I’ve managed to do a surprising amount of this cross-stitch project over the last three weeks, considering the run up to Christmas and other sewing stuff. Three weeks ago I was half way round the background flowers of the humming bird quarter, though I still had all the back-stitching to do on the bird its self.
Three weeks later and I’ve finished the background and added the back-stitching. The pattern calls for black, but I changed it to a soft dark grey/brown instead – the black just looked too harsh. The main square is finished apart from some french knots on the coral coloured flowers. I’m not sure what flowers these are meant to be and the french knots on the earlier ones look quite dominant. I’m going to try a smaller knot on these and see if it looks better.
I’m also half way round the border, I’ve still to add the back-stitching and the ivory flowers, but I’m pretty pleased with my progress.Hopefully next time (next year!!!) I’ll have started the final quarter which is a pair of butterflies.
This stitch-a-long is organised by Avis, we post our progress on our chosen project every three weeks, please follow the links to see what every one else is stitching.
I’ve just completed another month’s project for the Stitchbook Collective, this is a monthly on line course organised by Helen Bellingham of Untangled Threads which is teaching us different techniques each month, she sends a box out which contains everything you need, it’s a great way of trying all those things you see at shows but not quite sure what to do with. For someone like me who tends to do quite neat and precise stitching, it’s certainly pushing me out of my comfort zone! Each month we aim to produce two finished pieces which are then stitched onto calico pages to make a book.
The first month was all about texture…
The second month was pleats and tucks…
This time it was dyeing…
I put aside an afternoon when I could have a clear workspace in the kitchen – dyeing was definitely not an activity for my sewing room! Helen sent three Procien dyes, magenta, turquoise and lemon, together with the salt, soda, plastic bags and gloves and lots of different types of fabric to dye.
Altogether there were about six different samples to try dyeing, from basic soaking, to tie-dye, painting with dye, achieving different tones and seeing the different ways different types of fabric take up dye. My favourite was the DMC white thread which went into the purple dye wiith the cotton, polycotton and muslin, it came out beautifully and subtly variegated. All good fun!
We also tried rust dying, wrapping calico round rusty nails and washers and soaking in white vinegar before leaving it to dry for 24 hours, I did wonder if I’d left it too long when I first saw it…
I unwrapped it and rinsed it and I was pleasantly surprised with what came out…
I then had to create something with it!
I decided to use Helen’s suggestion and just concentrate on small areas. I found three 2″ squares where I could ‘see’ something in the rustmarks. I then used some similar coloured embroidery thread to try and make it into an embroidery. I saw some flower heads in one, so I added petals, grasses etc. The second one looked like a sunflower head, so that just needed lots of lazy-daisy petals. The third one looked like butterflies, so I just went round the wings and added boddies and legs.
For my second sample I decided to use the purple samples, three different shades from one batch of dye. I started by arranging the calico, polycotton and muslin together and started to use the DMC thread for some Kanthe style stitches. I was a bit bored after three rows, so I decided to do three rows of three, just enough to hold it all on! I then added three strips of other fabrics – the tie-dye one and magenta – and stitched them on with three rows of Kanthe stitch.
I then got all arty farty!! I remembered an app on my phone called What3words. Someone has divided the country into 10′ squares and each square has three random words attached to it. If you are lost somewhere and need help (could be in a forest on on the motorway…) if you give these three words to the emergency services they can find you easily. I checked the three words for my sewing room and wrote them on little pieces of mulberry paper before stitching them on with three buttons. For on-line security reasons I took the three words at either end of my sewing room and picked three from those – glad, flock, robes – I told they were random!!
I’m really enjoying this project – it’s so far away from my usual neat embroideries or cross-stitch! This month’s box is called Joomchi – something to do with mulberry papers apparently, I’ll get Christmas out of the way so I can give it a bit of time!
We have a phrase here of ‘doing a round robin’, usually meaning a road trip going from A to B to C to D to get various things done. I never wondered where it came from, well I learnt yesterday that the collective noun for robins is a round, though I’m still not sure how it came to mean a round trip! Mind you, having googled it there’s lots of meanings for the phrase round robin!
At the Harrogate show I bought a metre of very pretty robin fabric, it’s more home furnishing weight really, it was an impulse buy (not like me at all!!) but I decided it would be rather nice for tote bags. I’d got three little presents to make and I decided this would be perfect.
