Monday’s Meander Round the Garden

Posted on April 10, 2023 by craftycreeky

The weather this weekend has been typical of April, we had a couple of lovely sunny days over the weekend, today was dry and warmish first thing, then we had sudden hailstorm for ten minutes, and now the sun is shining!! British weather at it’s best!! Luckily I managed to time my gardening well…

I’ve spent several hours in the garden this weekend, weeding and working over the soil in between the plants. My friend who comes to help me in the garden introduced me to a wonderful little hand-tool, a hand cultivator, it’s like a mini rake with three prongs so you can work the soil between the plants. It’s been a game-changer for me, it makes the garden look tended! I’ve mainly been tidying up the patio area, I’ve moved a couple of plants, checked my planters to see what has survived the winter. I’ve a couple of plants and shrubs in the garden too which don’t look too sparkling, I’ll give them a couple more weeks to see if they’re going to show any signs of life.

I love this time of year when everything starts to appear and shoots up so quickly. The lime green climber at the side of the arbour is an early flowering clematis, it’s just about to flower, it has pretty little blue bell flowers. This one is pruned after flowering. The big shrub to the right of the photo is a white broom, it’s just about to flower too. I planted it a few years ago in completely the wrong place as it’s just going to get too big there. Once it’s flowering I’m planning to prune it and then move it to the side of the house where we have quite a dry and sunny area, I’m hoping it will be happy there.

By the side of the patio we have a few pasque flowers, pulsatilla vulgaris to give them their full name. As you can see these have gorgeous magenta flowers and they’ve flowered in perfect time for Easter this year, living up to their name. I love the seed heads of these too, they’re lovely silvery fluffy things.

This is the Amber and Amethyst garden, it’s filling up nicely. The pulmonaria are just starting to flower with their little heads of blue and purple flowers. The bronze sprouts trying to escape from the frame is a peony, I think I need to move the frame across a bit. The taller leafy one is blue camassia, the flower heads are just starting to appear so hopefully this one should flower in a couple of weeks or so. The shorter bushy bulbs are either hyacinth or bluebell, I can’t remember which – pretty blue flowers!

The violets have started flowering too, I love these, they self seed all over the place but I try not to pull them up if I can help it.

The trees on the back lane are starting to green up too, the two smaller green ones on the left are hawthorn, always one of the first to break into leaf. We’ve cut down some of the sycamores over the last few weeks which were getting too big so we’re hoping the garden will benefit from the extra light. We try to keep the sycamores down so the smaller native trees such as hawthorn, hazel and silver birch can flourish. The tall tree in the middle is an ash, it’s a beautiful tree so I’m desperately hoping it doesn’t succumb to the ash die-back, or even worse, the council come and take out all the ash trees regardless on the back lane as it’s already been seen further down.

The magnolia is past it’s best but is still brightening up the garden with it’s papery white blooms. The birds are getting quite territorial about our feeders I think as we’re now down to one pair of each, finches especially. We had a bit of excitement a couple of weeks ago when a strange bird visited the feeders, creamy white, a finch, having posted a photo on the Yorkshire birders page I discovered she’s a leucystic bullfinch. Leucism is a genetic disorder resulting in a partial loss of pigmentation, it’s not albinism as then they have red eyes too. It’s not a great photo as it’s through the conservatory window and I didn’t dare move! Her partner is the handsome chap on the right, they mate for life apparently. She’s not easy to see as she unfortunately blends in well with the magnolia behind! She looks like a snow bunting. I’ve named her snowy! She came regularly for a few days so I’m hoping once they stop being so territorial that she’ll be back.

I’ve been planting up some seed trays this morning so we’ll see if I have any success! Giant Chinese lanterns, purple poppies and giant sunflowers!

Posted in Garden | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

A Twirly Skirt

Posted on April 9, 2023 by craftycreeky

I’ve started a tradition with my grandchildren which I may come to regret, I make them a dress (or rompers) at Easter instead of giving them an Easter egg, it’s what I did with my own children when they were little. The girls love me making them dresses so I’m delighted to make them. This time I only left myself a week to make them…and then decided to paint the conservatory too! It has just crossed my mind however that whilst we currently just have three grandchildren from James and Bex, we have four children between us…that could end up as an awful lot of sewing!!!

