Monday’s Meander Round the Garden

Posted on March 14, 2022 by craftycreeky

We’ve had a dry few days and it has been a bit warmer too so I’ve managed to get quite a bit of tidying done in the garden. I started trying to tidy and weed at the same time so I could get each area looking good but it was taking too long in that a lot of shrubs need pruning now, not in a few weeks when I get round to their patch of the garden. So for the time being I’m concentrating on tidying…

Tidying is doing things like cutting or pulling up all the old leaves and stems on the perennials such as paeonies, geraniums, brunnera or sedums. I haven’t finished yet as I’ve most of the roses to prune still and some clematis, but it does look better, my OH took two big car loads to the tip!

The hellebores in the garden are taking centre stage at the moment, I’ve quite a few now as they do seem to like my soil, I’ve white ones, black one, purple, pink, speckled…but my favourite is the deep pinky red one, I just love the colour…

The pinky red one looks particularly good next to the hebe next to it, it picks out the purple edges on the leaves, This is part of the Amber and Amethyst garden, looking over to the autumn border. It’s looking a lot tidier than it did this morning. I’ve trimmed all the hellebore leaves, so the flowers are much easier to see. I still need to weed and decide how many of those self seeded foxgloves are staying round one of my roses!

The pond area looks much better too, though the snowdrops are past there best now. A few weeks ago we pulled the overgrown flag irises out of the pond, they had just got too big, you couldn’t really see the pond anymore! I’ve still some plants round here that are a bit thuggish which I tried to reduce a bit last autumn, so it will be interesting to see how it pans out this year.

One of the hellebore flowers was accidently chopped off, so I floated it on my mini water feature down by the patio. It reminds me of our holiday in Bali as they used to do this in the hotel we stayed in…

So the garden overall is looking much more looked after, though there’s still an awful lot of work to do over the next few weeks. This is the view from an upstairs window with the patio below, the Amber and Amethyst garden on the left with the autumn bed behind and the lawn, pond and summerhouse on the right. Hopefully the more spring-like weather will continue a little longer.

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Peppermint Purple SAL

Posted on March 13, 2022 by craftycreeky

Well I’ve started my border, and now I’ve decided which border pattern to use it’s moving on fairly quickly. This blackwork pattern is last years free SAL from Peppermint Purple, Claire (the designer) did suggest a lovely colourway but I decided for my first try at blackwork I’d make it difficult for myself by making it into a picture of Catbells, my favourite place in the Lake District. Three weeks ago I’d just finished the main square…

My original thought for the border was to include the names of natural features on or around Catbells, such as Manesty Woods, Hause End, Derwentwater. These would be stitched with a leaf border in between the words. I started trying to plan it out, found a pretty leaf border in a book I’ve had for years, but when I started to stitch it it just didn’t look dense enough to look balanced with the rest of the piece. Never mind the fact that working out the spacing of the words was frazzling my brain! I’ve still to undo the bit I did so you can see what I mean.

I decided to use one of the borders Claire from Peppermint Purple suggested. I’ve used two colours, a darkish grey for most of it but a soft grey- green for the middle. I needed a colour that wasn’t too overpowering round the lighter areas, but held it’s own round the darker bits. I’m pretty pleased with it so far and it does grow surprisingly quickly. Here it is so far…

I’m still planning to add the word Catbells at the top and maybe my initials and the year at the bottom, both stitched within the lines of the border. I’ve just need to unpick the leaves so I can carry on round the corner. Hopefully I can start polishing my happy dance shoes soon!

This SAL is organised by Avis from Stitching by the Sea, we each post our progress on our chosen projects every three weeks, just often enough to keep the motivation going! Please follow the links to see what every one else is stitching.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy, AJ, Cathie, Linda, Helen

Posted in embroidery, Peppermint Purple 2021 SAL, Serendipity, Stitch-a-long | Tagged , , , | 13 Comments

Sewing Room Cross-stitch

Posted on March 6, 2022 by craftycreeky

We’ve just had a few days in Derbyshire so I packed a little sewing to do in the evenings. I was strict with myself and only took one project, the sewing room cross-stitch. This is a design from Stony Creek Collection. I’ve been putting off all the gold and silver thread stitching as I really don’t like cross-stitch with metallic threads, so I packed my threads and left myself with little option but to do the metallic bit…it worked!

