Last week I made a top from Newlook 6107, it’s a pattern that was given away free with one of the sewing magazines which is why it was out of stock in all my usual places! I was so pleased with it I promptly cut out a second one!
This one is from a lovely soft batik cotton, I bought it in Harrogate a couple of months ago when I needed some retail therapy after a hospital appointment! I love the colours in it, soft blues, greens, purples and pinks, it feels so nice too. Continue reading
As you can see I am waaaay behind on Pat Sloan’s Block of the Month quilt pattern. Life has been so busy this year that something had to give, and this was it. Well everything has quietened down now…bliss…so I thought I ought to get on with it.
Fortunately I was organised enough at the beginning of the year to put all the fabrics together in a project box, so at least I didn’t need to go hunting again! They were all out of my stash, I’m using this BOM as a learning curve so I didn’t want to buy fabrics specially for it.
I changed a couple of squares as I was going along, originally I cut a square out of a blue ditsy floral fabric for the centre, but it just didn’t look right so I changed it for the leaf pattern, which is turning into the fabric to hold the quilt pattern together as so far it’s in every block!
The blue Sanderson design is actually a striped fabric I’ve had for ages, like years. It’s one of those beautiful fabrics you have to buy but can’t quite work out what to make! I fussy cut the rectangles and the squares to make the half triangles with. One pair had a stipe on them which I thought I might be able to incorporate into the pattern, I couldn’t, it just wouldn’t work, so I made another pair which look much better.
The block for April is called The Penny Arcade. I’m really pleased with it, I can see myself improving with each block. I think my cutting out is getting more accurate and my quarter inch seams are better too. I’m particularly chuffed with the little squares as the corners match perfectly, the points on my triangles are much better too!
Just got May, June and July to do…oh and August has just come out too!!
My sampler is making good progress, it’s all those positive thoughts! I started it a couple of weeks ago at Tea & Tents WI camping festival, it was small enough to pop in a bag and stitch outside.
The design is by Nathalie from Jardin Privee, it’s a free pattern that’s on her blog. I really like her designs, I did the bee pin-cushion earlier on this year. She keeps the designs simple, but somehow still gets the detail in. I mean it’s not complicated by lots of half and quarter cross-stitches and back-stitch. Just have a look at the girl with the parasol, with just 10 stitches Nathalie manages to get both poise and elegance in her arms! Note to self, must remember to stitch the spike at the end of the parasol!
I’ve discovered that doing irregular letters requires a lot more concentration than if the wording is a standard size. I realised this morning that I had made several mistakes in the letters. In the design not only are they not in a straight line, they are different heights too, looks lovely but it’s very easy to make a mistake. Luckily I think you can get away with a few variations!! It probably doesn’t help that I’m usually working on it in the hour before I go to bed, so I’m tired and the light isn’t brilliant.
I shall do as the sampler says and not worry about it…just maybe need to concentrate a bit more!!
Linked with Kathy’s Quilts on Slow-stitching Sunday and Super Mom no Cape on Vintage Embroidery Monday.
A couple of months ago I fell for a Newlook pattern, I tried to buy it about three times in Samuel Taylors but it was always out of stock, I tried my usual on-line pattern shop, out of stock! I finally found a little sewing shop on line that stocked it, I bought it immediately. About a week later I found out why…it was free with a sewing magazine!!!
I finally got round to sewing it this week. It has a pretty blouse/top with three variations and a pencil skirt (nothing exciting with the skirt but they’re always useful!) I decided to make the short sleeved version. Continue reading
The weather here in Yorkshire hasn’t improved much today, but in between the downpours I managed a quick totter round the garden! Last week I showed you my seriously overgrown Amethyst and Amber garden, most of the paths were inaccessible and half the plants were hidden by the weeds. I’ve managed to spend a good few hours out there, tidying and clearing so I wanted to show you the results! There’s still a lot of work to do, but it’s better than it was!!
We can now walk to the chicken run by the main path, the mint has had a major haircut! I’ve got three different types of mint growing there, it’s a good place for it, I’d spent several years trying to find plants that would survive the narrow dry strip and I finally found it. Mint is well known for being invasive, but here it’s limited by the path on one side and the chickens on the other, they do like a bit of fresh mint so any stem that dares to grow the wrong side of the fence is soon nipped in the bud. It’s also meant to discourage vermin, which is always useful round chickens.