I didn’t want to make the bag just in the robin fabric, mainly because things like handles add a surprising amount to what’s needed. I found in my stash a duckegg blue fabric which coordinated nicely. I usually make my totes 16″ square, I cut the robin fabric to about 10″, leaving the bottom strip in the plain fabric.
I made a simple lining, no pockets or anything as I wanted it to be a fairly lightweight for storing and carrying round. They’re not as round bottomed as they look in the photo, they actually have a gusseted flat bottom!
They were pretty quick to make once I’d worked out what I was doing with the first one, hopefully they’ll like and use them.
I had a couple of strips left over from cutting out which had a couple of robins on. I used one to make a card. My Embroiderers Guild do a Christmas card swop, you make one card, sign it and pop it in the bag and take another one, so everyone gets a nice handmade card. Obviously I wanted something fairly quick so I decided to embroider over the robin.
I just used feather, fly, buttonhole and herringbone stitches, together with a few lazy daisies and some french knots. He was fun to stitch and pretty quick too. I cut him out, frayed the edges and stitched him onto felt which could then be glued to the card.
I wanted to make a little something to slip inside a Christmas card for someone. My original plan was to make a flat decoration, but it was begging to be stuffed!! I just used a little lace, some ricrac and a soft brown cotton with tiny feathers on it. I added the buttons to the corners to hide where the ricrac hanger attaches. I think it’s rather sweet, I’m tempted to make myself one too!
I just need to get everything wrapped and in the post – I haven’t even written my Christmas cards yet!
I’ve been pretty busy in my sewing room this week, I’ve had a weeks holiday from work and I’ve made the most of it!Last month Ali from @akathimberlina organised a sewing meet up in Dewsbury. Clearly I don’t need any more fabric but it’s nice to go and socialise for the day with fellow stitchers who understand!! There’s lots of fabric stroking and one girl’s coat was tried on by about six of us, much to the amusement of one elderly couple in the pub!
Of course I ended up buying some fabric,one length was this gorgeous teal fabric. I have no idea what kind of fabric it is, it feels like suede, it’s satin on the back and it drapes beautifully. It was only £5/m from Lucky Fashions, I bought enough to make a dress.
I decided to make Vogue 2412, I think it’s out of print now, I picked it up at a pattern swop at one of the sewing meet-ups. I made two dresses out of it last winter and they’ve proved good staple wardrobe pieces, I’ve worn them a lot…
Both are in boiled wool…
I decided to make the collarless one again. The only alteration I made was to take a smidgen off the centre back, mainly as a way of lifting the sleeves a little. It was literally just half a centimetre – so I don’t think that is the reason this one feels a little narrow across my back! I think it is probably that this one doesn’t have any give.
It’s still easy to wear though…
I’m really pleased with this dress, it was pretty quick to make, the fabric was easy to sew, just a bit tricky to press, I ended up using my pressing cloth all the time which does make it a little more difficult to get things like darts perfectly pressed – that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!
I overlocked all the inside edges and made a decorative hem with the scallop stitch on my machine. The photos were taken after I’d been wearing it all day, hence it isn’t beautifully pressed!
I’m quite proud that this length of fabric never even made it to my stash!!
Editors note; if my daughter was taking the photos she would have sent me off to comb my hair – looks like it was a hat wearing day!!
I haven’t got round to decorating the house for Christmas yet, but I did rummage through the Christmas boxes to find all my Christmas cross-stitch smalls…
It makes a nice gentle start to the decorations!
Quite a few of these are Faby Reilly designs, I did a Christmas stitch-a-long last year to make four Christmas cards, I turned the designs into smalls instead, I gave one as a present but I kept the other three…
There’s also two of Faby’s cross-stitch humbugs which I made two or three years ago…
The little gingerbread mouse by Just Nan was finished a couple of weeks ago…
The mistletoe card I think was a kit from Hobbycraft and the dachshund was a pattern off Etsy. The little house is by Nutmeg Designs and the wreath is one I made years ago.
They make quite a nice collection, but I think a few might be disappearing onto my Christmas tree when we get round to decorating it!
Having only just shared November windows with you last week, I’m a bit more organised this month with my December windows. This is a monthly photo challenge by Wild Daffodil, so follow the link to see lots more windows. Next year the theme is textiles, which I’m looking forward to, as you can imagine!
