Chaos continues with our kitchen refiguration, the wall is down between the kitchen and the dining room and some of the adjoining bathroom, we have no electrics in any of those rooms or the conservatory, so we are eating by candlelight and we have extension leads for essentials like the fridge and the dishwasher!! The dust is everywhere!!!
…so I haven’t done much quilting!! Three weeks ago I had completed 33 blocks…
Last night I made a concerted effort to at least make a start on another block and I almost finished it, I’ve just got about half of the sashing circle to do. So that’s nearly 34 blocks out of 49 complete, I’m getting there slowly.
Hand Quilt-a-long
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.
Please visit the rest of our group and see what they are up to:
It’s chaos at home at the moment, chaotic and very dusty! This week builders have started on our kitchen/dining room so walls have been knocked down, steel joists put up…you get the picture! The dust gets everywhere!! I know I’ve been very quiet on here, I have been stitching a lot, but even my computer has been under dust sheets! I’ll do a few catch up posts over the next couple of weeks!
I hid my butterfly embroidery away so it wouldn’t get dusty too but last night I decided it was safe to get it out again!
Three weeks ago I’d just started this DMC kit…
I did manage to do a couple more letters before the building work started and last night I started the letter E…
I’m really enjoying stitching this piece, it’s pretty and delicate but not too complex to do.
This stitch-a-long is organised by Avis of Stitching by the Sea, we post our progress on a piece every three weeks, just enough to keep motivated! Please follow the links to see what everyone else is stitching.
I always said I liked feisty little girls and Helen was definitely a feisty little girl! They grow up into feisty young women and the world needs feisty women!
I think I’m making slow but steady progress on my Owl and Hare Hollow quilt at the moment, I’ve currently a lot of other projects vying for my attention and not just sewing either…
As well as trying to sort the top of the garden out after the redevelopment, we’re also about to embark on major building work! We’re knocking the kitchen through to the dining room in order to make the bathroom next to it big enough for a walk in shower. It’s all about future proofing our house for growing old gracefully (or not!) ! I’m not looking forward to the chaos of having both new kitchen and bathroom done at the same time! It’s not due to start until 3rd March but in the meantime I need to empty all three rooms and strip the dining room of wallpaper! I think my sewing room will be my refuge!!
Three weeks ago I was quilting the 30th block, celebrating passing the half-way mark…
I’ve only quilted another three full blocks, but that pushes me to the grand total of 33 blocks which is just over 2/3rds completed. You have to enjoy these mini happy dances as they come along!
The little dots you can see round the quilting are the Frixion pen marks I use to draw the circles. Frixion pen comes off with heat such as a tumble dryer or an iron. I try not to push my luck with it causing issues by just doing dots.
Hand Quilt a long
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.
Having finished my Bee book I have just this week started a new project. It’s a kit that’s been in my stash for some time, gradually creeping up the to do list, I’m pretty sure I bought it for about £10 on a facebook destash site. It’s a DMC kit called Butterfly Alphabet and I think it is very pretty.
It’s pre-printed linen and uses about ten DMC threads. The instructions are nice and clear, there’s one code for the threads and another for the stitch, it’s all straight forward stitches too like stem stitch, French knots and chain stitch.
So far I’ve stitched A and I’m half way through B…
I’m doing a back-stitch round the large leaves to try and keep my satin stitch neat. So far I’m enjoying stitching this one, I’ll probably frame it for the guest bedroom afterwards.
Time to link up today with fellow SAL members for our 3-weekly update and see what everyone else has been stitching.
I caught up with the Anne Brooke Bobbin Along challenge last night. Each week she adds a little more stitching to a piece to represent a word, we’ve had layers, rolls. hummock…and a couple of weeks ago it was wrinkle.
Anne gathered up fairly narrow lengths of cotton to make a wrinkly ruff or circle. I tried a couple of different cottons for my piece but they looked too heavy, so I tried organza ribbon and that worked much better for me. I initially also tried placing it round the hummock, but I just couldn’t get it to look right. I then had the idea of stitching it along one of the arcs of rolled fabric and that worked much better. This is going to be a double page spread in my textile book.
Last week the word was Slit, cutting a slit in the fabric, folding the sides back a bit like Cathedral Windows in patchwork, revealing another fabric underneath. I wasn’t sure how a straight slit was going to work in my book of circles, obviously I couldn’t do a curved slit as it would distort the fabric too much. I then had the idea to turn it into a slitty eye, a bit like an owl’s eye, or a reptile. I decided to make it next to the hummock with the two circles slightly overlapping each other.
I used a straight stitch to catch the turnings down and stitch the backing fabric in place at the same time using a subtly variegated quilting cotton. I could then use a blue thread to do two running stitch circles round the slit…
…and I couldn’t resist having a little bee peeping out of the slit 🙂
Since starting the Sewing Room Declutter Challenge (almost finished!) I’ve been trying to make up some of the kits I’ve acquired over the years. This is one I fell for at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show last year, a complete impulse buy!!
The kit included some lovely linen/cotton preprinted with the shapes, the large cotton reel and a spool of variegated perle thread. I decided to use a variegated DMC thread instead as it’s finer and I liked the colours of this one.
I decided to embroider leaves, flowers and general pretty shapes. Half way through I thought it might be nice to colour the fabric so as to soften the contrast with the white fabric. I used silk paints as I have them in my stash and I know how they work as it were. This is just before I painted it, as you can see I managed to stretch it on a large hoop for painting.
One advantage of silk paints is that it isn’t permanent until you iron it, so if I really didn’t like it, I could have just washed it out. Luckily it worked really well and I carried on with the embroidery. There’s no embroidery designs with the pattern, it’s a matter of choosing your own stitches and in my case making it up as I go along.
