I was getting a bit worried three weeks ago that maybe I was being a tad optimistic thinking I could get this birth sampler finished for Christmas but I’m ticking along nicely now!
Three weeks ago I was still stitching the first of six characters, Peter Rabbit…
I have now completed Peter, he was meant to be one of the Flopsy Bunnies with a pink jacket on, but as it’s for my grandson Hugo, I changed it to a blue jacket to make it Peter instead. The pattern had her holding a blue book, so I changed it to yellow which is the colour used in the pattern for mouse at the top, which I think is called Little Johney Townmouse.
I then carried on up the lefthand side and stitched Jemima Puddleduck and I’m over half way through Mrs Tiggywinkle. I have a soft spot for Mrs Tiggywinkle as according to the book, she lives on the side of Catbells, one of my favourite climbs in the Lake District.
I haven’t done any of the pulled stitches yet, I’m thinking of doing this side first, then tackle the pulled stitches round these characters, I think it might help me make sure I’ve lined the two sides up correctly, one thread out a couple of times over those long blue tendrils and I’m a whole square out! I’m also wondering about just running a tacking thread across one line to make sure I line it all up correctly.
This SAL is organised by Avis from Stitching by the Sea, please follow the links to see what everyone has been stitching.
I seem to have ended up with lots of blocks half made, so I’ve made a concerted effort to finish some this week…
Three weeks ago I’d prepared lots of 1.5″ squares as I had to make four 5×5 blocks. I’d decided to make them all the same as they wouldn’t be near each other on the finished quilt and just by turning them they would look different…and it took too much thinking to work out fabric choices four times!
I stitched them into the chequerboard blocks fairly quickly as I didn’t want to risk the box of squares being up-diddled! The blocks sat for a couple of weeks in my sewing box but this week I trimmed them into a circle and gathered it round a 7″ template. Four blocks more blocks finished.
On my visit to my daughters I finished stitching another embroidered block, this one just needs the ring of hexagons. I love this one…
On the train journey back from London I started stitching another embroidery, this has lots of flowers on and will have an appliqued circle in the middle. I’ve used several DMC and Anchor variegated threads for this one. It’s almost finished, sorry I can’t press it for the photo but I’ve used a Frixion pen to trace the design and it disappears with heat!
I finished the block with a large hexie flower on, it’s mounted on two circles. I’m not entirely happy with this one as I think the flower gets a bit lost. With hindsight I would have been better to have the pink flowery fabric as the outer ring and the green one inside. I might leave it and do a pink flower for the second one, with the circles fabrics the other way round, or I could take the hexiflower off this one and maybe make a darker pink flower instead.
I’ve finished making the tiny blue hexie flowers, I haven’t mounted them yet as I fancy getting some very pale green fabric for them. I’ve to make another set too, I’m undecided whether to make a pink set or some hexie sheep! I’ve had a big cutting out session of the larger (1/2″) hexies as I’ve three or four embroideries ready and waiting for the circle of hexagons.
I’m pretty much up to date with the embroideries now, these have been my handbag stitching this year, so I think I need to prep some hexie circles and tack them on, these can be properly stitched on then during my lunch hour or whilst waiting for appointments…or buses!
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.
Last weekend I had a wonderful few days with my daughter, she lives about 200 miles away at the moment, she comes up when she can but for various reasons I hadn’t been down there, so it was lovely to see where she lived and have some time together.
The weekend started on Thursday, she bought us tickets to see Shania Twain for my birthday. I made myself a blouse and after chatting to a younger work colleague who went earlier in the week Helen also managed to get some cowboy hats at the last minute…and then we got some twinkly lights to go on them on the stalls outside the arena. We had a fabulous time, here we are just before the concert…
On Friday we drove down to Colchester to her house for the weekend. On Saturday she suggested that we go to Beth Chatto’s garden. I’ve wanted to go for years as it’s quite a famous garden. It’s actually Grade II listed which is pretty rare for a garden. I’d heard about the dry garden which she famously made from a carpark back in the 1960’s, it’s never watered, she just planted plants that like dry conditions.
I didn’t realise however that there’s much more to the gardens, there’s 7 acres altogether with several ponds and beautiful borders. What we particularly liked is that it wasn’t pristine, there were weeds around, she used lots of easily available plants, like verbena, sedum, hydrangeas, there was no neat colour scheme, there were lots of ideas that were usable in the average sized garden…and some amazing vistas…
On Sunday she said we’d have a walk round Dedham. Something about Dedham rang a bell with me but I couldn’t remember what. I asked Helen what was there, oh it’s just a pretty village with a nice walk along the river. It still niggled me when we were having lunch in Dedham, why had I heard about it! We were walking along the river when we came across a National Trust exhibition…about Constable’s Haywain, probably one of the most famous paintings in Britain! It was painted in 1821 at Flatford Mill which is in Dedham!! The painting now hangs in the National Gallery. ‘Who’s Constable’ says my daughter!! Her artistic grandmother would be spinning in her grave!!
Anyway, we could see the spot where Constable painted the Haywain. I was surprised to see it was a dead end of water, I always presumed they were crossing a river, so I’m not sure why they didn’t just go round the end!
On Monday I left my daughters to come home on the train. I travelled via London and met up with two girls I trained as a nurse with, one of whom I hadn’t seen since about 1987!! We shared a flat for a couple of years and it was wonderful to see them both again, lots of reminiscing. We’re hoping to have a reunion early next year as it’ll be 40 years since we started our nurse training.
I was quite exhausted when I finally got back home on Monday night!
I’m stitching a birth sampler for my grandson for Christmas. I usually stitch a non-baby design as otherwise I think they can have a pretty short shelf life, however they always seem to stay with the parents when the children move out anyway! These are the two I did for my children…
I was beginning to think that they didn’t appeal to the younger generation so I was delighted when my daughter-in-law mentioned that she’d love a Peter Rabbit birth sampler…and of course I sold a pattern on e-bay during my clear out earlier this year!! I first stitched it back in 1988 for my niece and luckily I managed to buy a pattern back again .
I think it’s a particularly cute design as it’s based on the frontispieces of the Beatrix Potter books which have six of the characters reading books. I like the pulled thread detail too.
I’ve made a start on the bottom left. I changed it from one of the flopsy bunnies to Peter Rabbit with his blue coat as it’s for my grandson. I just need to decide on the book colour now.
It’s a while since I’ve done any cross-stitch, I’m using 32 count linen, so 16 stitches to the inch. I’ve had the odd bit of frogging to do when I’ve miscounted, so hopefully my maths will improve fairly quickly as otherwise this is going to take sometime! With a bit of luck I’ll have finished this block and be on with the next one by the time of the next SAL post.
This SAL is organised by Avis from Stitching by the Sea, please follow the links to see what everyone else is stitching.
I’ve started a monthly course with Sew Nature on how to use Inktense Pencils. Inktense pencils are made by Derwent which is based in Keswick. They’re watercolour pencils that you can use either on paper or on fabric. As the name suggests they can make a really intense colour.
The pencils are a bit confusing to use as the pencil lead doesn’t look anything like the final colour, when I’ve tried before I didn’t get the even effect I wanted. Hence I decided to do a course. It’s a live zoom course once a month for about 1.5 hours and a video of the lesson is put on the members page afterwards. It’s only $10 a month which works out at less than £8, pretty good value!
Laura from Sew Nature is running the course. The first part has been teaching us about butterflies and how to attract them to our gardens. She is based in the US but there are a couple of us from the UK and she is making an effort to include plants and butterflies that live over here too.
The second part of the lesson is the practical bit. The first lesson was how to use the pencils, the effect different liquids have on the pencils, water makes them bleed out, a bit like silk paints, but aloe vera gel stops them from bleeding at all. Other liquids are available too, I happen to have one called ‘no flow’, it’s interesting to play around to see how the pencils react to each liquid.
Laura is basing the course on the basic box of twelve pencils. I’ve managed to inherit a box of 36 from my mum. I’m sure I’ve also got a box of 12 somewhere of my own. I sorted out my box so the twelve were all together. She had a really good chart for us to print out onto fabric so we could see how the different colours mixed together. I haven’t quite finished mine , I’ve some more colouring to do and then the aloe vera gel to add.
Last week we had the second lesson. She provided us with a flower design. It’s actually a gaillardia, a pretty orange garden flower. Unfortunately orange was the one pencil that was missing from my box! I decided to do a purple one instead. I used two shades of purple, a dark indigo and a bit of pink too ( I have to confess that the pink went on accidently as it looks purple in the pencil! Once it was on one petal it had to go on all of them!)
I managed to get a progress photo to give you an idea of just how much the colour changes. The centre has been coloured and wettened, the petals have just been coloured…
…and this is the flower after all the petals have been wet with aloe vera and also water in the middle…
Quite a difference! I’m thinking of quilting round this to finish it, maybe adding a little machine or hand embroidery. I still want to get a more even finish, a more smooth blending, practise required I think! Next month we’re learning how to colourwash a background. I think this could look nice on the side of a tote bag when it’s finished. Next month we’re doing what looks like quite a complicated picture of a monarch butterfly on some blossom…watch this space!
I’ve fancied making a chandelier quilt for a while, so after my offer of a quilt for my great niece for her christening was accepted I downloaded the pattern free from Lella Boutique. I also watched a great tutorial on YouTube by Jenny Doan of Missouri Star. It doesn’t look too difficult. I’ve not done a quilt ‘on point’ before, but every day’s a school day!
Ages ago I bought a layer cake on a facebook destash site, it’s got lots of Hoffman batiks in pastel shades, blue, green, purple, pink, orange. There’s forty different fabrics, some only subtly different but different all the same. I decided to use it for Lexie’s Quilt. It’s pretty whilst keeping options open with colour schemes. I’ve just used an ivory cotton for the background.
I had a big cutting out session one weekend. I needed a 5″ square and two 2.5″ squares from each colour, plus one extra as I need 41 blocks altogether. I then needed lots of 2.5″ wide strips, 84 were 7″ long and 84 were 5″ long. Then there’s the triangles…it took a while!
Once I started sewing I got into a bit of a routine, stitch a few, press a few. I’ve almost finished stitching all the blocks together. I’ve put a few up on my design wall to give you (and me!) an idea of how they look.
The next job will be to decide how to arrange them. I’ve been saving images of these quilts on pinterest for a while so I know there’s lots of options…lines of colour, mixes of colour, graduations of tone…lots to think about and play with. At the moment I’m thinking of mixing all the colours up, but I also wondered about having the darker shades in the middle and the lighter towards the edges…I think I need to play with a few different layouts.
Hopefully once I sort the layout then it’ll go together fairly quickly. I have however re-thought my plan to make a quilt a month, so three quilts by Christmas…maybe it’s a tad ambitious! I was thinking of giving my two granddaughters a quilt each for Christmas, however I’ve decided to do them for birthdays instead. This means I only need to make Lexie’s quilt and one other by Christmas (Pip’s birthday is 1st January!) and I’ll make Harriet’s after Christmas. That leaves me more time for dress-making 🙂
I’m off to see Shania Twain on Thursday! I’m so excited! My daughter bought us tickets for my birthday last month. It’s quite sweet too as when the kids were little, like under five, I used to put Shania on full blast, pick them up and dance round the lounge with them on my hips until we fell on the settee laughing. Just last year she happened to mention that whenever Shania tracks come on at parties etc she has to dance, she was obviously indoctrinated from a young age!
Having got over the excitement a little, I then thought, what am I going to wear! I haven’t been to a pop concert for years, and I mean years – the last time was when I saw Queen at the Knebworth Rock Festival…and yes, Freddie Mercury was just amazing!!
Having lost weight this year a lot of my clothes are too big, some others I can fit into again! I don’t have a pair of jeans at the moment but I do have a couple of denim skirts I made a few years back. All I needed was a top!
I decided to make a tied shirt type top. I eventually decided on the Saturday Skirt Set by the Friday Pattern Company. It’s a wrap top which you can either tie at the front or wrap round. It’s meant to have sleeves but I fancied a sleeveless version.
I used a madras check print which I think I bought a few years ago from Fabric Heaven. I’d actually put the fabric on a charity pile as during my last sort out I couldn’t think what to make with it! It’s quite colourful! I decided it was perfect for trying a pattern out, a wearable toille!
It went together fairly easily. I cut some bias binding to finish the arm holes, I really like the effect of the bias cut. I’m also particularly pleased how well the collar pattern matches with the back!
When I tried it on I liked it tied at the front rather than wrapped round, but it did show rather more than I wanted! I didn’t mind a tiny bit of midriff though it’s a bit more than I anticipated, but I really didn’t want most of my bra at risk too. Having pondered for a short while, I stitched a couple of button loops at the edge and found some pale yellow see-through buttons which blend in really well. It just keeps me covered enough to reax and enjoy wearing it.
We’ve got a long hot holiday coming up over Christmas, I might make myself a matching top a skirt from this pattern, it looks like it will be cool to wear in hot climes. I also think maybe the skirt in the pattern sits a little higher than my denim one which I may be a little more relaxed in!
It’s officially autumn here in the UK and it certainly feels autumnal up here in Yorkshire. It’s time to start slowly tidying the garden up for the winter. I try not to tidy too much as it’s better for wildlife if it’s left over winter, but some things need cutting back a bit.
The deep border by the fence had got very overgrown – this is how it looked for my last garden post…
Well I got in there on my hands and knees, weeding and sorting out what’s what. I dug up lots of bindweed roots which is satisfying but frustrating too, they’re big and very white so they show up once I start ferreting round, it’s just frustrating that I still have such a bindweed problem after all these years. I’ve still some work to do at the very back. I cut a few perennials back, pruned some shrubs and accidently dug up a clematis!
I still have some work to do at the back but this is what it looks like now…
The blue pot hasn’t moved, it’s just that you can see it now!
Next I think I will tackle the pond area, I’ll give it a couple more weeks though and then the hosta leaves will just fall off. I’m thinking of digging up the crocosmia as it’s just got too big and spread too much, that’s the tall strappy leaves behind Hubert the heron. I’m also wanting to halve the patch of Solomon’s Seal as it hiding the pond … or I could move it to where the crocosmia is now!!
There’s still a few flowers around in the garden, the roses are still producing a few blooms, though the weather gets to them pretty quickly. This little patch of flowers is by the top lawn but looking through from the steps as you go up. It’s a pink geranium with a shrubby clematis. Not all clematis are climbers, there is also a shrub, it’s pretty nondescript for most of the year but late summer early autumn it has spikes of blue flowers.
One plant that rarely gets a mention but just quietly flowers for months on end is this penstemon, I think it’s called apple blossom. It’s coming to the end of flowering now but it’s still got several pink spikes.
From the upstairs window the garden is still looking fairly green, just a few trees and shrubs are starting to show their autumn colours. Hopefully over the next few weeks I’ll manage to get out there and tidy things up a bit.
It’s been National Balance Week this week, so I thought I’d do my bit to raise awareness of the issues those of us with balance problems face.
Balance is something we all take for granted, we don’t have to think about it in everyday life. There are three main factors which give us balance, vision, leg muscles inner ears. Take one away and we can usually cope, try standing with your eyes closed and you’re probably OK, try standing on one leg with your eyes closed and it’s not so easy.
Balance problems are often caused by inner ear issues, most people have heard or suffered from vertigo when the head spins on movement, usually lasting only a matter of days. Most people are familiar with that unpleasant feeling when you lose your balance, feel unsteady after a few too many drinks, or unsteadiness after a boat trip. Imagine living with that permanently. Meniere’s Disease causes balance issues, sometimes, like with me, the cause isn’t known and it’s just labelled as vestibular failure.
I have no balance from my ears, there are no bad days or good days, it’s just a matter of managing my issues and being aware of my limitations. As I have no balance from my ears, the other two components of balance are pretty vital. Take away vision with poor light and I’m all over the place, brilliant sunshine can do the same, at this time of year the early morning sun is low in the sky and walking towards it causes issues. Visual clues are important, I need horizons, I don’t mean wide distant views, just a linear marker so I know if I’m going off balance. ‘Horizons’ can be hidden by high hedges or even worse, crowds. I hate crowded areas as everything is moving and there’s no horizon. Sometimes building design makes an unexpected difference, there’s a posh shopping centre in Leeds which has a glossy tiled floor with a large zigzag pattern, it’s a nightmare for me to walk on.
Messages from leg muscles are affected by the terrain. Even, flat surfaces are the best for me to walk on, but rarely exist outside buildings. Footpaths can have quite steep camber and lots of uneven areas due to roadworks. I love walking in the countryside, in the Yorkshire Dales or the Lakes, but I do have to choose my route carefully and I always use walking poles. I’m actually better going straight up a hill, I like a bit of scrambling over rocky areas and as it usually involves hands as well as feet I feel alot safer. I struggle with narrow paths that follow the contour round a mountain, not helped by the thought of the consequences of falling! Very soft terrain isn’t good either, though it does make for a soft landing when I fall!
I like to have a third point of contact, particularly when I’m walking. Waliking poles obviously provide it but it might just be lightly brushing a wall with my finger tips, it doesn’t have to be all the time, it just helps. Similarly if I’m decorating up a ladder, I’ll only use one which has a bar across the top so I can rest my knee against it for that contact point.
Balance issues also cause problems with vision. As my brain doesn’t compensate for head movements, everything ‘wobbles’ when my head moves, so I can’t focus on signs for example when walking down the street. I also struggle in supermarkets as I can’t scan the shelves as I’m walking down an aisle, I have to stop to look. It can be tiring having to concentrate all the time on the little things like this.
Other things can have unexpected consequences on my balance, I started some new painkillers earlier this year which instead of just taking at night time, I had to take 3 times a day. It took a while to realise that this was probably why I suddenly had a lot more falls, I’m used to falling out in the countryside, not whilst getting off a bus!! I reduced the day time dose and changed the times I took them and the falls stopped.
Having said all that, I cope, on the whole it’s manageable. I get on with a pretty full and active life, I know my limitations and on the whole I don’t push them. There’s much worse problems to have than this!
If you’ve managed to get through all this, thank you! If you would like more information there’s lots on the VEDA website
I didn’t think I’d get so much done over these three weeks as I knew I wanted to concentrate on finishing my garden embroidery, however when we went away for a couple of nights the light in the evening wasn’t good enough for that so I stitched the simpler Owl and Hare Hollow blocks instead. This is a quilt designed by Natalie Bird of Birdhouse Quilts in Australia, it’s being released in the Homespun magasine over six issues. The fourth magasine dropped through my letterbox yesterday so I’m about halfway, I say ‘about’ as I’ve not quite finished the ones in the last magasine, I’m getting there though.
Three weeks ago I’d finished the Queen Bee embroidery and just started the next one. I’d made seemingly lots of hexagons to go round them…
Each embroidered block takes nineteen hexagons, it’s meant to be twenty but I can’t fit twenty in the seven inch circle, I gave up trying on block two! I tack them round first then sew the outer edges, then the inner edges, I find this much quicker and easier then sewing one hexagon at a time. I’m trying to do all the blocks in pretty much the same fabrics to get some continuity, it also saves me having to think every time about how the colours and patterns work together. It took long enough to decide which fabric to use for the inner circle!
I cracked on and stitched the next embroidery too. This one has a lovely circle of foliage round the outside which I did in a variegated green. It then has a colourful flower barrow. I enjoyed stitching this one. Last night I finally finished the circle of hexagons.
The next embroidered block was the first one I really wasn’t so keen on. It has a lovely border of leafy branches again but it then had a pair of dressed foxes which somehow looked a little sinister to me!! I decided to change it and found this delightful embroidery pattern from The Embroidery Place on Etsy. One great feature was that you could print it to fit different sized hoops, I think it went from 3″ to 7″. I used the 4″ size and nestled the deer down in the leafy glade. I love this one and think it fits in well with the other embroideries. I just need to stitch the circle of hexagons on.
My pile of hexagons is going down fast, I think I need another mass production line again! I’ve been making even smaller ones over the last couple of days, each side measures 3/8″. I’ve to make six hexie flowers for each block, two blocks in total. I worked out that means I need to make 84 little hexies!! Another block uses the slightly larger hexies to make a single flower. These are the half inch ones, so only 1/8″ bigger on each side so it amazes me how much bigger the final flower comes out…
I’m making three forget-me-not flowers, I haven’t decided yet whether the other three will be the same three blue prints, some lighter blue prints or pink ones.
I’ve also made an applique owl. I’ve used bondaweb rather then needleturn applique and then just back-stitched round. The eyes are meant to be satin stitched but I’m quite tempted to use these tiny buttons which are the perfect size. He’ll have an appliqued circle of arcs round him like the hare I made earlier.
I’ve prepped a load of 2″ squares too for four blocks which take twenty five each, so they are ready to be stitched into a chequerboard once I get a couple of hours free on my sewing machine. Hopefully over the next three weeks I’ll finish all the blocks in the third magazine so I’ll officially be half way.
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.
thecraftycreek 