Some of these photos just have windows in the background, so you just have to go with the flow 🙂
On Sunday it was Otley’s Victorian Fayre, this annual event has been going on for many years, the children dress up and sing carols on the temporary stage in the market place, the stall holders and shopkeepers dress up too. The stalls were pretty good this year, a good mix of really nice craft stuff, charity stalls, farmers market stalls, not as many tat stalls! There’s a little fun fair too if you’re so inclined! When you have kids attending a school in Otley you end up with a little collection of clothes which can be adapted for Victorian Fayre day!! Someone once came into work in a panic as their child needed an outfit to visit an old mill, the next day I took in the pinafore dress, blouse, cotton pinny, mop cap, shawl…here’s Helen looking very angelic many years ago!
All the shops decorate their windows, the charity shops find as much Victoriana as they can, this is the Cats Protection League shop..
It all looks very festive. This year Sunday was a cold, crisp day, a good day for getting wrapped up warm and trying some mulled cider (much nicer I think than mulled wine!) and roasted chestnuts. Otley brass band play Christmas carols, this always makes me feel a little emotional as one of my early Christmas memories is of the Salvation Army band coming round the streets, they always seemed to reach our culdesac on Christmas Eve, we would stand on the step and listen to the carols, I always requested O Little Town of Bethlehem.
There’s a few traditional Morris Dancing groups round here, so they usually do a display. We have a folk festival earlier in the year when the town is full of them – some of them black their faces out and look quite scary!
Once we were back home it was time to gather some holly and ivy from the back lane, some variegated foliage from the garden, and make my Advent ring. In the past I’ve always used an oasis ring, but in an attempt to be a bit more environmentally friendly, I’ve tried a different method. I saw a chap on one of the stalls with the metal ring bound with hay which he then used to make wreaths for the door. He looked a bit surprised when I asked him how much for just the ring – £1! For that it was worth a try!
The ring snuggled down nicely onto my candelabra. I was planning to wire twigs to it, but in the end they seemed to stay just from being poked into the hay. I’m pretty pleased with it, it didn’t need to be as densley packed as with oasis as a little hay on view isn’t too objectionable. I just need to be careful when the candles start getting low that the whole things doesn’t go up in smoke! Time will tell whether the foliage lasts long enough – even with oasis I had to replace most of it by Christmas with dried or artificial decorations. It looks lovely in front of my stained glass window.
There are four candles on it by the way, one is hiding directly behind the middle one! I got the usual jokes when I went to buy four candles, it probably ages us to a certain generation but if you haven’t seen the Two Ronnies sketch, here’s the link on Youtube.
Just want to say thank you to Wild Daffodil for organising this challenge, I wasn’t too sure about having the same theme all year at first, but I think it’s worked really well, looking forward to the textile photos next year.
I haven’t posted many garden photos recently as the weather has been a bit miserable – dank and dismal!! However the last few days have been cold, crisp, sunny days, we’ve been waking up to a beautiful hoar frost which coats every leaf and every blade of grass so it looks like it’s been dusted with icing sugar. We live in the lea of a hill called the Chevin, so from early November to mid February we get no direct sunshine, it makes it quite a frost pocket, so even with a bit of sunshine, the frost stayed all day. These photos were taken mid afternoon…
As you can see I’ve not got very far with the autumn tidy-up! I’m a fair-weather gardener, before it was too wet, now it’s far to cold!! I’ll just have to stay in side and sew!
Every blade of grass has a thick white coating…
…Rosie thinks that makes for a great place to roll!!
I bought this bird bath earlier this year – it’s been hidden beind the irises until now. The two bird ornaments came with it, they look quite cute with all the frost.
The roses are ever hopeful, they’re still producing buds, though they soon turn to brown with the cold and wet.
These two shrubs are in the autumn bed, the lower one is a euonymus and the top one is an erysimum, only the euonymus is actually variegated!
I think the pots corner has a frost pocket all of it’s own with a frost pocket!! It seemed extra thick here!!
Our hot compost bin arrived over the weekend. This is our main Christmas present to each other! We were keen to start so we followed the instructions on mixing the starter stuff with shreddings and twigs and added a plastic container of boiling water – it acts like a hot water bottle! Unfortunately I think we’ve picked the wrong weekend to start it off as it’s struggling to stay above 40 degrees!We’ll see how it goes and give it another boost when the weather warms up a bit.
Our bird feeding station has been very busy in the cold weather with a pair of nuthatches, blue tits, great tits and bull finches.
I’m almost there! I’ve nearly finished hand-quilting my Down the Rabbit Hole quilt! In fact, if we hadn’t had visitors this week I might just have cracked on and finished it!
