Teal Waters Run Deep

Posted on June 15, 2024 by craftycreeky

I still feel I have rather a lot of projects on at the moment but I’m slowly ticking things off my list. Some things take more priority than others, as they are time critical. One of these was some quilt blocks for Kate Chiconi’s latest quilt to raise money for ovarian cancer, it’s the 11th year of making these quilts, quite an achievement for Kate.

They’re alway teal coloured as that’s the ‘colour’ for ovarian cancer and Kate always finds a theme with a teal pun to it. This year it’s Teal Waters Run Deep, it’s an ocean themed quilt and we could choose whether we did an underwater block, a boat block etc. I plumped for two underwater ones.

I pulled out all my teal and sea coloured batiks out of my stash and my scrap box, I then went to a craft fair and one stall was selling a bundle of four batiks called Ocean! Well they fell straight in my bag! Having browsed on pinterest I found a wave block which I liked, most wave blocks like this just use two colours, I liked the way this used four.

The pattern is by Timeless Quilt Designs on Etsy, you could choose what size block you wanted and then just print the pattern off. The instructions are basically a video of someone making the block, which did make the whole process a lot clearer, it’s basically made of four square blocks. I would have liked however to have some measurements too, such as the size of the squares part way through. The pattern is all triangles so I found it easier to cut slightly bigger and then trim to size.

I also laid out all the pieces before hand so I knew I was getting the fabrics in the right place. Having made one 6″ block, apart from the final triangle, working out how it went together, I made the other three at the same time which worked out better for checking seams etc.

I’m pleased with how it’s come out, not sure I’d like to make a whole quilts worth though! The colours are not so contrasting as it looks in the photo.

I’ve already got the next block laid out, I just need to stitch it together.

Posted in Quilting | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Stitching my Garden SAL

Posted on June 9, 2024 by craftycreeky

It’s time for a mini happy dance, I’ve finally made all the individual pages and stitched them together into ten double sided pages.

Three weeks ago I had finally worked out how to create the actual pages. Each embroidery is backed with pelmet vilene, the raw edges were then pressed to the back and the two sides slip-stitched together.

A couple of the early pages weren’t quite big enough so I needed to add a couple of extra strips of fabric to two sides. The magnolia page was the first one to tackle in this way…

The Jack Brunnera page was also too small so I added a couple of borders again, this time I felt they needed a little embroidery too as otherwise they would be the only seams without any. I just did a line of feather stitch down the seams, either double or triple feathers. I also added a little triangle to the top corner so that just got a bit of fly stitch. I think these two pages go well together.

I also realised I needed one last page, the very back page. I decided to keep it simple and just use it to add my details. I used a pretty muted floral background and some soft green linen.

So I now have a pile of ten prepared pages. I just have to decide how to finish them. I need to make a cover but first I need to decide the final look of the book. Last time I made a book I learnt coptic stitch to bind them. It can be quite decorative, so I have to think whether to make a front and back cover and have the coptic stitch on show. This is the coptic stitch on the book of days I made back in 2021…

With the Book of Days I then stitched the book onto the cover so the coptic stitching was hidden by the spine…

I’m tempted to do that again as it does help protect the edges of the pages, but I equally quite like the idea of an exposed coptic stitching. I might do a bit of googling on more decorative coptic stitching…I could always make a bag to keep the book in 🙂

This SAL is organised by Avis from Sewing by the Sea, we post our progress on our chosen project every three weeks, perfect for keeping us motivated and moving forward on a long project. Please follow the links to see what everyone else has been stitching.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Jackie, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy, Cathie, Linda, MaryMargaret, Cindy

Posted in embroidery, Serendipity, Stitch-a-long, Stitching my Garden, Textile Books | Tagged , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

A Place Mat …or not!

Posted on June 8, 2024 by craftycreeky

A couple of months back I was asked at my WI if I would make a placemat for a WI competition to be judged at the Great Yorkshire Show, I tried to duck it but without success! I don’t like making stuff just for a competition if I don’t think I’ll like or use it afterwards and we don’t use placemats at home.