Once the embroidery was complete I could start cutting out. I just cut out a piece as I was ready to make it up as they were so tiddly it would have been easy to lose them,
There are basic instructions in the actual kit but there is also a link to several videos which detail each section to be stitched. I used blanket-stitch in the same variegated DMC thread. The pieces are pretty fiddly as the whole hare is only 2.5″ tall. In the kit there is also an orange stick which is very useful for stuffing the pieces.
Tiny buttons are also provided for attaching the arms and legs. The tail is on a metal hook to stitch it on with. The pattern also suggests a ruffle round the hare’s neck but I couldn’t find anything that looked right and I think she’s cute as she is.
I covered the spool with some pretty cotton and overlaid it with lace. I popped some batting underneath which just helped soften it for sewing. I cut a circle of paper to cover the top. glued that on top and sat my hare in place.
I love her! She is so cute!
The kits are from Moonlight Stitches, I’m tempted to do another one with maybe more of a flower theme, maybe make it into a mouse with bigger ears…
I’d been a member of Askwith with Weston WI since I was in between babies, nearly thirty years ago. I write that in the past tense, not because it has closed or I have left, but because it has recently renamed the institute. We had moved venues to the other side of the valley in Menston which is a much better drive for most people, over the years we also have had hardly any members from Askwith or Weston villages, our members come from quite a wide area, just not those villages.
It’s been a good move as our membership has steadily increased since moving to Menston. We did feel however that we could no longer call ourselves Askwith with Weston when we don’t meet anywhere near the villages. A new name was required.
After much deliberation and a vote, we settled on Wharfedale WI.
At out meetings we have a tablecloth embroidered with the name of the WI which is laid on the President’s table. I’m not sure just how old it is but it’s certainly been there as long as I’ve been a member. Obviously a change of name necessitated a change of cloth…or did it!
I was tasked with the job of creating a new tablecloth. I ummed and aarhed for several weeks, do I go down the quilted route, or the embroidered route? I didn’t want to make myself too much work either! I suddenly had a lightbulb moment…
The old green tablecloth had the name in felt across one corner, if I put the new name across the opposite corner we would keep the history of the institute whilst incorporating the name of the new one. Luckily the committee agreed with me.
The old name was in red felt, I decided however to use purple and dark green as these are the WI colours, dating back to it’s origins in the suffragette movement. I found a font I liked on Etsy and traced the letters onto Bondaweb, remembering just in time to reverse some of the letters as Bondaweb reverses everything. It took a while to arrange the letters evenly.
Unfortunately although the bondaweb stuck nicely to the felt, it wouldn’t stick well to the wool tablecloth, so I ended up pinning and tacking everything down. I cut a white rose of Yorkshire out which is an old symbol for North Yorkshire West federation of the WI. The dark green letters W I are then overlaid over the Yorkshire rose.
I decided to blanket stitch everything in place which took a few evenings. I was very surprised to see the original letters were machine stitched with a zig-zag, despite being President for three years I had never noticed!
Hopefully everyone will like the new version of the tablecloth.
Someone mentioned recently that I haven’t shared photos of my garden recently…that’s because it’s been looking a bit like a builders yard!
Last summer I did some serious thinking about our house and our future here. We’ve got to the age when you need to start planning, do you stay put and make the house work, or move whilst you’re still young enough to cope with it.
We live in a dormer bungalow so in many ways it’s perfect for growing old in, our bedroom is downstairs, we have a downstairs bathroom. We could live downstairs if we needed to. On the negative side, it has a steep drive and a large garden.
The garden is terraced so it does have some drops which are concerning me more as my balance and MS are getting slightly worse. In particular the area in front of the Amber and Amethyst garden has a 5′ drop onto concrete if I wobble the wrong way! I decided it’s also this left hand side of the garden which is the highest maintenance so a radical rethink was required.
I looked at the plants I wanted to keep and worked out a design round that. My priority was the Roald Dahl standard rose which I bought when my mum died. Near to it were a few nice shrubs which were on my ‘like to keep’ list, that includes a sarcocca, an acer, a eunonymous elatas and another shrub which I don’t know the name of!
I started off with circles but I couldn’t get the long border to look right, then my daughter suggested squares and rectangles…in the end I’ve gone in between using arcs to make one large seating area and one small one where I will put a ‘banana bench’. We’ve got some sturdy trellis in front of the big drop, some lovely new steps up to the back lane and I also had the path round the pond made a little wider to again make the bed easier to manage.
The landscaper finished at the weekend, I’ve hopefully got a load of topsoil and compost arriving on Wednesday and once that has topped the beds up I can start replanting everything I saved, time will tell what has survived and what hasn’t.
As you can see, I managed to keep the shrubs that I didn’t want to move. The sarcoccus (sweet box) smells amazing at the moment.
The hellebores are in flower too and two of them in particular are looking gorgeous. The purple one is up by the saved shrubs, the freckled one is down by the patio. I’ve bought a couple more too on the market last week so I’ll get those planted soon.
So, big changes in the garden, hopefully soon it will look like a garden again, full of flowers and scent.
I’ve made pretty good progress with my Owl and Hare Hollow quilt, three weeks ago I’d quilted 24 blocks, so not quite half way…
…I’ve been concentrating on mainly the bottom rows so I have complete rows. I now realise why I kept missing off the bottom one, I find them a lot more fiddly as it isn’t so firm in the hoop.
I quilted round the flower vase and also a circle inside the churn block square…
This morning I quilted round the Dresden ring and also in the centre, so I just need to do my big circle round the sashing. The little purple dots you can see are Frixion pen marks so they will disappear with a bit of heat.
Once I’ve done the sashing circle I will have completed thirty blocks, so well over the half-way point of twenty-five. Sounds even better now I can say nineteen to go!
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.
thecraftycreek 