posted in embroidery, Serendipity, Stitch-a-long | Tagged , , | 20 Comments

Down the Rabbit Hole Quilt

Posted on May 13, 2017 by craftycreeky

I’m making steady progress on my Down the Rabbit Hole quilt now, it’s a quilt-a-long by Sarah Fielke and I’ve got a  couple of months behind, but I’m catching up!

Last week I stitched the bias binding stems on, so my job this week was to make 24 sets of big and little circles. Sarah has a nifty way of doing this using tinfoil to wrap the fabric shape around the template and then pressing. It works a treat! I’ve been very impressed with this QAL so far, Sarah produces a video of all the processes we need to do and talks us through it, as well as having written instructions. It makes so much more sense when you actually see it done.

DSC_0002 (1)

The small circles are stitched onto the big ones first. I did mine off centre to create a more interesting look (as recommended by Sarah) I used about ten different fabrics for these, most of them I just used twice, but I particularly loved the bee one, so that one appears about six times! Some of the circles are better than others, but it is a learning curve, hopefully by the time I get to the outer border they will be much improved. Continue reading →

Posted in Down The Rabbit Hole, Quilting, Serendipity | Tagged , | 16 Comments

April Review

Posted on May 11, 2017 by craftycreeky

Magnolia StellataCan’t quite believe we’re already a third of the way through May, so I’m a bit late with my April review, but that’s life!

There’s quite a mix of needlework in this review, embroidery, quilting, dressmaking…I’ve finally finished my home decorating so hopefully I’ll have a bit more time for dressmaking in the coming months. I’ve still two rooms to paint (one of which is the landing with long drops over the stairs!) and lots of glossing, but having decorated nine rooms since last September I’ve decided to pay someone to do the last bit, I’m all painted out!!

My biggest finish was a quilt that is going to be auctioned this Saturday to raise money for a childrens cancer support charity in Wales. It’s a pattern called Paisley Splash and I called the quilt ‘Making a Splash for Emyr’, Emyr is the young boy after whom the charity is named, Emyr Owen Latch group.

I’ve stitched three little embroideries, two of them for our travelling sketchbooks at Embroiderers Guild and one was a pretty lavender cross-stitch sachet by Faby Reilly. I’m planning to hang this on a padded coathanger for Otley show next weekend. Of course my flower ribbon embroidery is still on going, making slow but steady progress on that one.

I finally made McCalls 6696, a shirtwaister dress that’s been all over the blogging world, I think I’m the last person to make it, though I have made it my own by making it a longer length. I wore it for the first time last weekend and I love it, you know you get those outfits that just feel lovely to wear, well this is one. The fabric drapes and swishes beautifully, I’m already planning my next one!

My stash report is very slightly improved! I made my dress, so obviously that’s one down, but when I went to buy the buttons I fell for a gorgeous length of cotton to make a vogue pattern dress! Fortunately when I was making my elephant quilt I found a length of dressmaking weight batik that matched perfectly for the backing, so that’s two lengths used from my dress-making stash!

Stash Report

Stash at end of March    54 lengths.

Fabric lengths bought     1

Fabric lengths used         2

Stash at end of April       53 lengths

Not much change but it’s going in the right direction!

 

 

Posted in Dressmaking, embroidery, Quilting, Serendipity | 7 Comments

Denman College

Posted on May 10, 2017 by craftycreeky

20170507_071411Last weekend I was at Denman College, learning lots, eating lots and generally having a wonderful time. Denman is the Women’s Institute college in Oxfordshire. It’s a beautiful Georgian house and they run brilliant courses on all sorts of things, history, gardens, music, cooking, and of course crafts of all types…I always do a craft course.

I travelled down by train on Friday morning, I had a couple of hours to mooch round Oxford before the complementary taxi picked me up to take me to Denman.

The college was pretty full as there was a federation visit on at the same time, my WI is in North Yorkshire West federation (there are about 100 WI’s in NYW) we have a federation visit to Denman every two years and take over the whole college. By coincidence West Yorkshire federation were down there this weekend, ironic seen as I actually live in West Yorkshire!! I thought it might make it a little cliquey, but not at all, it was as friendly as always. I think about half the guests were from West Yorkshire federation.