I then thought if I made a sewing themed one I could use it as a mat to put my overlocker on, I had in my mind some pre-printed panels from Raggedy Ruff designs. When I found the schedule again however, I discovered it could be no bigger than A4, or about 8″ by 11″, barely big enough to put a tea plate on never mind a dinner plate and cutlery!

I was rummaging through my stash and a file of unfinished, abandoned projects, when I found a pair of star blocks which were made for a totally forgotten about QAL by Pat Sloan called Bloomtopia back in 2021.

They were pretty much the right size, just needed a bit of a border top and bottom to widen it a bit. I had a rummage through my scrap box and found some scraps which matched perfectly, but when I say scraps, they were scraps!! One was too narrow, the other too short! The bird border is pieced down the middle, I just managed to find a line that didn’t chop a bird in two! The plain strip was too narrow so I used two strips!

As you can see I did a decorative line of stitching to hide the most obvious seam line. I quilted round the star ‘in the ditch’, which I was pretty pleased with as it’s not as easy as it sounds to stitch exactly on the seam line.

I backed it with a modern style leaf fabric which was in just the right colours. The binding is from another scrap – I could just get four strips out of it to make a long enough length of biding to go round. It’s a pretty stripy cotton which I bought in Amsterdam years ago, cut across the stripes it makes a pretty binding.

Having put the binding on, the fancy line of stitching on the two borders was in a funny place, so I added a few more lines of quilting!

Well it’s done! It won’t win any prizes with it’s lost points and wonky seams, but we have an entry! I might just use it as a large mug rug in my sewing room afterwards…and fingers crossed they don’t ask me again next year!

Posted in Quilting, Women's Institute | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Holiday Stitching

Posted on June 6, 2024 by craftycreeky

Well of course I took some stitching on holiday! I may not have done a huge amount but I did a little most days.

I decided to take my Strawberry Sampler Book kit with me, it’s a kit by the Cross-stitch Guild which I bought last year at the knitting and stitching show in Harrogate. There’s a different page for different types of counted work, all on a strawberry theme. Here’s a previous page…

This time I was working on the hemstitch page, probably not ideal after a long walk as it does take some concentration. I haven’t found the instructions the easiest to follow with this bit, so I’m not sure I’ve neatened the threads off at the back correctly, particularly with the two big squares, but it looks neat from the front! There’s some red silk included in the kit to put behind the page.

As you can see I’ve removed the threads ready for the next border, you basically take one thread out as far as you need and then weave the end in to the next row. There’s then certain stitches to create the patterns in the threads left behind. The third row is somersault stitch, the fifth row is diamond hem-stitch. The one I’m working on at the moment is zig-zag stitch, though I haven’t found the instructions for that particular stitch yet!!

There’s still some beads to stitch on and another row like the top one, these two will have ribbon slotted through them. Once that is done I just need to edge stitch the page and then it’s finished. Each page is then folded in half and stitched round the edge, I haven’t started doing that yet as I’m still undecided whether to add a little stiffener of some kind in between the pages.

I think there’s another three pages to do altogether. This kit is certainly pushing me to try new techniques!

Posted in cross-stitch, embroidery, kits | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Yorkshire Wolds Way Part 2

Posted on June 4, 2024 by craftycreeky

We’d been psyching ourselves up for our third day, it was not only the longest day of the walk at 13 miles, it was the furthest we’d walked for a loooong time! South Cave to Shiptonthorpe. We got ourselves organised for an early start. The weather was a bit cooler which we were more than happy about. Things were looking good…

Then one mile in I twisted my ankle on a deep rut hidden by grass and did a full face plant!! I carefully straightened it again and after a few minutes I gingerly stood up. We always wear proper walking boots with good ankle support and I think that saved the day, I found if I kept my ankle straight I could walk on it. Only 12 miles to go that day and about 65 altogether!! It swelled up somewhat but it survived for the rest of the week with a liberal application of Volterol gel!