Three weeks ago I was waiting for some more ceramic lead pencils to arrive so I could start the final side…
Whilst I was waiting I decided to be productive and finish the outer diamond border…
…and quilt round the rabbits and the heart.
I started adding a bit more quilting to the Dresden flowers too as I had only gone round the two circles so I felt the inside was too big to be unquilted. I’ve just stitched a line down the centre of each purple segment. I need to remember I have to go back to the central dresden circle too as I only quilted about a third of it before thread went missing!
The ceramic leads finally arrived so I could mark the cross-hatching in the main border. I’m so near to the end now, I’ll have to find my dancing shoes and give them a polish! Once I’ve quilted this last section and the other little bits, I just need to remove all that pesky basting thread, bind it, stitch a label on and wash it..hopefully in time for the next HQAl post – that would be a nice start to Christmas 🙂
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 have finally started a textile book of my mums work. My mum was a prolific craftsperson – you think I do a lot, she made lots of things and was happy to try almost any craft, pottery, embroidery, spinning, bobbinlace…you name it, she tried it!
Last year we had to make the hard decision to find a care home for her and put her house on the market. When we were emptying her house there were lots of items she had made, some finished, others half made, some in good condition, others well used and worn.
I decided to keep hold of everything until I could have a good sort through and decide what to do with everything. Knowing how much work goes into a craft item I couldn’t bear to send them to a charity shop or even worse, throw them away. To give you an idea of numbers, she must have had over 100 paintings, all professionally framed, boxes of sketches, lots of quilts and enough knitting wool to open a shop!!
I have decided to make a textile book with various pieces in, I’ve been mulling it over for the past few months and I’ve finally started.
The first page I made is from an unfinished cross-stitch. It’s a quote from William Shakespeare, I’m pretty sure the top foliage should be a lot fuller, there were also two words unfinished, I found some similar thread and embroidered those in.
I decided to frame it with two co-ordinating cotton fabrics. I added some lace and some trim too. When I attach it to the backing I’ll probably stitch a running stitch along the other two edges. There was a large blank area at the bottom, I think it was meant to have the reference to the quote there, it needed something so I added five buttons, though one of them looks like it needs a bit more stitching!
This one measures about 12.5″ by 16″. I’m thinking of using one of the well worn quilts as backing to the pages, so there will either be a quilted page or I can stitch things to it, it’s still a bit of work-it-out-as-I-go-along sort of project. I think I’ll see how many pages I end up with before I commit to quilted ones as it may end up too thick.
The second page is an iris cross-stitch, I think this one is almost finished. I used quilting cotton again, but I added a broad lace trim down one side. My mum used to make a lot of bobbin lace, so although this one is bought, it will fit in with the theme. The bottom right corner was plain, I decided to add a pocket (of bee fabric as she used to keep bees) the idea being that I can slot in sketches or small paintings of flowers in the pocket.
Hopefully now I’ve started the other pages will gradually get easier to do, I’ve lots of ideas and thought, just got to see if they will work.
I’m just squeezing these photos into November for Wild Daffodils photo challenge, better late than never! I hadn’t seen anything to inspire over the month but then this week we had family visiting from Australia and on a dank, dismal November day we called into Skipton Castle.
The photos are a little dark as it was a pretty dismal day and they didn’t do much in the way of lighting!
Skipton Castle is over 900 years old and for many years it was held by generations of the Clifford family. My walking buddy and I are walking the Lady Anne Way next year and it passes by all the castles owned by Lady Anne Clifford, starting at Skipton…
In case you’re wondering, the photo above was taken on a sunny April day when we did the first section of the Lady Anne Way!
These were taken on my mobile, so apologies for the quality!
This is the inner courtyard, there was a huge tree in the middle. It does make it pretty dark but you can see all the classic Norman arches with their rounded tops.
Some of the walls are about 6′ thick so the windows are in deep recesses. This one looks over Skipton main street…
…whereas this one overlooks the moors.
This one overlooks the tree in the courtyard, the stone mullions are still in great condition…
…this is the same window from the outside., though I’m not sure which one, possibly the top floor, judging by the tree.
It always amazes me to see buildings like this which were literally built by hand, you can still see masons marks on some of the stones – the mason would carve his initial or mark on the stones he laid so he would get paid for his work.
For more window photos, have a look at Wild Daffodils post, I’m sure there will be brighter, sunnier photos!! If you’re interested in Skipton Castle, there’s lots of information on their website.
thecraftycreek 