Anyway, outfit number two was a twirly skirt for Harriet who is seven. Her mum fell for this pattern before Christmas but the fabric she wanted me to use wouldn’t have worked (and was very expensive!)as it was a border print. This is a circular skirt from Shakalaka patterns (same pattern company as Hugo’s rompers). It’s got a net underskirt to help it puff out and some straps which tie very prettily at the back.

I found a pretty Rose and Hubble print in pinks and purples and a matching pink pattern for the straps and the underskirt. The netting is pink too – she’s at the pink age! I bought it all at the Remnant House in Harrogate. What amazed me with this skirt is that a skirt for a small seven year old takes 4 metres of fabric!!!

It’s a full circle skirt, so it’s cut out of one piece of fabric, then there’s a skirt facing to make a neat hem, that basically means the bottom two inches of the skirt are cut out a second time, whilst that is done in four pieces it still takes a lot of fabric to keep the curve…and then there’s the underskirt and the straps…there wasn’t much left from the four metres!

The pattern was well written with photos at every stage. The only instructions I got confused on was the attachment of the waistband as usually the waistband contains all the raw edges of the top of the skirt, whereas with this one I think they’re meant to be between the skirt and the underskirt. I presume this is to keep bulk out of the elasticated waistband.

The skirt went together beautifully…it just took a while. The hem of the skirt is about 3.6m, I think I stitched round it five times, with attaching the facing, understitching, hemming…I also inserted some horsehair braid to help the hem to hold it’s self nicely over the netting.

We went round on Wednesday evening and she tried it on immediately over her PJ’s, it’s a little big round the waist so when they get back from holiday I’ll take the elastic in a bit. The straps are detachable too so if she just wants to wear the skirt she can. She loved twirling round the living room in it.

Happy Easter everyone 🙂

Posted in Dressmaking, Sewing for Grandchildren | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

Stitching my Garden

Posted on April 8, 2023 by craftycreeky

I’ve finished another page for my garden book, this one is made from two of the little embroideries I did, one is of a standard rose we have called Roald Dahl and the other is a length of roses to show the climbing rose called Teasing Georgia. I bought the Roald Dahl one in memory of my mum as she was a primary school teacher and one of her favourite books to read to the children was Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. This is the book that influenced the colour of the rose when David Austins decided to name one of their roses after him.

This page ended up a little tight on space as neither were really big enough to have a page to themselves but there wasn’t much room for filler stitching. In the end I just trimmed them fairly close and stitched them onto the background fabric with running stitch and blanket stitch.

The wording was written by hand using a frixion pen but as it’s a coarse linen (from an old furnishing fabric sample book) I could follow the lines which made it easy to get a neat effect. My main problem with this bit was trying not to make it fray whilst I stitched it on.

I’m particularly pleased with my bee, I had a fat quarter of honeycomb fabric so I cut a small square and rather than just stitching round I suddenly had the idea to extend the honeycomb pattern onto the background. I then drew a bee using a frixion pen and stitched it. I’ve just realised he’s legless, so I might add a few legs!!

I think I’ve only one or two of these pages to stitch from the little embroideries. I’ve still got a map of the garden to create and one more big one to do, the amber and amethyst garden. I’m getting there!

Posted in embroidery, Garden, Stitching my Garden, Textile Books | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

Dolly the Diva

Posted on April 7, 2023 by craftycreeky

I’ve been a busy little bee over the last couple of weeks, lots of sewing and some embroidery too, I’ve been sewing to a dead line too, never my favourite pastime as I made three outfits for my grandchildren for Easter…and I only found out last weekend that they were going away for Easter on Thursday, so my potential sewing time was somewhat curtailed!

I’ve several finishes to share so expect a few posts over the next week!

First up is a little romper for Hugo, he’s now nine months old and his mum loves the traditional little rompers. I found the pattern on Etsy by a company called Shaka-laka Patterns, I quite like pdf patterns for children as you can print and cut out the size you want without thinking about them growing and needing a bigger size later in the year.