We walked along our first ‘wold’, a wold is a dry valley, often with very steep sides, it’s typical I think of a chalk landscape. The blossom on the hawthorn bushes was stunning.. This photo was taken as we descended down the steep side, we then walked along the valley bottom.

We also came across the first of the YWW poetry benches, these were made some years ago by Angus Ross out of steam bent oak. There are six altogether, each inscribed with a poem by John Wedgewood Clarke it was part of WANDER, art along the YWW project. I loved their sinuous curves, although they weren’t necessarily the most practical seats to sit on!

We stayed in Robeanne House which was about a mile off route. We had to walk along a pretty busy road with no verge, so we were very relieved that the passing drivers were so considerate and gave us plenty of space. Robeanne House was lovely, we had a room off a courtyard which had a shower room, kitchenette with breakfast stuff provided. It was great. The main negative thing from our point of view was that there was nowhere nice to have dinner without getting a taxi. Luckily there was a McDonalds nearby so we had an uninspiring meal there.

We had a later start the next day, so late in fact that Mal from the Goaties turned up to collect our bags, it was nice to put a face to the name. He very kindly gave us a lift back up the road to the path so we didn’t have to walk along there again.

Day 4 was 9 miles from Shiptonthorpe to Millington. We had great views which stretched for miles. One thing we particularly noticed on this whole walk was the birdsong, we were serenaded by skylarks whilst passing through the fields. This photo is taken just before we descended into Millington for our night at the Ramblers Rest.

Day 5 was a very long and very very wet 8 miles from Millington to Fridaythorpe!! Last year when I had a weekend in the Lakes with my daughter she recommended a rain shelter, they’re a bit like a tent with no poles! Well we christened it that day!! It just gives a bit of shelter from the wind and rain whilst you have a snack.

It was a shame that our two wettest and darkest days should have been the prettiest as that was when we were walking through a lot of the wolds. We were absolutely dripping and squelching when we arrived at Seaways Glamping in Fridaythorpe. We were staying in a little wooden cabin, it was petite but had everything we needed and Michael, the owner helped us to find somewhere to dry our stuff out, especially our boots!

On that wet note, I will sign off for another day!

Posted in Serendipity, Walking, Yorkshire | Tagged , , , | 12 Comments

Embroidered Tote Bag

Posted on June 3, 2024 by craftycreeky

I feel the need for a few finishes before I embark on anything else, I seem to have a few things that I’ve done the stitching for and not made it into anything or finished it off. Today I decided to tackle my embroidered tote bag.

This is a bag I bought at the Harrogate show last November from Sew Enchanting. The design was pre-printed onto a calico bag, I just had to embroider it how ever I liked. I chose pretty colourful threads and this was the bag last time I posted about it…

I could have just left it as it was, but I felt with all the work that had gone into it it deserved to be lined. I had a rummage through my stash and found a batik whose colours matched perfectly, all blues, turquoise, green, purple and pink. I washed both the bag and the batik first as I thought it would be just my luck for the calico to shrink significantly.

I made new straps first, just 1″ wide as that was what the original straps were. I top-stitched them either side to keep them neat and pinned them in place.

I cheated a little on the actual lining…rather than accurately measure and then cut out the lining, I stitched the top seam1″ below the top of the bag, then worked out where the side seam should be, cut and stitched that. I then top-stitched the mock-binding and did the reinforcement cross on the ends of the straps.

I then pinned where the base should be, cut and stitched there too. I left a hole in the middle of the lining bottom so I could turn or ‘birth’ the bag. I could then stitch the hole closed and my bag was essentially finished. As a final touch I added the ‘Handmade’ wooden tag.

I’m really pleased with how it’s come out, lining it has made it feel much more substantial and didn’t really take long once I knuckled down to it.

Posted in embroidery | Tagged , , , , , | 13 Comments

Yorkshire Wolds Way Part 1

Posted on June 1, 2024 by craftycreeky

Well it’s nearly a week since I finished the Yorkshire Wolds Way (YWW) and I’ve just about recovered! Here in the UK we have quite a lot of official long distance paths, my friend and I were doing one a year until covid struck and we haven’t done one since for various reasons, lock-downs, operations and just life getting in the way. So although I think this is the 8th or 9th long walk we’ve done, we’re five years older and we didn’t manage to do the practise walks we usually do. What I’m trying to say is that we did find it quite a challenge!

The Yorkshire Wolds Way is 79 miles from Hessle, near the Humber Bridge, inland to Market Weighton, then out to Filey Brigg. It finishes at the the end of the Cleveland Way which we walked back in 2019. There’s not much accommodation in the area so we usually had a mile or so to walk to our B&B too. In recent years we’ve always used a baggage transfer service, they collect your suitcase from the B&B in the morning and take it on to the next one, so you only have to carry a day sack and you can have clean clothes on an evening…and a glass of gin! We’ve used a couple of different companies over the years but this time we used a different one, the Weather Goat Walk Support, AKA the Goaties, they were great and I would certainly recommend them. They don’t just transfer your luggage, they’ll pick up people too, so rather than use a taxi service on top, they collected us if needed at the end of a walk and took us to our B&B. They also give general support so if there are any problems during the walk they will help – very reassuring!

A lot of people walk the YWW in 3 or 4 days, walking 20 plus miles a day. We like to enjoy our walks, we like to have time to look at the changing landscape, puzzle over certain features, watch the lambs or the sunlight coming through the trees. We also have various health issues, I for one, have MS and a major balance problem, so we aim to do about ten miles a day, knowing we can push ourselves further if we need to. We had one thirteen mile day this time, that was quite far enough! We walked the eighty miles over eight days, so we averaged ten miles a day.

We started on Saturday 18th May, on our first day we quite often plan a shorter walk so we can drive over, have lunch and then get dropped off at the beginning whilst our designated driver takes our stuff to the first B&B. Here’s us looking nice and fresh at the beginning…

The long distance walks quite often have a feature seat at each end of the walks which go together, so this is one half of the YWW seat. We’re on the banks of the river Humber and as you can see it’s a warm and sunny day.

The walk passes under the Humber bridge, I remember being taken to see the bridge when it was being built – that’s what happened with a dad who was an engineer, a coach trip to see the foundations of a bridge 🙂

It was pretty busy on the path along the river, but after a while we turned off the river side and had a lovely walk through a wooded area and across some fields until we reached the outskirts of Melton.

After nearly seven miles we reached our first B&B which was in the village of Melton, called Eastdale, It was probably just under a mile off the route, so not too far. It was very comfortable, we walked to the Green Dragon pub in Welton for our evening meal and had a delicious steak and ale pie.

Day 2 was walking over nine miles to South Cave. We walked through some more woodland, which we much appreciated as it was a pretty hot day for walking. We passed a very pretty cottage in the woods…

We also started to get some of the huge views which were a feature of this walk. They don’t always photograph well just because they are distant and hazy. This was one of our last views of the Humber…

We stayed at the Fox and Coney in South Cave. Very comfortable and lovely not to have to walk anywhere for our evening meal! We had a good night’s sleep, ready for our big day, the 13 miler!

I think this walk is going to take about three posts, so watch this space!

Posted in Walking, Yorkshire | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments

Monday’s Meander Round the Garden

Posted on May 27, 2024 by craftycreeky

Well after nine days away the garden had lots of lovely surprises for me. One of my favourite paeonies is a very delicate shade of the lightest pink, it’s sited under a standard rose, which is fortunate as just before I got home yesterday there was a huge thunder and hail storm! The blooms have nearly all survived and smell gorgeous as you’re walking up the path.