I stayed in the Moonraker room, which is Wiltshire Feds room, it was very comfortable. All the rooms are sponsored by a federation, they often have a lot of handmade things in them such as pictures, quilts, cushions, it makes it very personal.

20170507_120409My course was Silk Ribbon Embroidery by Marilyn Pipe, I booked it at last years federation visit as she taught us then and I loved it so much I booked to return there and then. She’s a wonderful lady, she creates a really happy and encouraging atmosphere in her classes, helped along by jelly babies!

The class this time was silk ribbon hollyhocks. We started off painting the background with watercolour paints. These have the advantage that if you don’t like the effect you can dab it off the silk noil with kitchen roll and start again! Having a little bit of colour in the background just helps give a bit of depth to the picture.

20170506_104054

The tops of the hollyhocks are embroidered using stranded cotton and french knots, then the lower buds are french knots with silk ribbon. Marilyn taught us three different ways of creating the hollyhock flower, either gathering along the edge of 4mm ribbon, down the middle of 7mm, or folding the wider ribbon in half and then gathering along the fold. The flowers grew pretty quickly.

We added leaves and stems and then  a few extra ‘twiddly bits’, I stitched some curly lines of back-stitch in variegated thread in between the flowers and also added some french knots and straight stitches along the bottom.

DSC_0001

Considering we all started with the same pack of ribbon, our pictures were all very individual and all very pretty.

Marilyn dyes all her own ribbon so we had a lesson in microwave dying as well.

We had a great time, I even managed a bit of fabric shopping as Marilyn had heard of a fabric sale at a pop-up shop in a nearby garden centre and kindly gave me a lift. I got a nice selection of quilting fabrics. There was also Denmans Craft Cupboard; a mini shop jam-packed full of craft  supplies that members have donated, so of course I bought a few things there too!

DSC_0008

The food as usual was delicious, we had a big breakfast, homemade shortbread with morning coffee, two course lunch, home-made cake with afternoon tea, three course evening meal…you are well looked after at Denman!

20170507_093926

You also work hard! Our first lesson was 8pm on the Friday night, we were back at 9.15 the next morning, stitching all the way to 6pm, although we did have a long lunch (time to go fabric shopping!) and back for an hour after dinner. It’s surprisingly hard work embroidering all day! On the Sunday we had another three hours before lunch, we had time for a good nosy round the other classes to see what they had been creating; beautiful flower arrangements, lovely paintings and lots of fun scandi crafts.

20170507_120609

All in all I had a wonderful time and can highly recommend it! Don’t ever be afraid to go down alone, Denman College has such a lovely atmosphere, you can happily join anyone at the dinner table or in the bar, we already have the connection of WI to help start conversation and friendship. Non members can go too, you just pay a little extra!

Our Federation trip is next May, I’ve already booked to do Jacobean Crewelwork 🙂

DSC_0005

Posted in embroidery, Serendipity | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments

Me-Made-May Monday

Posted on May 9, 2017 by craftycreeky

MMMay17logoA day late but MMMay Tuesday doesn’t have the same ring…

A week into MMMay 2017 and my biggest issue has been getting photos, with my chief photographer away at Uni, and her assistant busy at work, I’ve been asking work colleagues, WI members, tutors…anyone passing really!

Work days for me are sort of wear-what-you-like days as I wear theatre blues all day, my sister saw me in them for the first time a few weeks ago and commented that the trousers really didn’t do anything for me, and that was on a good day when I actually had a pair the right size!

This is me post shift in the changing room, so please excuse the hair!! I made my lavender duster jacket last year and I’ve worn it quite a lot, I could do with a lighter weight skirt to go with it really. My sewing shirt was from the Archer pattern and the dark purple cardigan has been worn a lot, though not so much with the long straight skirt I made to go with it. I love the skirt but for some reason it constantly rides up!

