It’s three weeks since I last shared my gorgeous Cottage Garden Quilt, it’s a design in a lovely book by Kathryn Whittingham. I’d just finished the bottom row so just one more row to do and then the border…
These last three weeks have not gone to plan at all, I had an operation on my neck on the 18th as planned, managed a little sewing with blocks I’d prepared earlier, but then ended up back in hospital with a nasty wound infection from Christmas Day to New Years Day! Hence this post will be short and to the point!
I stitched three blocks, a wheel barrow in a vegetable plot, this will be a 6″ block…
I also stitched two sweet butterfly blocks which will be just 2.5″ square when trimmed…
I’ll write more about the embroidery next time when I’ll hopefully have more energy and I’ll also share Kathryn’s new book of a Seaside Quilt which is gorgeous and I’ve been lucky enough to be given a copy. Kathryn has now set up her website so she can ship her books to America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, so follow the link to Patchwork Katy if you’d like to make this quilt or the seaside one.
In the meantime…
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.
I started the ‘stitching 4 the soul’ project very late in the day, I think it ran over the first lockdown. It was organised by Anne Brook of Hanne-made, her videos are still on Youtube together with the subsequent Christmas version. Last time I shared my progress with you I hadn’t quite finished a woven double page spread…
I cracked on and finished it later that day.I stitched the dark blue circle on with pistil stitch, I added french knots and fly stitch to the petals. On two squares I just accentuated the petal edges with another row of blanket stitch, I felt it was too strong a design to try and embroider over the top of it. On one square I added more flowers and continue the flowers across to the next strip. I used fly-stitch in different sizes to attach the blue lace on the right. I rather enjoyed just stitching a bit here and a bit there.
I’ve stitched it onto the calico pages, being careful to line up the centre so it will close easily once it’s bound with beads. I’m rather pleased with these pages.
I’m writing this well before Christmas, as hopefully by the time you read this I will be well on the road to recovery following an operation on my neck, I’m not sure how much it’s going to impact on my hand-sewing in particular so I thought I’d get another pair of pages stitched…
For the next two pages Anne suggested a calm look, as the previous pages have been pretty busy. This was achieved by having a single strip of fabric across the double page…for something so simple it took me ages to decide on which fabrics to use! I’m trying to mainly use fabrics from a sample book I bought last year, they’re beautiful but there’s not many plains! In the end I used a piece of silk noille from my stash for the background. I like silk noille for embroidery as it has lots of texture and feels nice too. As it’s not very robust I put some calico underneath. For the strip I used some furnishing weight linen in gorgeous shades of lavender and soft gold, the photos don’t do it justice really, it’s a beautiful shade!
I chose a selection of embroidery threads in soft shades of purple and ecru to a warm light brown.
The first task was to embroider some ‘waves’ in running stitch, I’m not very good with random and I didn’t just want to copy Anne’s, so I hit on the idea of using the outline of Catbells, that little fell in the Lake District which has featured many times in my work! Of course that really only covered one side, so I had to stitch another wave on the other side, with a bit (or a lot) of imagination, this could be Causey Pike which is just the other side of Newlands Valley.
Catbells from The Heads, Keswick
The idea Anne had was to intersect the lines to make different areas to embroider. However, I now had my muse to consider!
I edged the outline of Catbells with a blanket stitch, this ridge walk is the usual route up Catbells, having arrived by launch over Derwentwater to the landing stage of Hause End, hence the blanket stitch dips below the ‘shoreline’. Each year (except 2020 funnily enough!) Keswick holds a Festival of Light, people climb Catbells at dusk and all turn their head torches on, the photos are amazing, that’s the footpath which we follow. One year we hope to do the Festival of Light.
I used fly-stitch and a lovely variegated Weeks thread to represent the trees in Manesty woods around the base of Catbells, extending them in a gentle wave across both pages.
The shaggy french knots are the herdwick sheep which populate the fells. When you’re out walking in the Lakes or the Dales it’s very easy to lose your way by following a sheep track, thinking it’s a path until it peters out!
Neat french knots round the top of Catbells in varying shades of purple is the heather or ling which grows up there.
The lattice tied down with little crosses is the fields of Newlands Valley. From the top of Catbells you look down on the patchwork of green fields with the patterns made by the tractor.
So you see, once I get a theme in my head I can run with it!