I had to be pretty ruthless on the paths with all the little seedlings, I love aquilegias, but I do need a path! I’ve left lots of poppy heads to self seed though, They look rather statuesque anyway but the poppies have been lovely this year, I’m not sure where these came from but I seem to have lots of lovely shades of purple and deep pink.
It is finally looking like a garden again. I made the raised beds about 15 years ago, there’s four square beds in the centre and four large triangle beds to make the corners. With hindsight I should have made the paths wider as they are only about 15″, I have four ‘wobble sticks’ so I don’t lose my balance round the beds, they wouldn’t save me, but just having something to put my hand on is enough usually! I love the unstructured look of this bit of the garden, it has a relaxed feel to it.
Just got to sort the rest of the garden out now, this clematis is looking great, unfortunately it decided it would be much more interesting to climb the bird feeding station instead of the obelisk!
Today in Yorkshire it is cold, wet and miserable, not at all end of July weather! We’re all hoping that we didn’t blink and miss summer, at least one friend has put her heating back on, I’ve just put a jumper on!! Hence the lack of ‘Monday’s meander round the garden’ post, if the weather improves I will totter round on Tuesday instead!
It does make you appreciate the days when the sun does shine…last weekend I was in the sunshine at Walesby Forest in Nottinghamshire with over 500 ladies from all over the country at Tea & Tents, the unofficial Women’s Institute Camping and Crafting Festival. We had a fantastic time.
There were over 70 different activities to choose from, all run by volunteers. On Saturday I spent a couple of hours learning how to make lampshades. I’ve covered them before the traditional way with binding, this was done with sticky back plastic and double sided sticky tape, reminded me of watching Blue Peter as a child! It gave a really neat finish, I chose a purple upholstery fabric which goes beautifully in our bedroom, though I think next time I would choose a lighter weight fabric, I think it would be easier to get a perfect finish. The tutor was Kirsty from Make and Do in Bristol, she was great, very patient with us all.
On Sunday afternoon I did paper-cutting, it took a bit to get my head round which bits you cut out to make a picture, but I made a fairly respectable picture of a vase of flowers in the end.
Our weekend had started off with a bit of a bang when our gas cooker exploded just after we’d cooked our eggy bread for breakfast, part of it landed about 50m away so we were pretty lucky no one was in the firing line! The incident did have a silver lining though as the girls camping next to us, having rushed over to check we were ok, immediately adopted us for the weekend. There were about twenty girls from Seven Hills WI in Sheffield, ‘two more won’t make any difference’. They were great, if anyone lives in Sheffield check them out, they’re a young WI, full of energy and enthusiasm. The highlight was when Sarah taught me to crochet, it’s been on my bucket list for ages, so hopefully I can now make the ripple blanket I saw on Attic 24…maybe I’ll start with a scarf though! I’ve definitely got my concentrating face on in this photo!
The yarn-bombing was amazing, the theme was Wizard of OZ, so lots of members had knitted bricks to make the yellow brick road and some very skilled members made Dorothy and her friends, the diddy men, monkeys, the whirlwind was amazing, knitted round a rotary clothes line with the house and other stuff being swept up…and Toto was just gorgeous! It’s now going to Daisy Change WI which is a WI set up in a mental health unit.
It wasn’t just crafting at Tea and Tents, I also did self defence (Taekwondo), archery, tomahawk throwing, rifle shooting, I went on a zip wire, and the bit I was most proud of, I climbed all the way to the top of the climbing wall, amazed myself, not so keen on abseiling back down again though! There was also none stop laughter and friendship…a great weekend.
I’ve just started a sampler, it’s another design by Nathalie Cichon of Jardin Prive. I stitched a bee pincushion by Nathalie a few months ago, I love her designs, I think they’re pretty without being twee. I’ve another two samplers waiting to be stitched…
This sampler is called Positive Thinking, it’s actually free on Nathalie’s blog, it was a month by month project last year. It’s got a lovely verse on it which Nathalie has translated into several languages. I must admit I was very tempted to stitch it in French, I studied French up to A level, I think it’s a beautiful language. When I looked at the French version though I wasn’t convinced I would remember what it meant, I even considered doing a mini version in English to hang next to it, however on reading her blog, I realised that the poem was originally in English and that she had had some difficulty translating some of the lines, so I decided to stitch in English!
The embroidery that inspired Nathalie
The poem is as follows;
The Way to Happiness
Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry,
Live simply, expect little, give much
Scatter sunshine, forget self, think of others.
I think it was the Scatter sunshine that really confused Google Translate!
It’s proving fairly quick to stitch, I’ve used 16 count even-weave linen, I prefer 18 count but my eyes don’t appreciate it any more! I’m onto the ‘second month’ already, I like having a bit of hand sewing I can just pick up for half an hour in the evenings.
Sharing this with Slow Stitching Sunday and Vintage Embroidery on Monday.
I cut out a blouse last night, planning to make a start on it today, however having looked at the state of my sewing room, I decided I really ought to have a tidy up first! I did pretty well before I got distracted, I can now walk safely across my sewing room and I can actually see the floor! This is definitely an improvement!
I also have a big bag of scraps for Captain Rummage of Taylors Tea in Harrogate. He has a wonderful set up collecting mainly business waste, he turns it some of it into activity packs for schools which they ‘pay for’ with old spectacles, mobile phones (Oxfam will give £5 per phone) he also teaches disadvantaged young people to sew bags etc, any profits are divided between local projects and also Taylors Yorkshire Rainforest project, there’s more information about it here
So I did make progress before I got distracted! I was putting away some embroidery silks in a box my mother passed on to me a few years ago when she was having a clear out. Its a beautiful wooden box, with a top section divided up for the thread holders, two drawers underneath and a hinged lid with a removable section for putting an embroidery or tapestry in the lid. The lid had stayed empty since my mother bought it however many years ago! I decided that whilst I didn’t have an embroidery for it, a pretty piece of quilting cotton would look just as nice. I spotted a fat quarter I bought in Hobbycraft a few months ago, it was definitely an impulse buy as I got it home and realised it really didn’t go with any of my other quilting fabrics! It’s a pretty, vintage style floral design printed by Rowan.
I cut a piece of polyester wadding to cushion the top a bit, then placed the fabric over the top and laced the back to hold it firm. I put the hardboard provided behind it and pushed it in place, the tags to hold it are a little loose so I need to get a screwdriver at them at some point.
I think the whole project took less than half an hour, why did I wait so long to do it!!!
Path to the chicken run!
I’m showing you these photos hoping it will spur me into action to sort our my garden. You see the first seven months of this year have been so hectic with sewing, crafts and mini breaks that the garden has been sorely neglected. I know I’m going to pay for this in weeds for the next few years! This is what I call my Amber and Amethyst garden, or AA for short, it’s actually eight raised beds made originally as a potager, not that you can see the paths. The path through to the chicken run is impassable at the moment due to an overgrowth of mint!!
In amongst the weeds and plants that need cutting down or pruning, there are some lovely flowers, you just need to look for them!
The heleniums are in flower, I love the colour of these, like a russet, or burnt orange.
The veronicas are just coming into flower, this one isn’t too tall, about 15″. The climbing rose I planted to grow up the arbour hasn’t got very high but it’s blooms are beautiful, I haven’t been able to near enough to check out the scent!
These irises are beautiful, I must have planted them a bit late as they are only just flowering, just ignore the couch grass photobombing the picture!!
I’m hoping this time next week to post pictures of the AA garden as it should be! My calendar over the next couple of months is pretty empty, so I’ve no excuses, just got to leave time for sewing too!
About three months ago a good friend asked if I would make their wedding cake. Having checked that they were happy with a rich fruit cake, I was delighted to accept, I’ve made quite a few celebration cakes, but only one other wedding cake which was my own. Rich fruit cakes are made well in advance, so it’s not as stressful as the last minute decorating required with a sponge cake. Then she dropped the bombshell…can we have it royal iced as we don’t like fondant icing…I explained that I had never flat iced a cake before in my life, she reassured me that it would be fine…somehow it’s not always reassuring when neither of you have done it before…I watched it on u-tube, it didn’t look too difficult!!!! Continue reading
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