It’s called the Rosa Romper, a little disconcerting as from the blurb it’s obviously aimed at girls, however I decided that with the right fabric and pleats rather than gathers it would be fine. I saw some gorgeous Peter Rabbit fabric on line and ordered a metre. It’s always a risk when buying fabric on line as so much is how it feels, not just the pattern but when this arrived it both looked gorgeous and felt beautiful! It’s organic cotton and whilst it’s a good weight of fabric, it is so soft to handle, perfect for a baby.

The Rosa romper has pleats or gathers for the bottoms and a Peter Pan collar. It buttons down the back and press-studs in the crotch. It has both fully lined and unlined options, I went for lined so I didn’t need to finish all the inner edges! I had a meter length of a white fine cotton lawn which was ideal for the lining.

I’ve not used Shakalaka patterns before but I was quite impressed. It went together beautifully, the instructions were well written and there were useful little tips too. Despite having made clothes for nearly 50 years, I didn’t know that if you sew the curved seam of the collar twice you get a much more even curve!

I fussycut the collar so I had Peter Rabbit running on one side and one of the flopsy bunnies on the other.

Baby clothes are a delight to make but a little fiddly as everything is small…especially the buttons!

My sewing machine now has a name, Dolly the Diva!!!

All I needed was three perfect buttonholes down the back, it’s not asking much of a high spec sewing machine but she made such a song and dance of it not only did she acquire the name, she was nearly thrown out of the window and I think miss Florence, my Luna Lapin, was probably blushing from the language she heard!!!

I did practise ones on a folded scrap of fabric which of course came out perfectly. I went to do the top one and half way down it decides to turn round, making it potentially half the length I needed…I unpicked, practised again, checked it wasn’t catching the stick…three times this happened!!! Eventually I tried the middle one instead and that worked OK. I decided in the end that it wanted a perfectly flat area and because of the collar above and the pleats below . It wasn’t easy achieving this on such a small button-band…The name has stuck!!

The buttons are less than 1/2″ in diameter, I found them in my stash. I was tempted with some little red ones too but these nicely picked out the colour of the darker leaves. I stitched on a Grandma label. and the rompers were complete.

I was a little concerned that maybe it did look a little girly but we popped in yesterday evening and he had just finished his bath, perfect timing as he could try them on straight away. Mum loved them and doesn’t he look cute!

Posted in Dressmaking | Tagged , , | 16 Comments

Staying Home HQAL

Posted on April 3, 2023 by craftycreeky

Apologies for the late arrival of this post, it’s been one of those weeks! I was on annual leave this week and had a nice week of sewing and gardening planned, as the weather wasn’t inclement for gardening I thought ‘Ooh, I’ll paint the conservatory instead, I can paint for the morning and sew in the afternoon!’ Needless to say the ‘quick job’ turned into three full days so now I’m sewing under pressure to get three Easter outfits finished for my grandchildren!! Anyway…..

I have my dancing shoes on!!!

Over the last three weeks I’ve finished the last bit of quilting, trimmed it and bound the edges, I just need to check for loose threads now, never my strong point!

I started this quilt back in 2020, it was one of the wonderful free stitch-a-long patterns the craft community came up with to keep us sane during the long lock-downs. The embroidery patterns were designed by different quilt designers(mainly Australian I think) and the whole project was organised by Natalie Bird of the Birdhouse. I made it from the fabric left over from a quilt called Coming Home, due to the conditions this quilt was started under it was soon called the Staying Home quilt.

There were twenty embroidered and appliqued blocks altogether, all finished to 6″ square. To make it into a useable bed quilt I made twenty simple house blocks, double bordered each block and used most of my last fabric scraps to make the scrappy sashing. I love the way the colours have worked out.

I still haven’t mastered taking photos of quilts, I blame my balance, this is the best of about 10 shots!

I just checked back and I started quilting this back in July last year, so about 9 months at a gentle pace! I’ve done minimal quilting on the embroidered blocks, just enough to hold everything in place, houses are quilted on the ditch with windows added. I whip-stitched the quilting round the windows to make them stand out a bit more. The sashings quilted with hearts. It’s probably easier to see on the back…

The backing as you can see was pieced from leftover fabric, trying to get a landscape appearance, the light fabric at the bottom actually has reflective dots on it so it glows in the dark!!