Last time I shared this project with you the sewing machine just needed all the metallic stitches and then back-stitching and I’d started the patchwork blocks on each side…

The sewing machine is now complete, I’ve finished all the metallic stitching and the back-stitching, I just need to do the back-stitching on the thread and the pincushion and then ‘thread’ my machine with purple thread. I’ll probably do the thread bit last as they’re long stitches so I don’t want it distorting in the hoop I’m using.

Isn’t it cute!

I also finished the patchwork blocks on either side, though I still have the back-stitching to do on the left hand ones as I didn’t have the right colour with me. The one on the bottom right niggles me a little as I feel it’s trying to be a log cabin, but actually the way they’ve drawn it that would be a tricky block to stitch!

In my last post I asked for suggestions for a quote for this piece. The pattern uses a quote from the bible; “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with the might” I fancied something different. There were lots of excellent suggestions and in the end I chose one Laura suggested. Laura finds lots of lovely and inspiring quotes to include in her posts on her blog LC’s Cottage, so I wasn’t surprised when she came up trumps, thanks Laura!

I changed the font too from an old-fashioned one to my standard one which is clear and simple. The variegated brown thread in the border is DMC4000, I had trouble buying it here in the UK, I finally found it on Lakeside Needlecraft, I still haven’t worked out if it is discontinued or just not usually available in the UK. It looks like a very useful colourway with dark brown and grey, particularly for nature inspired embroidery, so I might try and buy some more next time I put an order in.

I love the bottom border of reels of cotton, I still have all the back-stitching to do there too. Next to be stitched is the words “Sewing Room” at the top. Then I’m on the homeward straight, I’m enjoying stitching this now I’ve got the metallic out of the way!

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Tuesday’s Totter round the garden

Posted on March 1, 2022 by craftycreeky

Our garden has been sorely neglected over the winter, though if you’re going to neglect a garden it’s the best time to do it and the local wildlife will thank me for it! We seem to have had storm after storm recently but over the last weekend we managed a few sunny hours so I managed to get out and start the big tidy up.

I’ve started pruning the roses, starting with the standard rose and the climber down by the patio, I tidied the beds up and put a thick mulch of homegrown compost down to feed them.

I’ve got quite a few hellebores around the garden, if I find a plant that likes my conditions then I tend to buy one in every colour! I’ve got pink ones, purple ones, almost black ones, white ones and this pretty speckled pink one.

The daffodils are just starting to open, I tend to buy the little ones as they seem to stand up to bad weather better.

Up by the pond the snowdrops are in full flower, they look so pretty and seem to be spreading wider every year. These snowdrops came from my mum’s garden so I’m always pleased to see they’re happy. I think she in turn was given them by a friend who always had a glorious show of snowdrops. Snowdrops can be fussy things in that they prefer to be moved in the green, it’s not usually as successful just to plant bulbs.

Hopefully we’ll have a few more nice days as I’ve an awful lot of roses to prune and beds to tidy up!

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The Seaside Quilt HQAL

Posted on February 27, 2022 by craftycreeky

I’m making good progress hand quilting my seaside quilt. It’s living in our lounge at the moment with all the necessaries on a stool next to where I sit. I don’t usually watch much television (the only programme all year I make an effort to watch is the Great British Sewing Bee!) but my OH and I are trying to spend a bit more of our daily lives together rather than me squirrelled away in my sewing room and him watching (usually war films) on the computer in his office, which also seems to be the warmest room in the house! I can’t just sit and watch so I make sure I have some kind of sewing project in the lounge to keep my hands occupied!

The seaside quilt is from a book of the same name by Kathryn Whittingham of Patchwork Katy, it’s a lovely cheerful quilt. I’m quilting a clam shape across all the little squares and block borders and then just quilting inside the seamline of the picture blocks. I find it a simple shape to quilt as I can just work across the row from right to left. It’s actually meant to be waves across the quilt, but it could be either and still fit in with the seaside theme.

This is where I was three weeks ago…

I’m using a Gutermann variegated thread in light blues and greens for everything so far, I’ll probably change colours for the outer borders but I haven’t decided quite what I’m doing there yet.

The only parts of the quilt which won’t fit in with my clams are the two pairs of stars as they are based on a four by four square patch, using 2″ squares where as the rest of the quilt is in 2.5″ squares. I might either stitch in the ditch round the stars or just inside.

You can see the quilting much more clearly on the back. I’m having to stab stitch a lot of it rather than making a few stitches at once, I’m going to use a different wadding in future for hand quilting.