On Friday I travelled down to Denman College, so I needed ‘smart but casual’. This is me all ready to go, suitcase packed, with my teal cardigan and navy Fumeterre skirt.

DSC_0002On Saturday in class I wore my pansy waistcoat, I bought the fabric for this on Goldhawk Road and it always gets lots of comments, by chance I realised it went well with my teal Fumeterre skirt.

20170506_181511We have a three course meal every evening so I like to change for dinner, even though we had another hour of lectures afterwards (they work you hard at Denman!!) I wore my red rose shirt waister for the first time, I only made it last month. It was lovely to wear, it drapes beautifully and just feels really nice.

20170506_212547

The weather is still pretty cool here, I’m hoping it’s going to warm up so I can wear some of my more summery clothes before the end of the month….otherwise this could get rather repetitive as I don’t have a huge wardrobe!!

 

Posted in Dressmaking, Serendipity | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Down the Rabbit Hole

Posted on May 8, 2017 by craftycreeky

denman-house-72pxI’ve just had a fantastic weekend at Denman College learning how to do hollyhocks with ribbon embroidery. Denman College is a wonderful old manor house owned by the Women’s Institute, they run all sorts of courses, historical, fitness, craft, music, I just do the craft courses (no surprise there!!) It’s about four hours away by train and of course I needed something to do during those four hours…

I’m way behind on my Down the Rabbit Hole quilt, it’s a block of the month quilt designed by Sarah Fielke in Australia. I’ve been really impressed so far, she releases the pattern and written instructions each month, but she also does a video which makes everything so much clearer. She also has a facebook page so we can see what everyone is doing, get ideas for colours and general encouragement. Block four has just been released but I’ve just finished block one!!!

This is where I was a few days ago;

In my defence I was trying to get my Splendid Sampler quilt finished first before I got too engrossed in this one, and then I had a charity one to make for the Hands2Help Challenge. If I’m honest though I was also procrastinating over the thought of making my own  1/4″ bias binding. I’ve tried making bias before with one of those little contraptions, they make it look so easy at the shows!!! I really wasn’t that convinced that it was going to be as simple as everyone made out…it was!

Sarah uses a hera marker to make the crease in bias, I’d never even heard of these before, but they are a nifty little tool, not only does it make a nice deep crease but you can also use it to hold the fold down when you’re ironing it, saving the risk if burnt fingers! Once I’d buckled down to it, it really didn’t take long to make the bias. I used two different shades of green to add a bit of variety.

I made the centre circle a couple of months back, there’s more about the process here. Having cut the background (slightly bigger to allow for fraying whilst working!) I arranged circles around the centre, these are the patterns for the flowers which go around the circle. There’s meant to be 26 circles as Sarah doesn’t like things too regular, I don’t do random so I’ve got 24! I could then tack the stems on all going straight out from the centre as instructed.

Having the video makes all the difference, Sarah is great in giving us little tips like matching the thread to the applique not the background and which way to hold the fabric ( sew towards you when doing applique). I used a miliners needle again and did tiny stitches all along the edge. I’m not sure mine were as tiny as they are meant to be, I seem to recall they should be bigger than a 1/16″, but not as much as an 1/8″, I reckon mine are a generous 1/8″”, but that still looks pretty small to me!

So what did I do on my four hour train journey? I stitched my stems down! I wished I’d had time to prepare a few flowers too as I ended up starting another project for the journey back…but more of that another day!

My next job is to applique circular flowers on each stem, each with a centre, so I need to get prepping whilst this quilt is still in the portable stage!

Posted in Down The Rabbit Hole, Quilting, Serendipity | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

A Ladybird Inchie

Posted on May 2, 2017 by craftycreeky

At Skipton Embroiderers Guild we’re putting together a book showcasing our work and (I think) our history as well. We’ve been asked to each make an ‘inchie’, these will all be stitched together to make a book cover.

I’ve been intrigued by inchies for a while but never quite got round to determining just how you make them. My pinterest page has lots of inchie pictures, like these by Boxoftrix. I love the idea of a group of several mounted together…one day!