The final piece Anne suggested was a cutout ‘window’ made from a circle of wire laid around a cut hole and overstitched, I used blanket stitch as I like the neat edge. The idea is that through the hole you will be able to see through to the next page. Mine looks like the sun, it reminds me of an amazing walk I did many years ago with a friend, we got up very early (like 3.30am!!) and walked up Catbells in time to sit on the top and watch the sun rise. It was stunning, it rose over Blencathra and the morning mist formed below us over the lake, turning beautiful shades of orange and red. As the sunrise was just beginning everything was these lovely muted shades with a softly lightening sky, so this is my Sunrise from Catbells’ piece!
I’m pleased with this one, it is a very calm page, despite having lots of embroidery on. I like the movement across the pages too. I’m waiting until I see what’s happening on the next pages before I stitch it onto the calico pages, I need to work out how it will work with my pages. I’m hoping I’ll be able to have some soft gold fabric behind to look like the sun!
This stitch-a-long is organised by Avis from Stitching by the Sea. We post our progress on our chosen project every three weeks, just long enough to keep us motivated. Please follow the links to see what everyone else is stitching.
I haven’t done a book post for ages, I seemed to lose my reading mojo over the spring and summer. I lost my usual reading slots, I used to read on the bus to visit my mum which was a two hour round trip, so lots of reading there. I also read on the train on the way to work, then I had three months off isolating! Anyway, I’m now getting the bus to work which usually gives me an hours reading time each way, so I’ve got a few books to share…
Walking Home by Simon Armitage; Simon is a poet who lives near the beginning of the Pennine Way. The Pennine Way was the first long distance walk and it stretches from Edale in Derbyshire, all the way to Kirk Yetholm in Scotland, all 256 miles!! My friend and I do a long distance walk each year but we’ve never even entertained the idea of the Pennine Way, we know our limits! Simon was walking it from north to south, so he was walking home. He hit on the idea of offering a poetry recital in return for board and lodgings. He would sing for his supper! He was accompanied by a wide range of local people during the different stages. It was interesting and quietly entertaining, especially if you’ve done some long distance walks, though it does go on a bit, a bit like the Pennine Way!
OK, this is actually the Cleveland Way, not the Pennine Way!
A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier. I pre-ordered this book as soon as I saw it was coming out in paperback. I’ve read a couple of her books and always enjoyed them. I also listened to a talk she did as part of the Yorkshire Festival of Story, it was interesting to hear how she researches books. For this one she learnt how to do tapestry and how to ring bells in particular. It’s set in the early 1930’s, Violet is a ‘surplus woman’, after WW1 there just wasn’t enough men to go round, it was really interesting to read about what life was like for women at that time, ‘surplus women in particular. They were expected to stay at home to look after aging parents, those who did get married left their jobs to be housewives, same sex relationships were still illegal and ladies living together would be socially ostracised. Violet joins a group of embroiderers at Winchester Cathedral and befriends one of the bell-ringers. I really enjoyed it, though I did find the ending a bit contrived, though very moving. A good read.
Cross-stitch pincushion, rather than needlepoint kneeler!
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald; This has been on my radar for a while as it’s been mentioned in quite a few of the nature books I’ve read It was only published in 2014 but has become a bit of a classic already. As it says on the back…’H is for hawk is an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonalds struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawks taming and her own untaming…it is about memory, nature and nation and how it might be possible to reconsile death with life and love’ It’s beautifully written but I did find it a bit heavy, though maybe this was the wrong year to read it in!
OK, so it’s a red kite, not a Goshawk!
I wanted something light to read next, on TV recently there’s been a new adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small’ by James Herriot. It’s been a lovely series, though it doesn’t stick much to the book. It’s also filmed in Grassington in Wharfedale, I’m sure the villages of Wensleydale and Swaledale where the book was set are spitting feathers! Anyway, it made me decide to read the books again. James Herriot was a newly qualified vet from Scotland in the 1930’s, he got a job in Thirsk and most of the patients of the practise were up in the remote corners of Wensleydale and Swaledale. The books are very entertaining, the characters he meets and the two brothers who are his new colleagues. A week or so back on TV there was a re-run of one of the original episodes of All Creatures Great and Small, which I remember watching as a child, it was classic Sunday Night viewing. After the programme there was another one about behind the scenes of the series. It was very interesting…apparently James Herriot insisted the first time round that they stuck exactly to the book. The next in the book series is All Things Bright and Beautiful, I’m just waiting for it to come into stock in our local bookshop. They’re great books, funny and entertaining.