I’ve now quilted about a third of the quilt, ignoring the main borders! All of of left lower quarter is quilted and I’m working my way up the right hand side. You can see from the hoop marks where I’m working now…

Any suggestions for the quilting of the borders gratefully received, though they ideally have to be workable in one direction! Hopefully next time I share my progress I’ll be well into the top half.

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 Theresa

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

Posted in Quilt-a-long, Quilting | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Curlews in the Red

Posted on February 22, 2022 by craftycreeky

At Skipton Stitchers we have a variation of travelling books going round at the moment, rather than each persons book going round the group we are given a theme each month, all based around our next exhibition which is in October. The title of our exhibition is There is no Planet B’, so we stitch a little piece on the theme, pop it in an envelope and then swop it for someone else’s embroidery which we can then stick in our book. Hope that makes sense!

Anyway, the theme for this month’s swop was species at risk. I decided rather than going for the obvious ones like tigers or elephants, I would look much closer to home. Many of our native birds are now on the ‘red list’, many are birds which when I was growing up were ten a penny, like the house sparrow, or the lapwing, I used to listen to skylarks as I walked home from school, trying to spot them high in the sky, now we rarely see them.

Another bird at risk is the curlew, it has a very distinctive shape and a long curved bill, so I decided it would be a good one to choose to embroider. I found a few images on the computer and sketched a basic shape. It’s only little as the final piece is only just over 4″. I traced it onto bondaweb, chose some brown batik and pressed the cutout shape onto the background fabric. I chose the same smudgy fabric for the background that I used for my magnolia – it’s a surprisingly useful fabric!

I back-stitched round, close to the raw edge, adding legs and the long beak with stem stitch. I started to embroider the wing area with button hole stitch, adding some fairly mat gold sequins and then herringbone above. I used one of the DMC variations which I find surprisingly useful,it’s 4522 which as well as brown, has violet and dark grey, it just seems to add a bit of colour without being too way out.

I then carried on stitching up the wing area with chain stitch, embellishing with a few beads, adding fly stitches and then seed stitches on the breast of the bird and a few pistil stitch on the tail. I was happy with my curlew but he needed something to ground him…

I rummaged in my textile box and found somesuitable organza, I tore a narrow strip off and laid it across so my curlew would be walking on it. I secured it with a couple of rows of running stitch and then used another variegated DMC thread to add fly stitch and straight stitch along the top edge. I think the torn edge works really well as grass. I added a few French knots and I was happy with it.

I trimmed it to size, bondawebbed it to some felt and blanket-stitched round the edge.

I was quite sad to see him go, I’m tempted to make another as I’m really pleased with how he came out. I enjoyed doing these mini challenges, it does push your creativity and encourages you to find your own style. As the piece has to fit in an A5 book it means it doesn’t have to take too long, I don’t like to spend much more than an evening on these.

Next month’s challenge is renewable energy or fossil fuels, so goodness know what I am going to do there!

Posted in embroidery, Skipton Stitchers, Stitch-a-long, Textile Books | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Stitching my Garden

Posted on February 21, 2022 by craftycreeky

Recently I started an on-line embroidery course with Nicki Franklyn from The Stitchery, she does beautiful, delicate stitching, very pretty. The course is called Stitch a Garden, it can be any garden, she is stitching Beatrix Potters garden up at Hilltop as an example, making a picture of the layout of the garden, she’s covering lots of techniques and ideas, such as stitching trees, pots, paving, colouring your fabric, choosing stitches etc. I’m really enjoying it though I haven’t started a map of my garden yet.

I’ve been mulling ideas round, I decided to make a textile book of the garden, mainly because I have an awful lot of pictures! I’m hoping to do little scenes of features in the garden as well as ‘maps’ of the three different areas in our back garden.

Stitching the ‘trees and shrubs’ sampler has given me a good page size and now I’ve sussed out that I can plot the maps more easily if I just draw them in portrait shape rather than the landscape plan which I see when I look out of the window (don’t know why it took so long for the penny to drop!!) I’ll hopefully start to make some progress.

In the meantime I decided to stitch one of my favourite trees in the garden, a magnolia stellata. In the spring it is covered with delicate white blooms, it’s only small, probably about 5′ tall and 6′ wide, though it’s probably over 25 years old as I think it was one of the first things I planted in the garden.