I tried a couple of fabrics for binding, but eventually decided on this grey/blue design which I had used for some of the sashings. I did my usual double fold method with 2.5″ strips. I always hand stitch my binding down, it may take a few evenings in front of the TV but I much prefer the finish.

I’m well chuffed with this quilt, I love the colours and how its balanced out. With hindsight the only ting I might have done differently is to add another light 1″ border round the whole quilt, it would have just meant I could have done whole hearts round the outer edge instead of part ones. As the saying goes in quilting though, only God’s work is perfect 🙂

I’m just waiting for the instructions for my next project to arrive, hopefully by the time of my next post I’ll have started it. It give you a clue, it’s actually by the same designer!

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  Cathie

I’ll also be linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday

Posted in Quilt-a-long, Quilting | Tagged , , | 17 Comments

Monday’s Meander Round the Garden

Posted on March 27, 2023 by craftycreeky

It’s a while since I went for a wander round the garden with my camera…it had been a long while since I did any gardening but here in Yorkshire it feels like spring has finally sprung. We’re still having some very cold mornings, but when the sun comes out it can be quite warm. Over the last few days I’ve finally got out and done some gardening.

Somewhat late but I finally got round to pruning my roses, not heavily as I am a bit late, but interestingly the ones which Sally, my gardening friend had cut back in the autumn hardly needed anything, just a light trim, so I think I’ll try and do an autumn trim in future.

Sally came round again today and we worked on the amber and amethyst garden at the top. I think I have finally got the hang of the hand rake, a wonderful little tool she introduced me to last year with three strong prongs, it just makes everything look tended and helps with the mini weeds.

The dark blue flowers on the left are pulmonaria, the purple growth under the dome is a peony and the dark grey looking flowers are hellebores which when freshly out are a stunning dark purple.

Plants are putting on lots of growth at the moment and spring flowering trees are looking beautiful, I love seeing the cherry and almond blossom around the town and at home I have a mini cherry in a pot, its blossoms are so delicate, I love it.

The camellias are all in flower too, the blooms are easily damaged by cold winds so some have browned a bit, especially a white one I have at the side of the drive. The dark pink one by the conservatory is a bit more protected…

The two plants underneath are camassia on the right, which will probably flower in about a few weeks time and two brunnera leafing up nicely. Interestingly the silvery one is the original plant, the off shoot is clearly reverting back to a plain green.

Up by the pond I have a very pretty pale pink camellia, a fairly young shrub, which at the moment has a single perfect flower, isn’t it beautiful…

The pond area which is the area I’m embroidering at the moment, is still looking a bit bare, the hostas are just starting to push their shoots up. Having cleared a big bank of flag iris last year which were hogging the pond and causing access issues, I really have no excuse for the pond weed, I think I need to put a fishing net nearby so I can have a dip when I’ve got 5 minutes to spare. I took the photo on my phone which seems to have gone into a wide angle mode…not sure what I did but you can see a bit more of the garden!

The snowdrops in the bottom corner were lovely this year, it’s getting to be quite a big patch now, these are all from a bunch my mum gave me from her garden a few years ago. It works quite well as when they die back the bed is covered by a rogersia and some geraniums, layered planting at it’s best!

The patio garden is slowly coming to life too, though the birds are very busy on the feeders and collecting moss from the walls for their nests. In the space of half an hour whilst I sat in the conservatory drinking coffee, I saw two bullfinches, two goldfinches, nuthatches, a blackbird, a wren, a pair of long tailed tits, bluetits, great tits, dunnocks…and a pair of pigeons! I could sit for hours watching them!

Hopefully now it’s warmed up a bit I can get out a bit more, though it’ll come to a bit of a halt again just after Easter as I’m having my gall bladder out, keyhole method fortunately so hopefully I’ll be back to normal activities in three or four weeks…I’m sure I can find some sewing to do in the meantime 🙂

Posted in Garden | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Stitching my Garden SAL

Posted on March 26, 2023 by craftycreeky

I was hoping to have finished this area of the garden by now but I found there is a disadvantage in having a hedge (ish) of wild roses across the back of the garden, it takes forever to embroider!! I even took it to my Skipton Stitchers meeting which gives me a few hours stitching and still didn’t make much inroad!! Three weeks ago I had just started the roses!!

These roses are the simple open petalled type so I didn’t just want to stitch them with a chunky French knot, I tried a few straight stitches round a small french knot but that looked messy and came out too big, so I resorted to a little French knot surrounded by some loose-ish stem stitches. I think my mistake was doing most of my French knots first and I did rather a lot of them!!!

I’ve started filling in a few perennials under the roses, some alchemilla mollis and I’m just doing a pink geranium. The rest will hopefully not take too long, theres the rhodedendron bush which is the green circle, theres a camelia in the corner behind it and then some hellebores in front together with a little azalea…and maybe a few lines on the blank area on the left where the flagged path and steps are…then I think I’ll be finished!

I’ve one more big one like this of the other side which has the amber & amethyst garden and maybe a couple more little ones – ones almost finished. I want to do a map of the garden too which I’m doing as my (very belated) final piece from the Cartography embroidery course I did with Zara Day but that won’t be anywhere near as intensive as these ones.

Now the end is in sight, I’ve started to think about how I’m going to put it together. There’s a lot of raised surface embroidery with the chunky French knots, so at the moment I’m wondering about backing them with pelmet vilene to give the support and then edging with a fine cotton bias binding, a bit like how a quilt is edged. I’ve got a bias binding maker so if I can master the technique I can make my own bias from pretty quilting cottons.

This SAL is organised by Avis from Stitching by the Sea, we post our progress every three weeks, it certainly gives me the motivation to keeo going on some of these bigger projects. Please follow the links to see what everyone else has been stitching

Avis, Claire, Gun, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, 

Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy, 

AJ, Cathie, Linda, Helen, Connie, Cindy, MaryMargaret

Posted in embroidery, Garden, Stitch-a-long, Stitching my Garden, Textile Books | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

Dancing in the Secret Garden

Posted on March 13, 2023 by craftycreeky

Well I’ve got my dancing shoes on….

In February when I had a couple of weeks off I decided to concentrate on getting my Secret Garden quilt finished. This is a gorgeous design by Andrea of Raggedy Ruff Designs, I bought it as a BOM kit ages ago, I did the first block and then bottled it! I think at the time that first block also seemed so busy and bright I was having second thoughts about it…but having counted up just how many Raggedy Ruff kits I have, I decided to give myself a stern talking to and crack on with it! I have to add at this point….I absolutely love it now!!

The final block was the central one with a view into the garden and a cat sitting washing himself. Whilst he did look like a cat I had many years ago, I decided instead to try and incorporate our three dogs which we had up to the last couple of years.

I found some old photos of the dogs wandering down the back lane which was the perfect pose for them, it also helped me to get the size right, as the difference between Rosie the golden retriever and Lucy the bichon frise was huge. When Lucy came down the garden she would peer round the wall at the bottom of the steps, looking very cute, so I pictured her looking round the door. Andrea makes the designs look so relatively simple…it’s not!! My respect for Andrea as a design was already high, it’s now through the roof!!

I drew an outline of the three dogs, traced it onto freezer paper and found some batik which was the right colour. I cut them out and stitched round the edge with my usual gutermann thread. I then carried on with the rest of the block.

Once all the flowers were stitched I turned back to the dogs. I tackled Zach first, using a dark blue/grey/purple thread to give his shape and a bit of detail. My only issue with Zach is that he was a smooth, glossy coated dog and the batik has frayed very slightly as I’ve stitched near to the edge and he looks a little straggly…but I can live with that!

Lucy had a curly coat, a bit like a poodle, so I just did lots of curly stitches in a variegated off white. I did all the eyes by hand with French knots as I didn’t trust myself to do such a small black spot.

Rosie was a big fluffy lump, I used a variegated sandy thread initially, but it just looked a bit flat, so I added some highlighted areas. Both her and Lucy just didn’t seem quite right, I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. I slept on it and it came to me overnight, they needed more of an outline. I outlined them both in the same dark brown, grey thread which was quite a bit heavier than the original outlined thread. It made all the difference. It would have been better to outline in the heavier thread first and then have the feathery detail over it to soften it a little, but on the whole I’m happy.

Having finished the final block I could start to put the quilt together. I trimmed the stabiliser from the back where possible and stitched the top and bottom blocks on. I’d already stitched the two sides blocks together but I added another buddleia flower and a couple of blooms where the delphiniums met. I also added a few stems over the join to give the continuity.

Here’s my completed quilt top…

I’m well chuffed with it, I just need to quilt it now, I have a few thoughts on how I’m going to do that but I think I’ll mull it over for a bit longer.

If you fancy making one of these quilts, do follow the link to the Raggedy Ruff website. She’s just about to start a new Block of the month, the quilt looks gorgeous, and this time as well as the written instructions like I’ve always used, she’s also made videos of the making of each block, so you can see how she does it more easily.

Posted in embroidery, Machine embroidery, Quilt-a-long, Quilting, Raggedy Ruff Designs | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Staying Home HQAL

Posted on March 12, 2023 by craftycreeky

Well I’m quite excited this morning as I’m pretty close to a happy dance, not quite, but close!

Three weeks ago when I last shared this quilt (which I started in 2020, hence the name) I was nearly at the end of the fourth row, so six blocks and sashing to go…

After a few nights in front of the fire with a quilt on my knees, I’ve quilted another four blocks. The heart shaped key-hole is quilted round the edges of the applique. The butterfly in the bottom right at the moment just has the branch quilted, it doesn’t seem much but I think with the square quilted just in from the edge too it’s just enough to hold things together, the alternative was to quilt round all the flowers and the butterfly wings…you can probably tell this is my least favourite block of the quilt!!

So all that’s left to quilt is the house block and the embroidered block on the left of the bottom row together with their length of sashing. Hopefully in three weeks time I’ll have quilted and bound it and be dancing round my sewing room!

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

I’ll also be linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, please follow the links to see what everyone has been stitching.

Posted in Quilt-a-long, Quilting | Tagged , | 17 Comments

Magnolia Stellata

Posted on March 8, 2023 by craftycreeky

One of my favourite trees in the garden is my magnolia stellata, it’s dainty white flowers brave the early spring weather to put on an amazing display and their scent is beautiful too.

When I started my garden textile book it was inevitable that one of the first little embroideries I did was of my magnolia…

I’m mounting these smaller embroideries in a sort of crazy patchwork background to make a page for the book. The last one I did for geraniums ended up quite bright but this one wanted a quieter feel to it. I found some soft green/grey fabrics that blended nicely with it. I also found in my box of linens a little scrap of vintage linen, I trimmed it a little and used a Frixion pen to write the words, it’s to be hoped this book doesn’t get cold as it took about three attempts before I was happy with the letters, so they might all reappear !!! I chose a range of threads which I thought would work, the butterfly is cut from some leftover apron fabric, it just worked colourwise.

I started by stitching the white linen in place with a simple running stitch. This held it nice and secure for stitching the letters in back-stitch. Whilst I was stitching the butterfly motif on I was mulling over different ideas for the border embroidery. I decided I wanted something to bring out the white of the embroidered flowers.

I started by embroidering a branch which curled round the sides. I then started embroidering magnolia flowers in the basic white DMC thread. To start with they were actually half the size, but I felt they needed to be bigger and more dainty too, so I stitched another layer of petals, curving some outwards, using the B5200 DMC thread, which I don’t often use as it has a different feel to it somehow and usually looks too white, but it was just right for this.

I felt it needed a little something on the righthand side. I remembered my idea to put a liberal sprinkling of bees through this book so I embroidered a little be and it’s flight path.

Another page stitched, I’ve probably got about three more of these mixed pages to do, I need to prepare one ready to have as my handbag stitching project.

Posted in embroidery, Garden, Stitching my Garden, Textile Books | Tagged , , , | 21 Comments