The White Horse near Thirsk where James Herriot actually lived!”
The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie; I read a review of this book somewhere and ordered it straight away. It’s based around an old Singer sewing machine across four generations from the lady who worked on it in the Singer factory at the time of a big strike, to the lady who bought it and her descendants. It’s one of those books which does a chapter on each character and timescale, so it flits from 1911 to 2016. It’s interesting how she weaves the plot and builds the characters, you spend most of the book trying to work out how they’re all connected and of course you don’t find out until the final chapter! I enjoyed it, I almost want to read it again knowing who was who. It was also interesting reading how societies values and morals have changed over the 100 years. A good read.
My vintage singer!
I’m not sure what I’ll be reading next, we now have an independent bookshop in Otley so I’m trying to support it!
I’m going hot and cold on this quilt at the moment, in fact more chilly than warm to be honest…
It’s my first truly scrappy quilt, all the colour fabrics are from my scrap boxes with a couple of fat quarters for background. I’ve got boxes of coloured scraps, but not that many light enough to be a background piece. It’s a free QAL by Pat Sloan from earlier in the year, or it may even be last year. Either way, all the patterns are there for free on her website.
This week I stitched set 4 blocks. I made the mistake of not looking at my earlier blocks first as they were tidied away in my block book…
First I made two little stars using a soft grey background leftover from my coming home quilt…
They were fiddly as they’re only 6″ square, but I’m happy with those.
Next up were four blocks of Goose and Gosling blocks, these were even more fiddly due to all those triangles! I like doing half square triangle blocks as the square stays stable, I really don’t like having to cut the fabric down the diagonal before it’s stitched! There’s too much room for movement! I drowned it in Best Press and it seemed to work! For these I used a plain cream background and on these blocks I think it looks OK…
Next up was a 12″ block with a star and a mini pinwheel. It stitched easily (apart from those pesky triangles again!) and I was pleased with how it turned out, nice and crsp I thought…
… until I got the other blocks out on my design wall and put them altogther!
OK so this isn’t the final lay out but those blocks with a cream background stand out a mile, I hadn’t remembered the others having such busy backgrounds. I hoped it might bring a bit of calm, but I think the big block in particular looks too stark! I think I will get away with the smaller blocks, especially as they are in pairs on the final layout. My one saving grace is that the pinwheel block is a standard 12″ block, so if needed I can always add an orphan block in, do a swop..
I think next time I’ll just stick to a simple half square triangle scrappy quilt!
This morning I put the last few stitches in ‘December’ for the Anthea Calendar, this is the last one in the series of twelve beautiful flower designs by Faby Reilly. It’s been fun trying to guess what the seasonal flower would be each month (not very successfully!) and this month I got it three-quarters right!
I guessed hellebores, otherwise known as the Christmas rose, I have one in flower in the garden at the moment. I hoped there would be holly and mistletoe as I’ve stitched Faby’s holly and mistletoe humbugs so I know how nicely they come out. What I didn’t guess was poinsetta, these always remind me of my mum as she always bought one at Christmas, it never survived long into the New Year though! One year she bought a cream one and that was much prettier I thought, not quite so in your face as the red ones. Anyway, I digress…
So this month is a lovely colourful, Christmassy design with holly, mistletoe, Christmas roses and poinsettas. I remembered to take a photo half way through adding the back-stitch, it makes such a difference to the design…
Do you ever look at a word so many times you almost convince yourself you’ve spelled it wrong? I ended up showing my OH just to check the spelling of December!! I wasn’t too sure about the gold thread in the centre of the roses, but I trusted Faby’s design and as usual it works perfectly. I think it’s a beautiful design and very seasonal.
I’ve really enjoyed this stitch-a-long, the patterns are all still available on Faby’s website and they’re very reasonably priced too. Here’s the twelve months together…
Aren’t they gorgeous? I need to start stitching all these pages into a book with their correlating wordplay, then at the end of the month I just need to stitch a final wordplay and work out a front page then my book will be ready to finish.
It’s three weeks since I last shared with you my progress on the gorgeous Cottage Garden quilt, I am so enjoying making this one, I keep looking at it on my design wall and smiling to myself! It’s a design by Kathryn Whittingham and she’s put all the instructions in a lovely book. Three weeks ago I’d just finished all the embroideries for the bottom row…
This week I stitched them altogether…
First one tackled was the gorgeous pile of flower pots, I love this block! It’s surrounded by a narrow border in a darker red paisley and then a simple border of squares, it looks simple enough but it took me ages to arrange the fabrics in an order I was happy with! This block balances with the flower in a pot on the top row, which I stitched with the same red border. In fact this red border was the main reason I have stitched the bottom row before the middle row, as I wanted to be sure I had enough fabric left.