As you can see the tree blooms before any leaves appear. The flowers look a lot more delicate than their bigger cousins, magnolia soulangia. They’re like pure white little stars.

For the background I chose quilting cotton I bought from a destash. It’s a funny sort of fabric, like a duck egg blue background with smudges of brown and green…I know, I’m not really selling it and that’s what I thought at first, thinking of it in quilt making terms. However, for little embroideries it’s perfect, just a little colour variation in very neutral colours.

First I drew the tree, looking at it through the conservatory window. I traced it using a light box onto the fabric and started to stitch the trunk and branches with stem stitch. My original plan was to use three different shades of grey/brown but in the end I just used two, I thought I might use the lightest shade for adding extra thin branches later but I decided it wasn’t needed in the end.

I then started adding blossom, I used the DMC thread B5200 which is like the brilliant white paint version in thread! I very rarely use it as it is SO white, but that was just what I needed for the magnolia. I did think of varying it with some using the usual white DMC but in the end I just kept going with the brilliant white. I stitched two or three fly stitches on top of each other and then a straight stitch in the middle. I chose fly stitch as I thought it might be not quite so ‘straight’ as a straight stitch, giving the slightest of bends to the petals.

I added a few seed stitches at the base of the tree to ‘ground’ it, and at that stage I was pretty pleased with it, trying to decide if it was finished or not.

I put a photo on our Skipton Stitchers whatsapp group, asking if I should add a few french knots, or leave it. Someone suggested adding a pale pink straight stitch to the flowers. At first I hesitated, as the stellate flowers are pure white, however I decided to try. I wondered about adding a silver grey/green calyx too but when I tried it was totally lost on the background. I carried on with the palest pink just in the centre and I think it does just lift it, though it doesn’t show up well in the artificial light photo below.

Today at Skipton Stitchers we’re having a mini workshop on Inktense pencils, I think it might prove useful for stitching my garden.

Posted in embroidery, Garden, Skipton Stitchers, Textile Books | Tagged , , , | 12 Comments

Peppermint Purple SAL

Posted on February 20, 2022 by craftycreeky

Ever felt you have too many projects on the go? Well that’s me at the moment, it’s a good job I have these three weekly reporting in posts to keep me on track!

Three weeks ago I was working my way round the blackwork sampler with the filling in stitch. This is one of those stitches that look complicated at first, working out the pattern, then you get the hang of it and sail round…then you realise that you still have to concentrate as it’s easy to go wrong!

So there’s been a few unpickings and one mistake which is just going to stay there as hopefully it’s not too obvious.

You can just see on the above photo that I had also started outlining the reflection of Catbells. I was using the floss that I used for the two side bits but I wasn’t sure it was dark enough particularly on some of the busy squares. I decided to wait until I’d stitched a bit more of the filler stitch.

In the end I went one shade darker from the left side, I’ve actually one stitched as far as the top of Catbells, I’m tempted to leave it at that as reflections aren’t always clear all the way along and I think it might be just enough.

So I can now do a mini happy dance as the central blackwork is finished…

Now I just need to design a border. There are some different ones available on the Peppermint Purple website but I have an idea in my head which I’m going to try and plot on some graph paper.

If you fancy having a go at some blackwork then the Peppermint Purple sampler is a great way to try it, the 2022 one started at the beginning of the year, a square (or rectangle) is released each week. It’s free and there’s a very friendly facebook page too, it’s interesting seeing how different colourways look so different. There’s lots of designs on the website too if you don’t fancy committing to a year long project.

Stitch-a-long

This stitch-a-long is organised by Avis from Sewing beside the Sea, we each work on our project of choice, sharing our progress every three weeks, just enough to keep the motivation going, please follow the links to see what everyone else is stitching.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy, AJ, Cathie, Linda, Helen

Posted in embroidery, Stitch-a-long | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Sewing Room Cross-stitch

Posted on February 16, 2022 by craftycreeky

I’ve been working on a cross-stitch for my sewing room for a while now, it’s been my handbag project, though really it’s a bit big for my sewing wallet and there’s too many different threads so they keep falling out, hence I’m trying to do a bit more at home so I can get it finished.

It’s a design from Stoney Creek, in some ways it’s a little bit dated in that the back-stitch (which I’ve still to start!) goes round the squares of cross-stitch, rather than cutting across to get a smoother outline, but it appealed to me as it includes a vintage sewing machine, quilting and sewing…perfect for me!