For those of you who haven’t come across inchies, they are basically a 1″ square of embroidery or textile art of some kind. Obviously when you only have 1″ to embroider there are limitations, but it’s amazing what people do with one inch!

After much thought I decided to keep it fairly simple and do a tiny embroidery. Whilst I’ve been stitching my flower lattice embroidery as part of the Stitch-a-long, I’ve mastered how to embroider a ladybird. I decided to do a few blades of grass and a ladybird climbing up one.

I chose a soft green-grey quilting cotton as my background, I laid some calico behind to help by giving me something to start and finish stitches on.

I drew around my 1″ die cutter with a soft pencil to give me a guide. We’ve actually been asked to make them 3cm square, which the pencil line pretty much is (by chance!) I used a variegated DMC thread in soft greens, beiges and blues to do a few background grasses with just straight stitches, a few french knots and a couple of fly stitches.

Next I used a green perle thread to make the main stalk, couching it down at the bend. I didn’t couch it any further as I knew the ladybirds legs would effectively couch it down too.

I stitched the outline of the ladybird first in black DMC thread, this helps to pad out the satin stitch later. I used a couple of french knots of the head and little straight stitches for the antenna and the legs.The 1″ die cutter gives you an idea of just how small this is!

 

I used satin stitch over the back with a single strand of DMC and then added three french knots for the spots. He came out slightly slimmer than I anticipated so I embroidered a line of  red stem stitch along the top edge which is now his other wing! It’s just enough to fill him out a bit.

I rather like my ladybird and I definitely like stitching inchies!

Posted in embroidery, Serendipity | Tagged , , | 18 Comments

My #MMMay17 Pledge

Posted on May 1, 2017 by craftycreeky

MMMay17logo

Where has this year gone! May has sneaked up on me this year so I’m a few hours late making my Me-Made-May pledge.

This is my third year of taking part in the Me-Made-May Challenge. It is organised by  Zoe of So Zo…What Do You Know and the idea is to make a promise of how much made-by-me clothes you’re going to make in May. Everyone writes their own pledge so it can be as challenging as you like! It’s a good way of taking stock of your handmade wardrobe, what you actually need and what you have lots of but rarely wear! Having not bought any RTW clothes for about two years now I know the hole in my wardrobe is definitely trousers, any jeans I have left are getting decidedly past it, so hopefully #MMMay17 will give me the kick to make some!

I’m aiming to write a post every Monday, though with my chief photographer at uni in Birmingham that side is going to be a bit more of a challenge! I might even get the hang of Instagram during May!

So, here’s my promise;

I, Margaret of http://www.thecraftycreek.com sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May’17, I endeavour to wear me-made clothes everyday for the duration of May, especially those I’ve made and hardly worn!

Posted in Serendipity | 3 Comments

Paisley Splash Quilt

Posted on April 30, 2017 by craftycreeky

H2H 2017Last night I put the last few stitches in my Paisley Splash quilt. This is the one that is going to be auctioned for the Emyr Owen Latch branch. I’ve just finished it in time as they have a big ball and auction in a couple of weeks time. I’ve made this as part of the Hands2Help Quilt Challenge, I’m sending one or two tops to America as well, but this is my main one.

paisley_splashI’ve not made a quilt to be auctioned before, I felt it had to be a design with a bit of wow factor, one that could be held up in a hall and have enough impact for people to think ‘Yes, I want to bid on that!” I also had to think what age I wanted to aim the quilt at. Latch is a Welsh charity that supports families of children with cancer, both emotionally, practically and financially if necessary. In the end I decided  to use the Paisley Splash design, a free pattern from Windham Fabrics. The pattern is for a cot quilt, but I decided if I enlarged it with a few borders I could make it nearer a single bed size, the finished quilt measures approximately 60″ square so it is a bit small to be officially called a single bed quilt, but it’s big enough to be a throw on a bed. Hopefully the design will not just appeal to children but also those a bit older who like elephants!

Paisley Splash

Continue reading →

Posted in Quilting, Serendipity | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments