Midnight Blue Silk

Posted on June 27, 2021 by craftycreeky

A couple of weeks ago I had a mad moment and ordered three Deer and Doe patterns, I fell for the Passiflora, but once on the website the Orchidee and the Bluett also appealed.

I decided to make the Bluett first, this is a princess line dress, sleeveless but with a collar and stand and a bow on the back. I had a look through my stash file which I bought a few months ago. It’s been very helpful as I’ve measured all my fabric and together with a small sample I’ve listed the width and length of each piece. I’ve also listed them according to length so I could easily see which fabrics I had over 3m in. I had 4m of these beautiful midnight blue silk dupion. It looks darker in real life compared to the photos. It’s not as shiny or blingy as most dupion silks and I really like that understated look, it means I can wear the dress when I just want something smart and classy, not the full evening look.

I remembered my sizes from the last skirt I made ( which is fairly recent!) and duly cut out a size 42. I added about 12″ to the length to get it the midi length I like rather than the knee length of the pattern.

The pattern went together pretty easily. I did have a giggle one day, I realised I was running out of navy thread with no opportunity for a couple of days to go to a shop. As my OH was popping into Otley I asked him to buy some navy blue thread. He came back chuntering ‘Do you know how many blues there are, none of them have names on!!!’ There’s me thinking navy blue thread was a reasonable description! He actually googled gutermann thread whilst in the shop to find which number was officially navy blue!

The seams are all top-stitched, I over locked them first as dupion is a so and so for fraying. When I got t the sewing side seams stage I was already becoming a little concerned with sizing, so I made the side seam slightly narrower. The only other change was to add pockets, I do like a dress with pockets!

When I first tried it on it was definitely snug. I did consider adding a stitched on front facing but that would have meant I had to alter the collar stand and the collar. I decided in the end I could just about get away with it…and hope I lose a little weight!

The last part of the instructions was the button holes, with the extra length there’s about 17 buttonholes! I did wonder what my chances were of my sewing machine sewing so many buttonholes with out throwing a wobbly…but it made all 17 perfectly. It took me ages to sew the buttons on, there’s actually only 15 buttons as that’s all they had left in the shop, however I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to buy some more.

I’m really pleased with this dress, though it is a little snug, particularly around the midriff (I’m blaming starting on HRT!) I might need to put on some slim fast knickers! I’ll certainly be making another though, just maybe slightly bigger!

Posted in Dressmaking | Tagged , , , | 24 Comments

Jacquie Magic Needlebook

Posted on June 25, 2021 by craftycreeky

I’ve just signed up for another stitch-a-long, I know, I’ve got lots of projects on the go but I can never resist a Faby Reilly SAL!

I’ve done several SAL’s with Faby, they’re always such beautiful designs and they’re very reasonable – £10 for the whole pattern, and there’s often a discount for early booking.

Faby Reilly SAL’S

The new one is called Jacquie, it’s a beautiful palette of greens and blues. It’s going to be a needle case. What is different this time is that she has designed different levels, beginner or advanced,depending on which stitches are used, so you can choose what to do.

I’ve always enjoyed her SAL’s, there’s a friendly facebook page, she’s always easy to contact if there any issues. I like all the different stitches she incorporates into her designs too.

It starts next week, so if anyone fancies stitching it with me please follow the link to Faby’s Website.

Posted in cross-stitch, embroidery, Serendipity, Splendid Sampler Quilt | 10 Comments

Embroidering Clothes

Posted on June 24, 2021 by craftycreeky

I’ve started a new project, it hopefully won’t take too long but I’m pretty pleased with it so far.

I was trying to think of different things I could embroider, as there is a limit to wall space and my walls are getting pretty full. In the latest edition of the Stitch magasine there’s a pretty design of flowers and leaves to go on the shoulder of a t-shirt. I didn’t fancy it on a t-shirt but I thought on a cotton shirt it could look rather pretty.

I had a perusal on pinterest to try and find a suitable shirt pattern but of course I started going off on a bit of a tangent and saw lots of pretty designs on denim jackets. Now only the week before I had finally got round to buying a denim jackets – it’s only taken 55 years!! It’s actually a soft teal colour which goes with a lot of my summer clothes. I also knew they had it in pink and blue as well. To be honest I didn’t fancy all the hard work involved in sewing a jacket to then not like the embroidery,this sounded a good trying out plan!

I wandered into town and bought a blue one to embroider, they’re from a shop called Harriets which tend to sell seconds or end of lines, so they’re very reasonable.My only niggle is that they have a fair bit of lateral stretch. I decided I could work round this.