It’s a while since I shared my progress so I thought a little update was due (I’ve just looked, it was before Christmas!!) Last time I was still working on the sewing machine,,,

I’ve still not quite finished the sewing machine, but all I have to do now is the areas of metallic thread, not my favourite thread to sew with.

I’ve changed the colour scheme of the design to fit in with my sewing room decor, so rather than lots of pink, I’ve changed it to purple. This is working well apart from the tomato pincushion! A tomato shaped pincushion is very traditional, according to Wikipedia it goes back to Victorian times. The dusky pink threads didn’t look too far out for a tomato…shades of purple I’m not so sure about – maybe mine is a plum tomato 🙂

Either side of the sewing machine are four different quilt blocks, two are finished apart from the back-stitching and the other two are nearly there. Then I’ll be about a third of the way through the sampler, though this is probably the fiddliest bit.

I need to choose a suitable quote fairly soon as I’m not keen on the one in the pattern, I’ve two rows of writing, full width, to fill and I could make it three for the right quote…any suggestions welcome!

Posted in cross-stitch, embroidery, sewing room | Tagged , | 9 Comments

Secret Garden Quilt

Posted on February 15, 2022 by craftycreeky

I’ve just finished the first of nine blocks for my Secret Garden quilt. This was a BOM from Andrea of Raggedy Ruffy Designs last year (or may even be the year before!) Things happened and I never got started, but having put my name down for the next block of the month (which is looking gorgeous!) I thought I’d better get my finger out and start this one!

This was the initial layout I shared with you a few days ago…

Everything was laid out ready to stitch down.

The first task with these designs is just to get everything stitched down and secure. Andrea is very adept at just holding everything in place before she stitches it down, I’m not that brave so I put a dab of fabric glue on everything. Everything is outlined with a mid brown thread, Andrea goes round everything twice just to make sure all the pieces are well stitched down. I vary whether I do one or two, there is an element to which if one line is wobbly, the eye automatically sees the correct line, which is very useful if there as wobbly as some of mine!

At this stage it’s very easy to get disheartened as close up the stitching does look messy, I found it helpful to put it on my design wall every so often so I could stand back and see it. For those of you unfamiliar with this type of stitching, this is free motion machine embroidery. Usually when you stitch on a sewing machine there are ‘feed dogs’ under the machine foot which drive the fabric through at the correct speed, regulating the stitch length and keeping the stitch line smooth. With free motion embroidery the feed dogs are lowered, so the fabric can be moved in any direction and the length of the stitches is determined by how fast you move the fabric. It’s like drawing with a sewing machine…easier said than done!

The pink roses were the first area to be tackled with more detailed stitching. I’ve got quite a collection of variegated machine threads now, I bought a set from Oliver Twist’s when they had a half price offer on, there’s always some shades I haven’t got so sometimes I just used ordinary Gutermann thread.

Stems have been added with green thread, calyx have been feathered a bit and veins and serrated edges added to the rose leaves. Variegated thread sometimes looks completely different when it is stitched, the green I started with on the leaves at the top seemed to have alot of brown in it, so I swapped to one that looked initially too bright but it looked much better once stitched.

This panel is on the lower left hand side of the doorway to a secret garden, so there is quite a lot of stitching for perennial flowers, I’m not sure mine would pass an ID tests with the RHS but they are meant to be delphiniums (other end of stem is on next block up!) agapanthus (mine are more like alliums) achillea, scabiuos and salvia.

The birds were one of the last things to be stitched, which does have the advantage of gaining a bit of confidence before doing an obvious area. The eyes were the trickiest, they are edged with brown, filled in with black with a white dot…and you can imagine the size of it! Next time I’ll make sure I have a darker neutral thread underneath as the light grey I was using did show on darker colours. In the end I used a black finepoint pen to colour the eye in!

So here’s mine finished panel, it’s about 8″ by 13″, the photo has cropped in a bit tight but the brown area to the right is part of the wooden door to the garden.

It’s going to be a very busy, colourful quilt!

If you like Andrea’s designs but don’t fancy doing the applique she has now started getting panels printed of her initial watercolour design, usually they’re cushion size. They are gorgeous! These could either be used individually or stitched together for a quilt, if you are interested please follow the link to Raggedy Ruff Designs.

The next block has a lovely

Posted in Machine embroidery, Quilt-a-long, Raggedy Ruff Designs | Tagged , , | 10 Comments