I’d already stitched a border on the beehive, but I wasn’t happy with the pink border fabric, it stood out too much, so I unpicked it and went for a sorter pink border instead…
The little pink heart is the centre of a log cabin block, this time I used fabrics with a hint of blue on one half…
The snail and the frog are the centre of saw-tooth stars, there’s also a flowery one which is the reverse of the star on the top row. The trowel has the same pink border as the fork on the top row…
I’d already stitched the border on the cute ducks, this has a light border like the three hens above. Finally I made four pinwheels and several blocks of squares as fillers in. The pinwheels are probably the only bit of the quilt I would change with hindsight, as I think they would have been better in a more dominating fabric, but having made the top row in soft shades I wanted the bottom row to balance.
So here’s the bottom row stitched together…
I’m glad I stitched the bottom row second as it’s helped me to balance the quilt, I realised fairly early on how Kathryn had managed too get a balanced quilt, which blocks correlated to each other. I’ve got the two pieces next toeach other on my design wall and I’m so pleased with how it’s working out…
I’ve just got the middle row to stitch now, though I’m not sure how much stitching I’ll get done in the next three weeks, but hopefully I’ll have something to show you.
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.
I’m on a bit of a roll at the moment, finishing various projects. In the autumn I stitched a Dimensions cross-stitch kit called Believe, the stitched border was like a patchwork quilt, at the time I was mulling over how to finish it…
As it’s less than a fortnight to Christmas, I thought I should get a move on and finish it. The general consensus here was that I should make it into a bigger cushion, rather than a cross-stitch small. I’ve sort of gone inbetween…
I bought off a facebook destash site a mini jellyroll of Christmas fabrics, the fabrics matched the cross-stitch perfectly. I couldn’t have chosen better if I went into a shop! I felt the cross-stitch needed a lighter border before the colourful Christmas fabrics, so I chose one with an ivory background and snowflakes on. I stitched it on and trimmed it so it would finish at about half an inch.
I then started to play round with the Christmas fabrics, I wanted it to be irregular and a bit random, like the embroidery, but that’s not as easy as it sounds for someone who doesn’t do random! I got there in the end though and with a bumbleberries red border to finish it off the front was complete.
For the back I decided I may as well use some of the strips from the jelly roll, so I stitched a few together, it looked best with the stripes going down, so after a good press I stitched them together.
I didn’t have a cushion pad of the correct size, so as it’s only going to be on display at Christmas, I decided to stuff it and slip-stitch the opening. It also helped to reduce the amount of stuffing I seem to have acquired in my stash! In an ideal world it would have been nice to embellish it with a little trim, but as I didn’t have anything suitable it will have to wait probably until next year.
I’m really pleased with how it’s come out, we have a delicate old ladies chair in the dining room and it looks great sitting there as it’s just the right size.
I’ll be linking up tomorrow with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, please follow the link to see lots more hand-stitched inspiration.
For me the first Sunday in Advent heralds the beginning of Christmas, we usually have an Advent candle, when the children were little we had Advent story books and we’ve always had an Advent ring.
An Advent ring has four candles with the idea that you light just one on the first Sunday, two on the second and so on. A few years ago I bought a candelabra on Otley market (a bargain at £10!!) which has four arms and a central candle. It’s perfect for Advent as usually I put the Advent candle in the centre. This year, what with lockdowns etc, I missed the chance to buy an Advent candle, so I will light the centre one on Christmas day.
In the past I always used an oasis ring as the basis for the ring, filling it with foliage from the garden. Since discovering that it is not biodegradable I’vebeen trying to find alternatives. I’ve started using an artificial length of foliage I bought a few years ago. I circle it round the candelabra and then start attaching lots of natural and artificial bits and bats.
It’s a bit precarious at first, things are mainly just poked in, if I’m lucky I have a length of wire attached to curl round something. There’s fircones, poppy seed heads, cinamon sticks, dried clementines and limes, beech masts, some gypsophilea sprayed silver together with a few sprigs of artificial stuff. The last to be attached was a fine string of twinkly lights. Adding the lights does mean it isn’t just a feature when the candles are lit on a Sunday, it looks pretty every evening.
Now I’ve got used to attching everything, I rather like my new style of Advent ring, though I do miss the scent from the pine and the rosemary which I used to include. It does feel safer too when the candles burn low!
It makes quite a nice display on the sideboard with the gingerbread house, Christmas cake and all my Christmas smalls and of course my new Christmas cross-stitch on the wall.
I seem to be getting quite a bit of cross-stitch done at the moment, I’m self isolating for an operation just before Christmas, so I’m using my time productively! I usually cross-stitch during coffee breaks and tea breaks or when I’m cooking tea, being at home all the time means there’s a lot more coffee breaks!
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve stitched another cross-stitch for Christmas, as we’re nearly there I thought I should make it up straight away!
This is a free pattern from The Drawn Thread, it’s called First Snow. It’s quite quick to stitch with pine stitch for the leaves and smyrna crosses for the snow flakes, these are a basically a cross-stitch with a + over the top.
I didn’t take a photo when I first finished it, I started trying to work out how to mount it. I had a tree hanger which I wanted to use which I bought from Fabric Chicks on facebook last month. It was 6″ wide and the tree is only just over 2″ wide, so I needed to bunce it up a bit. I pulled out all my Christmas fabric and tried various combinations but nothing seemed to jump out at me. I remembered some white mini pom-pom trim I have, I had a rummage in my trims drawer and found it. It worked perfectly…
When I looked at my selection of Christmas fabrics I realised they were nearly all embellished with gold and next to the embroidery it just didn’t work. I was also surprised to see red worked better than green fabric, red picked out the birds whereas dark green just made the tree look drab. Having tried several combinations I remembered I had a pillarbox red bumbleberries fabric by Lewis and Irene which I bought for some blocks for quilts of Valour. I found it and tried it, it worked and with then simpler red next to it the red and gold fabrics were less overpowering. A length of red and white Christmas ribbon was just long enough to titivate the top and bottom too.
Having stitched the borders on I had to finish the back in some way. I decided to just hand stitch some red felt on the back, covering up all the raw edges. One issue I had with the red felt though was the slight tinge it gave to the cross-stitch linen through the plain fabric. To get round this I tacked a rectangle of dark green felt behind the linen which I think nicely enhances the soft green shade of the linen. I stitched it onto the hanger and the little white bow just finished it off.
I’ve already hung my mini Christmas tree in the dining room, well ‘hung’ is a slight misnomer as it’s blu-tacked to the wall, hence the fircone in the middle to hide the bluetac!
For many years I’ve decorated gingerbread houses for Christmas. It started when the children were small, I bought them flat packed from Ikea and decorated them with sweets and icing. I started making them for friends until I was decorating around twenty each December. The aroma of twenty gingerbread houses would permeate through the house.
These days I just make two or three for our family and I still love the smell. These days I buy the kits from Morrisons supermarket, although the houses aren’t quite so decorative (no open windows or chimneys) I think the gingerbread is much nicer to eat and there’s a store very near to us!
My son, being a very mature 26 year old, wanted a Haribo one! I bought the pack of Haribos which seemed to have the smallest chews in them and also a pack of jelly tots…
…I don’t think I could have fitted many more sweets on if I tried!
I prefer a ‘simpler’ style with just icing and a few silver draghees (not sure what they’re called in other countries but they are those little silver balls which break your teeth if you’re not careful!!)
I like the snowy cottage look! The ‘icicles’ on the edge of the roof look very delicate but once they dry they are pretty solid, I used to drive them into Leeds in the boot of the car and I never had any break. The icing loops itself into a nice even curve so long as it is secured at either end. I make royal icing with egg white and a drop of lemon juice, so it holds it’s shape and dries firm.
We always had a family rule that the gingerbread houses couldn’t be eaten until Christmas Eve, in the days when I used Ikea houses I would make lattice windows from icing and the first things the children would do was stick their fingers through the windows! The houses would be slowly demolished over Christmas week. Of course there was one year which has gone down in family lore when the night before I was due to deliver all the houses, Helen (aged about 3 or 4) stuck her fingers through one window in two houses…I was up til about 2am making another two houses! Two friends got a surprise gingerbread house that year as I was determined that Helen wasn’t going to benefit from her vandalism! Happy memories!
So Christmas cakes are made, gingerbread houses decorated, just need to make some mince pies and I’ll be ready for Christmas!
thecraftycreek 