I then wandered into Sainsbury’s, our local supermarket and spotted denim jackets, £22 and no stretch!! They only had a warm white one in my size but I decided it was cheap enough to give it a bash.

…so I now have three denim jackets!

Having seen a couple on the internet the design I’ve chosen is just an informal row of flowers along the bottom of the back, a bit like a meadow or a garden border. Last night I drew in silver gel pen a basic outline of stems to give me some structure. I’m sure I’ll add to this but it seemed an easier way of getting it look even whilst still looking relaxed.

I’m pleased with it so far, I planning to have foxgloves,echincea, lavender, alliums to name but a few. I’m also not going to get too tangled up with botanical correctness! I’m particularly pleased with the blue stems as I thought up a new stitch, new to me anyway – I made a lazy daisy and then secured it with a french knot.

Hopefully I will soon havemore progress to show and I’ve already got plans for the blue on!

Posted in embroidery | Tagged , | 9 Comments

Wednesday Wanderings

Posted on June 23, 2021 by craftycreeky

I haven’t been on any big (for us!!) walks this week, I’m in the final week of a garmin challenge to do at least 20 minutes walking 4 times a week, I’ve kept up to it so far, but this week I’ve been using my every day walks to get my 20 minutes, rather than going out specifically.

Last night however, despite spending all day gardening, my step count was woefully low so I decided to do a short walk down the old railway line behind us. The railway closed along with thousands of other smaller stations and lines about 1965 with the Beeching cuts.

Our back garden gate opens straight onto the railway line, it’s perfect for dog walking, though Lucy, our bichon frise, isn’t so keen on anything further than the garden these days, she’s an old lady!

It was one of those lovely evenings where the sun shines dappled through the leaves, lighting up flowers beneath. This cow parsley (I’m happy to be corrected if it’s one of the similar flowers!) looked gorgeous…

The path is finally starting to dry up a bit, so it is passable in trainers rather than wellies, though it’s quite a narrow path past the boggy bit still. There’s been many a time when I’ve been walking the dogs in a pretty cotton summer dress…and wellies 🙂

Does anyone else give names to trees? or is it just me! There’s a few trees along here that are like marker trees, something to aim for when either the dogs or the kids didn’t want to go so far…we’ll go as far as the twin trees…well this one is the spider tree! It’s nothing to do with the eight legged variety, well only indirectly, it’s the nickname for one of the views we use in angios of the heart arteries to see the main stem clearly and the initial bifurcations. This tree reminds me of the way the arteries divide off in different directions.

Up and down the railway line from our garden is just over a mile, there’s sheep and rabbits to see and occasionally deer. Lots of bird song to listen to and try and spot their owner, one day I saw a sparrowhawk just sitting quietly on a fence post. There’s often another dog walker to have a chat to, I often only know them by their dogs name!

This little dark glade is the entrance back to our garden. It has confused many a dog walker when they have seen me walking up ahead and then I suddenly disappear from view.

And here’s our garden gate with the clematis arch going over it, the clematis is making a break for freedom up the ash tree at the moment.

Next week I will hopefully have a more exciting walk as I have rashly put my name down for a walk organised for the Otley Walking Festival next week. There were several I fancied but most were already booked up. The walk I’m going on is called Early Birds in the Wetlands, a dawn walk round the nature reserve, we have to meet at 5am, it may not seem such a good idea when my alarm clock goes off at 4am 🙂

Posted in Walking | Tagged | 6 Comments

The Seaside Quilt HQAL

Posted on June 20, 2021 by craftycreeky

I’ve not made as much progress as I’d hoped over the last three weeks with my seaside quilt, mainly because I’ve been dress-making more as I’ve realized those four or five extra pounds I’ve put on during lockdowns have been mainly round my middle, so when I got my summer clothes out some don’t fit any more!

This is from the second quilt design book by Kathryn Whittingham. I loved making my cottage garden quilt from her first book and this one is proving just as gorgeous. Both books are available from her website, Patchwork Katy, they’re lovely books, with clear instructions and patterns for making a gorgeous quilt.

Three weeks ago I’d almost finished the boat, embroidered some of the smaller blocks and I’d prepared the oystercatchers block for embroidery. I’d arranged some filler squares but not stitched anything together until I could see how it worked out…

The boat just needed a bit of bunting, stitching the seagull, a few ‘waves’ and finally a little dog at the helm. (Being completely ignorant of boats, it might not be the helm, but it sounds good!! She’s at the front!) I stitched a white fluffy dog as it is meant to be Lucy, our little bichon frise. As she was my mum’s dog she’s not appeared in any of my stitching so far, so I thought it was about time I rectified that!