I love irises and I’ve several clumps in the garden, I think a few need dividing as I’ve not so many flower spikes this year. These ones are doing OK though. They came from my mum’s garden and have a beautiful silver edge to the rich blue leaf. They’re all round the bird bath down by the patio, it’s very heavy clay soil there but they seem fairly happy.

Up round the pond everything seems to have grown about 6″! The pond has all but disappeared from view, as has Hubert the heron. The hostas are looking amazing at the moment and to my surprise the purple rodgersia is also looking good – it’s a surprise as I dug it up when I was trying to get on top of the couch grass earlier in the year and I haven’t got round to planting it yet – job for this week I think!

One area which I don’t often feature here is my deep bed, it’s just not usually interesting enough, but it’s looking really good at the moment. The purple continus coggyria has come into leaf, purple alliums are hovering above the paeony and the astrantia. The white blossom at the back is a philadelphus which smells wonderful. The climbing rose to the right is just starting to flower and the wisteria is draping itself across the top of the fence.

This was my first view as I walked (or rather staggered!!) up the drive after my week long walk, it’s not often I think wow! as I look at my garden but it did bring a smile to my face!

Posted in Garden, Serendipity | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Owl and Hare Hollow HQAL

Posted on May 26, 2024 by craftycreeky

I’m still away walking the Yorkshire Wolds Way, hopefully finishing today. I haven’t had chance to work on my quilt over the last three weeks so no progress to share unfortunately. I’m still undecided about sashings!

I’m sure everyone else has been beavering away, so please follow the links to see what everyone has been stitching.

Hand Quilt Along Links

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, Margaret, Deb, Nanette, Sharon, Karrin, Daisy, and Connie

Posted in Owl and Hare Hollow BOM, Quilt-a-long, Quilting | Tagged | 1 Comment

Stitching my Garden SAL

Posted on May 19, 2024 by craftycreeky

I finally plucked up the courage and started stitching the pages together for my garden book. I’ve been prevaricating for a while on how to do it, I discussed it with one of my friends from my stitching group who has made lots of textile books and made a plan I was happy with…

Each page is backed with pelmet interfacing, it’s actually double-sided iron-on, which I didn’t realise initially, but it’s actually been quite useful. I worked out what size I wanted the pages to end up and trimmed the stitching with a half inch border. The hardest bit was lining up the embroidery onto the vilene as I had to press it from the fabric side and I couldn’t see through it easily. Here’s a pile waiting to be stitched together…

Four blocks need making a little bigger, mainly early stitchings before I’d really settled into the project. Two of them are crazy patchwork ones so I can just add a narrow border on two of the sides. The other two are embroideries I can put a border round. One I’ve already done is the trees embroidery…

I’m slip stitching the pages together – I’ll work out later how to bind them together! I’ve made four pages so far, I think I’ll end up with about ten or twelve. I’m pleased with how they’re coming together.

Having put the pages into a sensible order, I realised I was one page short, I needed another page about the patio area. I decided to do one about the birds that visit the garden as the feeding station is in that area. I remembered some mini panels I bought at the Harrogate show last year, they were of beautiful paintings of birds. Perfect! I chose the bluetit as they are regular visitors. It has a nice splogy background, I decided to write the names of birds that visit the garden or that we see from the garden. I wanted it to look like the bird painting was on top of the words, so a couple of the less common sightings are disappearing behind the blue tit. I’ve used a variegated DMC thread which is subtle enough to be seen without dominating the image.

I’ve just got the last four letters to stitch and then a label below on linen. I’ve still got a fair bit of work to do before this project is finished, so I’m not polishing my dancing shoes just yet!

This stitch-a-long is organised by Avis from Stitching by the Sea, please follow the links to see what everyone else has been stitching.


Avis, Claire, Gun, Kathy, Margaret, Jackie, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy, Cathie, Linda, Mary Margaret, and Cindy

Posted in embroidery, Garden, Stitch-a-long, Stitching my Garden, Textile Books | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments