Today, over on Kathy’s Quilts, it’s Slow Stitching Sunday, a weekly celebration of hand-sewing, I’ve spent quite a few evenings ‘slow-stitching’ this week as I started a cross-stitch pin-cushion, it’s a pattern from Jardin Prive, I discovered Natalie’s beautiful designs through Hilda’s blog as she had photos of a stunning sampler (I ordered that pattern too!) Continue reading
After telling you all about our handmade wedding this month, I thought for the Poem of the Month’ I would choose a poem we had as a reading for our wedding, I think it’s beautiful.
“The Art Of Marriage”
Happiness in marriage is not something that just happens. A good marriage must be created. In the art of marriage the little things are the big things…
It is never being too old to hold hands.
It is remembering to say “I love you” at least once a day.
It is never going to sleep angry.
It is at no time taking the other for granted; the courtship should not end with the honeymoon, it should continue through all the years.
It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives. It is standing together facing the world.
It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.
It is doing things for each other, not in the attitude of duty or sacrifice, but in the spirit of joy.
It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is not looking for perfection in each other. It is cultivating flexibility, patience, understanding and a sense of humour.
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.
It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.
It is finding room for the things of the spirit. It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.
It is establishing a relationship in which the independence is equal, dependence is mutual and the obligation is reciprocal.
It is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner.
It is discovering what marriage can be, at its best.
Well today’s meander was more of a quick whizz, as the weather was decidedly inclement! We’ve had every variation of weather this week; warm, (well, mild!) cold, sunny, raining, hail, snow, wind…often all on the same day! A friend who has just moved over from America is beginning to understand why we always comment on the weather and why we all dress in layers, as the layers can come on and off several times in a day!! It has certainly not been what I would call good gardening weather, being a fairweather gardener!
From our conservatory (where it is dry!!) I can see a really pretty miniature cherry blossom, it’s very dainty and just coming into flower. The perennials are beginning to shoot up and some poppies are growing fast too, these are biennials, so they just have green growth one year, and then flower the next and set seed. I’m pretty sure we’re due for flowers this year, I thought they might have staggered a bit by now, as they’ve been in several years, but it’s strictly every other year!
The deep pink camellia is still looking good and the daffodils are looking cheerful, there’s lots of other bulbs coming up now as well, alliums and camassias, tulips and muscari. Primroses and cowslips have been in flower for several weeks now, brightening up shady corners. It can’t be much longer before my magnolia flowers…
I’ve just finished making a top from Simplicity 2917, I bought the pattern for the summer dress designs, I do like long cotton dresses in the summer. However I noticed that the top (they call it a tunic!) looked rather nice and I decided it would be useful to try out the sizing on a top before I splash out on 4m of fabric.
The dress and top have a very flattering sweetheart neckline, princess line, with a choice of cap sleeves, 3/4 length sleeves or sleeveless. It zips down the back. Continue reading
Well spring has finally sprung, we’ve had some lovely mild spring days here in Yorkshire so I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the garden this week. We also had a solar eclipse, I was planning to sit in the summerhouse to experience it, but I very quickly realised there were some trees in the way!! I retreated to an upstairs window! It was quite overcast and cloudy but I felt that worked to our advantage as you could watch it without worrying about retinal damage. In Yorkshire we had about 97% eclipse, I was surprised it didn’t get particularly dark or cool, maybe that 3% makes all the difference! The photo looks dark and dramatic, but that’s cameras for you!!
I’m blitzing the front garden at the moment, I’ve got quite a big front garden which was already terraced when we moved in. I like to think of it as a low maintenance garden as it’s mainly planted with shrubs. I prune everything hard at this time of year and then leave it, mainly because within a couple of months a lot of it is not easily accessible!
Things are not always what they seem in the garden…last year this big clump of ornamental grass seemed to be swamping the nearby shrub, I decided to try and move the grass, it proved hard work and after a while I started to look at the shrub…that’s the bully!! It had suckered and spread into all it’s neighbours! So instead of moving the grass, I’ve trimmed it and cut the shrub back hard, see what happens this year! By the way, the pretty golden leaved shrub behind is actually a golden privet, unpruned, I love it!
I spent yesterday digging up this area of euphorbia and perennial lobelia as it had got totally out of hand, I’ve cleared a big area, dug out bags of mares tail roots too. I’m thinking of planting a couple of rhododendrons and maybe an acer. I interspersed it with trimming a box into a ball (give my back a rest!) now my family know why I always took the children to the hairdressers and never attempted it myself!
There’s some gorgeous daffodils in flower under a ceanothus bush, long stems but really tiny flowers, very pretty. I’ve seen butterflies and ladybirds this weekend, so things are definitely warming up!
Today over on Kathy’s Quilts it’s Slow Stitching Sunday, this afternoon I’ve been doing a bit of ‘slow-stitching’ by hand-stitching the binding so my quilt is now finished!!! I still can’t quite believe I’ve mad a quilt in less than a week, this is a record for me…and to think I was worried about the June deadline! It was only Tuesday when I signed up for the Hands2Help Challenge to make a quilt for charity and it’s finished already!
I quilted it yesterday on the machine, I thought I might need to do a bit more, but having checked the requirements of ‘Warm & Natural’ wadding, it’s fine!
Sarah from Confessions of a Fabric Addict who is hosting the event left a comment on Tuesday which was very helpful; those of us who are outside the USA and Canada can choose to donate locally instead if we want. This will save a lot on postage! I looked on line and found Project Linus, which looks perfect, they give quilts to sick and traumatised children so hopefully I will be able to donate my quilt there.
All that is left to do this evening is to hand-stitch my initials and the date on the back!
Last night over on Sugar Lane Designs, Wendy was hosting another Friday Night Sew-in with Friends. Well this week I’ve been beavering away on a quilt for Hands2Help and last night was no exception. I have to say, I’ve even impressed myself!! I signed up to make a quilt for the Hands2Help Challenge on Tuesday, you can read about it here. One of my concerns was that it usually takes me months to actually finish a quilt…well I have surpassed myself…quilt is pieced and quilted, all I have to do is the binding!! Continue reading
Over on Sew We Sew, Madam Samm is hosting a Meet and Greet for us to show our three favourite items we have made, for me it has to be three celebration samplers;
I like making things to celebrate an event, particularly births and weddings. The first birth sampler I made was for my niece, it was a cross-stitch of the Beatrix Potter frontispiece with the details in the middle, very pretty and sweet. By the time I came to stitching one for my friends children, I decided I would prefer to make a sampler that would still appeal when they grew up, I started looking at designs where I could take a band or two out to insert the birth details. The other advantage of this was that I could include whatever details I wanted, such as the christening date. You can see the two samplers here. Continue reading
A couple of years ago my daughter asked me if I would make her a black and white quilt to go in her newly decorated bedroom. She wanted the Charming Flowers design from Pam and Nicky Lintott’s book ‘Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts’ which I’d just made into quilt top in from batik fabrics (another UFO!) She agreed to varying shades of grey too but I was surprised how long it took me to amass enough fabric, the pattern called for a layer cake, as I couldn’t find a black and white layer cake I was buying various fat quarter collections. Continue reading
Over on ‘Confessions of a Fabric Addict’ Sarah has launched her fifth Hands2Help quilt challenge where quilters from all around the world make a quilt for charity. There are three charities to choose from this year, two in USA and one in Canada. What I think is also a great idea and a very generous offer, is that for those of us further afield Sarah has offered to quilt the quilt, if we send the completed top and the backing. I still haven’t decided if I’ll take her up on this offer to save on postage, as I could really do with the practice of machine quilting another quilt.
This is a pretty big challenge for me, as it has to be posted by June 12th! I’ve only made three quilts so far and they have taken on average 18 months to finally complete them!!! I’m going to make a scrappy quilt, I’ve seen lots of scrappy quilts on facebook and they always look great. I checked my scrap drawers and I’ve got loads of jelly roll lengths that my mum gave me when she was clearing her fabric stash, they look like Moda, lovely fabrics, just not me…they’re brown and I don’t tend to do brown!! Whether in my home or my wardrobe, there’s blues, purples, greens, red, but very little brown! I found a pattern in ‘Quilting for you’ magazine for a quilt called Razzle Dazzle which looks fairly straight forward and also says ‘quick to sew’. I’m going to make it! I’ve even found a length of material from my stash for the backing.
I’m hoping to gain a lot too from this challenge, learning to do a different quilt design, using up my fabric stash (one of my New Year resolutions!) and having another go at machine quilting – I can only get better!!
This is my progress so far, stitching the lengths together, I’m starting with the full length ones first, I can then use the shorter lengths to make a border if I need to increase the size a bit.
Hopefully you will be able to see my progress over the next few weeks, if you fancy making a quilt for Hands2Help then go over to Sarah’s blog and sign up for the challenge!
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