The oyster catchers took longer than I anticipated to embroider as there is actually quite a lot of stitching. I used a dark grey for the back-stitch on the birds, my thought was that it will show up on the black and not look too harsh on the white.

I changed some of the embroidery stitches from those used in the book, I edged the rocks with blanket-stitch as I thought it might give the idea of rounded edges on the rocks, I used a Weeks variegated thread for all the rocks, it’s a sandy colour mixed with a very soft purple which perfectly matched all the fabrics I used. For the pictures I’m mainly using fabrics which aren’t nautical. so there’s flowery ones, paisley’s, deer (the soft purple has actually got deer and trees on!!) The oyster catchers legs were meant to be in satin stitch but I could see me having issues with tension as I didn’t have a hoop handy that day, so I used chain stitch with a single thread, doubling them up for their knobbly knees and then whip-stitched them with a double thread.

One of my birds was positioned a little high, so he had rather long legs, I stitched him mid step so it’s not quite so noticeable. I’d made a similar mistake before in that I always cut the background a little bigger than required in case it frays a lot with handling during the embroidery process. I then forget when I’m positioning things to allow for the extra half inch. With a plain background it doesn’t matter, but I positioned the rocks right at the bottom and then when I positioned the birds I was looking at times how close to the horizon they were in the book…so one bird was quite a way above the rocks!

It made such a difference once I got the blocks ‘framed’ with the sashing. All the big pictorial blocks will be sashed with these two fabrics. I chose the bumbleberries blue right at the beginning but I wasn’t sure which to choose for the lighter outer sash. As soon as I tried the seahorse fabric I loved it, unfortunately I’ve only got a fat quarter so I’ve just ordered some more!

I sashed the boat at the same time and then started arranging the little square blocks. I picked up a bundle of red fat quarters from Hobbycraft so I don’t have to use the Christmas one, though I might pop a couple of reindeer in the quilt just because! Until I get into the swing of this colour palette I basically used Kathryn’s colour placement as a guide, particularly with red and dark blue squares. At the moment the red stands out a mile, but I know from the book they’ll be scattered throughout the quilt and there’s also some red pinwheels thrown in the mix.

I collected quite a few nautical fabrics for this quilt and I’m mainly using them for the little squares, fussy cutting sometimes to get a nice image. I’ve got puffins, lighthouses, boats, sand-castles…

Next I have pinwheels to stitch in red and blue, then a hermit crab picture and another beach hut to complete the row.

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, Connie, and Sherrie

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

Posted in embroidery, Quilt-a-long, Quilting | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

A Summer Skirt

Posted on June 19, 2021 by craftycreeky

Last week I decided to make an everyday skirt for summer. I chose a pattern which I think I must have got from a facebook destash site as it’s a Vogue pattern made in partnership with Love Sewing, a sewing magasine I don’t remember ever buying! It’s a Very Easy Vogue pattern V9090, i have to say that the picture on the front isn’t overly inspiring, but it’s actually a lovely pattern.

The pattern is a pleated skirt with a fitted dropped waistline…and it’s got lovely deep pockets in the side seams. It comes in three lengths from above knee to above ankle, of course I made the long version.

The fabric is some cotton I bought on one of my London trips a few years ago, this was from a shop south of the river, I can’t remember it’s name. I’d realised that I actually have very few plain fabrics in my stash, I seem to go oooh a lot more for colourful prints, but they really need a plain to set them off. This is a lilac cotton, a little firmer than I usually buy, I think I was thinking of cropped trousers when I bought it. Anyway I decided it would be perfect for this skirt.

Please excuse the somewhat creased look, I’d already walked down to the market and sat on a bus to come home when this was taken!

True to it’s title, it was a very easy skirt to make, especially when you remove the centre front seam! The fabric was pretty perfect for it as it holds the soft pleats nicely. I probably could have made it in an afternoon if I had a zip to match. Despite having a drawer full of zips, I had a dark purple and a light purple, but not the mid-purple I needed! I did a quick trip to John Lewis’s after work one day so I could get it finished. As usual I hand-stitched the zip in, I just find this much easier to get a neat finish and it doesn’t take much longer than machine sewing a zip in.

I used a leftover piece of batik for the pockets and the inside of the waistband. It’s pretty and a bit softer to the touch than the purple cotton.

I wore my new skirt for the first time today and I love it, it’s very comfortable and easy to wear, I can see myself making a few of these, even in heavier weight fabric for winter.

…and it’s got pockets!!
Posted in Dressmaking | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Wednesday Wanderings

Posted on June 16, 2021 by craftycreeky

My walking buddy and I have started to try and do regular walks, increasing our stamina for when we tackle more of the Dales 30 challenge. Over lockdown we have just been walking locally and have discovered lots of new paths just on our doorstep.

Yesterday we did a walk from a leaflet on walks from Burley in Wharfedale. Burley is a really intersting village, I would love to learn more about the vernacular architecture there as there are some very interesting cottages and houses. The photo below is of Burley Hall, we passed it right at the beginning of the walk. It’s now a residential home, but a peek over the wall revealed beautiful stone carving round the doorway, deep eaves under the roof and a gorgeous arched window.

We followed a path round the back of the hall, past the old corn mill where I used to buy bags of flour many years ago, eventually reaching the bypass and then down to the river Wharfe.

We kept looking out for a kingfisher but no luck, though we did see quite a few pied wagtails bobbin about on the stones. We had a lovely view for our cup of coffee and a sausage roll.

After our coffee break we left the river and walked across fields to loop back to Burley. We then went on a little exploration and found another section of the path down by the river and the goit.

I’d never heard of a goit until I started walking round here. It’s a bit like a mini canal which connected the river to the mill…still no sign of the kingfisher, though I did find out an interesting piece of information about kingfishers; they are very rarely preyed up by other birds or animals as they don’t taste very nice!

The goit links up with the weir, it’s a pretty long weir!…

We sat just below the weir to eat our sandwiches. We were watching the world go by when we noticed in the river just ahead of us was a bumble bee floundering in the water.I extended my walking pole to the full length so I could reach it and then slowly brought the pole up from underneath the bee. I was a bit worried that it get in a pickle and refuse help, but it quickly climbed onto my stick and enjoyed the lift to safety. We rested the pole down on a rock to give it chance to dry off, expecting it to fly off, but no, it gradually climbed the full length of my pole, we had to persuade it to move onto a leaf;

The stepping stones were pretty busy with people traipsing across for a picnic on the other side. Not a bad view for lunch and some perfectly sized stones for sitting on.

From there we walked back to the main street along an old lane. There were some beautiful oak trees along the side, we decided they were probably middle-aged in tree years!

Altogether we walked about five miles, not a huge amount but enough in hot weather.

Posted in Walking | Tagged | 9 Comments

Monday’s Meander Round the Garden

Posted on June 14, 2021 by craftycreeky

If last week was iris week then this week is peony week, the hot sunny weather has brought all the flowers out. Over the years I seem to have planted a bit of a collection of peonies. Their flowers may be short-lived, but they are so beautiful and the scent is wonderful too.

This beautiful bloom is up in the autumn bed at the top of the garden.

Nearby in the amber and amethyst garden is this big pink one, I think the label suggested it was purple and it clashes gloriously with the orange geum! The photo almost looks photoshopped, but it really is that bright! It’s lucky really that it’s flowers are fairly short lived as it really doesn’t go with anything around it!

Round the patio I’m trying to gradually lighten the colours as in the evening from the conservatory the light coloured flowers look almost luminescent. Last year I planted this gorgeous peony, it’s petals are the palest of pinks.

The clematis I’ve planted in the last few years are starting to make an impact. This one is climbing up one of three obelisks in the autumn border. It’s starting to mingle round the neighbouring plants as well as up the obelisk.

In the amber & amethyst garden I have a large wooden obelisk which I made probably about 3 or 4 years ago. It has a rambling rose growing through it, I’m really pleased with it this year as although it hasn’t flowered yet it has lots of buds all the way up the bush. The rose is completely covering the obelisk now! I’ve also got a couple of clematis growing through it. One of them, the darker purple one, was meant to be growing over the arch next to it, I didn’t think it was doing very well as most of the flowers initially were very low down. However the other day I spotted a bit of purple right at the top of the obelisk, it was a clematis flower! Since then a few more have emerged in the midst of the rose bush.

Another climber in the amber and amethyst garden is a honeysuckle which is growing over the arch at the entrance to this part of the garden, it’s never done much in the past, in fact I’ve been a bit disappointed with it in previous years. However, this year, whilst it is still a bit straggly it has quite a few pretty flowers, these are a lovely rich yellow colour and smell wonderful. I think I need to check my book on how to prune this to try and improve it.

I’m trying to catch up with the weeding at the moment as bindweed and mares tail are increasing daily in the nice weather. Some of the spring flowering shrubs such as deutzia have been pruned back too.I need to investigate my little water feature again too as it dried up over night, so it has obviously sprung a leak somewhere – maybe my 15 year old plug of blutack has finally given up!

Posted in Serendipity | 15 Comments

Leafy Tree SAL

Posted on June 13, 2021 by craftycreeky

It’s happy dance time with my Leafy Tree embroidery. This is a design by Mary Corbet of Needle’n’Thread. It’s available in an e-book which I found worked really well for this project, I could print off the necessary pages but just look at it on my computer for things like stitch instructions.

Three weeks ago I was stitching the yellows and oranges…

I had just started introducing the darker rust shades and after a concerted effort over a couple of evenings I finished the remaining leaves. There was some battlement couching, some satin stitch and some long and short stitch, together with the little leaves in fishbone and fly stitch.

I’ve really enjoyed this embroidery and it’s been a useful follow-on from the stitchwheel as I’ve put many of the stitches I learned there into practise. I think the fishbone stitch is probably my favourite little leaf stitch now!

I’ve also learned a lot about colour transition, I love the effect she has achieved by mixing threads to get the movement from dark green to dark red. She also used other techniques such as whipping the stem or splitting the ends with tiny back-stitches which increase the texture and interest.

I’m not sure how I’m going to frame it yet, whether to send it to be traditionally framed or whether to try block mounting.

I’ve pretty much decided which one I’m going to do next for the stitch-a-long as I have a rather pretty embroidery kit in my stash and hopefully after the practice on this project and the stitch wheel my stitching will be nice and neat.

In the meantime please follow the links to the other members of the SAL and see their progress over the last three weeks. There’s lots of different styles of embroidery to inspire;

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

Posted in embroidery, Serendipity, Stitch-a-long | Tagged , , | 17 Comments

Wednesday Wanderings

Posted on June 9, 2021 by craftycreeky

Having a Garmin watch has spurred me into taking more walks, even if they’re short ones, it’s nice to be able to map where you’ve been and the speed (or not!) that you walked at. I’ve two walks to share this week;

The first one was just from my house and along the old railway line, discovering a couple more local paths. June is a lovely time of year in this country, the trees are in blossom, the wild flowers are appearing…

There’s something about a field of buttercups, this is at the top of the hill behind our house. I followed the path down to the main road, planning to follow another back a bit further up the road. However I spotted a footpath sign opposite, I’ve lived her for over twenty years and never noticed it before!

It went through a couple of little hilly fields, I could see now why I’ve seen deer not far from here. It’s a quiet little backwater. The blossom on the hawthorn bushes has been lovely this year…

I followed the path up to the next half of the old railway line.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the bluebells were still out up here…

The foliage on the trees is still fresh and green, especially with the sun behind it…

Altogether I think I walked about 4.5 miles, all around my local area. Yesterday my walking buddy and I did a walk from Burley-in-Wharfedale. I worked out a route which could be lengthened or shortened depending on the weather and how we were feeling!

We walked up to a little hamlet called Stead. It was quite a pull up to the farm and we were just saying we were ready for a coffee and a sausage roll when we turned into the farm yard and found they had a refreshments van, so we had a cup of lovely fresh coffee. Apparently she’s open every day apart from Wednesdays! Someone on the farm obviously had a sense of humour too…

For those of you not familiar with the animation of Wallace and Gromit, this is Shaun the sheep and Gromit the dog, the films are worth checking out, they’re very amusing and done in a lovely Yorkshire accent – maybe I’m a wee bit biased!

We walked down to the river Wharfe to a little nature reserve, hoping to see the otters again, but unfortunately they didn’t put in an appearance this time. There were lots of damsel flies flitting about though and the red kites were soaring in the thermals above.

From there we followed a footpath to another nature reserve, this one was at the end of Sun Lane, I only found out about it through a little leaflet I picked up on walks around Burley.

By this time we’d walked a fair way in hot sunny weather so we decided not to continue further down the river in the hope of seeing the elusive kingfisher, we meandered back to the car instead through the snickets of Burley, having walked 6.5 miles, far enough considering the hot (for UK!) weather.

Posted in Serendipity, Walking | Tagged | 4 Comments