My Fortnight!

 Having been struck down by some lurgy (popular opinion says covid) some 10 days or so ago, I have been having a quiet time here with lots of reading while I nurse a horrible cough. Feeling a bit more myself this week and am back to light duties interspersed with a bit of knitting and sewing. So what have I been up to. Well I managed to continue with my stitch journal all bar one day - marked with a cross! I had one of my Hundertwasser moments and traced out the main shapes of one of his paintings and have been filling the sections in with stitch.

For my Chookshed Challenge book cover, I had laid out a selection of my turquoise fabrics onto a backing and had them all stitched down ready to move onto the embellishment before I was ill.

I had a plan for adding a flower motif to the front panel and thought that I would paint the basic shape with gold paint and then embroider into it. 

Then I thought that the background stitching might not like that so I thought - gold fabric and bondaweb. When I felt well enough to go rummaging I couldn't find the right gold fabric - too bright or too dull and couldn't find the bondaweb. So I ordered bondaweb while I had a think. I am now moving back to my original gold paint idea - oh well, watch this space as they say.

I opened up two solar dye jars this week. This first one was black bean soaking water, slightly weaker than my previous experiment. The fabrics were just squashed in, in the hope of some nice random markings which is what I got.

We have a lovely 'black' hollyhock in the garden which is actually a really really deep red. There are masses of dry and semi dry flowers on the ground underneath and I wondered if they would make a good dye. Well the liquid was a beautiful deep ruby red but as you can see, my fabrics and threads are not!

Much like the red onion skins which also gave a lovely green.

I have been knitting and the Ryegrass socks have reached the heel turn and I am decreasing for the gusset.

I have lots of sock wool oddments and am always looking for ways to use them. I thought that I would have a go at working with a ball of plain 4ply yarn and some of my scraps to make a thicker boot sock to use with my walking shoes.

I am using the Winwick Mum DK basic sock pattern and am happy with how this is knitting up so far. I love how the addition of the plain colour subtly alters the colours of the scraps.

Right, I am off to sit in the garden with a glass of something nice - enjoy your weekend.

My week

 A quiet week here with just one day out to meet friends for lunch. And I seem to have had a quiet week on the sewing front too. However, I have kept up with my stitch journal and here it is for the last week.

I have started on a new theme today - but you will have to wait until next week for that!

My Christmas tree skirt rondel for the month is complete - only one more of these to do.

And this sock is coming along nicely - I haven't touched the Ryegrass one.

I opened up some of my solar dye jars this week and I am pleased with the results. This first one is avocado stones. This time I chopped the stones and cooked them for a bit in the microwave with some water then used that in my jars. It has given a nice soft browny pink which I like.

This next one is from fresh buddleia flowers (lilac) which has given this lovely dark yellowy green.

And in this last jar I used new leaves from our corkscrew hazel which has given a nice warm yellow.

I have tried to adjust the colours in my photos to give as accurate a colour as possible but the last one didn't want to play nicely. So I am very happy with those. I have a feeling that the laces, which are new, need a run through the washing machine to remove some sort of dressing as they don't seem to be taking up much dye.

I have been playing around in my sketchbook with ideas for my sketchbook cover - Chookshed Challenge #7 - and come up with something I like. I have just used shapes from the sketchbook and their placement needs to be adjusted.

The trouble I am having is that in my mind this cover has always been white which of course is totally impractical! So now I am thinking that the base should be a mixture of turquoise and terracotta, two colours I associate with the middle east, maybe kantha stitched with these designs embroidered on top. Still a work in progress as you can tell.

Anyway that is me up to date - I need to go and rummage in my fabric boxes. Have a great week.

FOQ part 2

 Welcome back!

This was amazing - so much to look at!

This young lady will go far

This lovely piece was made to celebrate 150 years of Liberty's

This next jacket is from the Quilters Guild collection - and I want it!

A few of the prize winners - the ones I liked! The lighting in the winners gallery was not conducive to good photography!

You will not be able to tell from this ghastly photo but the next quilt was entirely silver. A first I thought all the same silver but then looking closer I could see it was all different silver fabrics including a 'velvet'.

This quilt was voted Best in Show.

I hope you have enjoyed my quick tour of the show - there were masses of beautiful quilts to look at and the standard was amazing.

Festival of Quilts

 Photo heavy folks - come back tomorrow for my usual weekly update.

A few of my favourites from FOQ in Birmingham last weekend. Hopefully you will be able to click on the pictures to enlarge.

This huge piece by the Ukranian Quilt Association was the first piece of work I saw - it is stunning and made up of individually pieced and quilted squares.

This lovely quilt is by Janice Gunner in her trademark Indigo shibori.

The World needs to see this one!

A few miniatures.

I suspect that is enough for one post - I will do another with the 'creations'!