Christmas Post

In my last post I showed you the cards that I had sent to my swap partners in Sheila's Christmas postcard swap. I have finally received my second card - it was posted on to me from France by a friend - so I can show both of my cards to you.

This card is from Sunny (heres the picture for you Sunny!)

It is beautifully handstitched.

This card is from Janet.

It is not easy to see on this picture but the background is beautiful kantha stitching.

Thank you both very much for your cards and thank you Sheila for organising another swap for us.

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For some time now I have been admiring the beautiful Cottage Garden Threads that some of my Australian friends have been using and I have been looking for a European supplier, to no avail! I happened to mention this to Maria and the lovely lady very kindly offered to send me a pack to try - how kind is that?

When the envelope arrived it not only contained the CGT but also some beautiful variegated green silk thread from Colour Streams and a gorgeous Fabric Patch!

The variegated CGT is beautiful - just my colours - as is the fabric patch

butterflies and passion flowers. (I know - I should have taken it out of the cellophane to photograph!)

Thank you very much Maria - if you don't know Maria's blog then do go and visit The Next Stage, Maria makes the most beautiful knitted throws!

I will leave you with a couple of photographs from Lyme Regis which we visited on Saturday.

And wish you all a very Happy Christmas and Peaceful (stitchy) New Year.

Christmas Postcards

Now that all of my Christmas postcards for Sheila's swap have arrived I can show you the ones that I sent.

I made these by bondawebbing foil sweet papers onto purple velvet ( the cheap stretchy sort) and then on the first one adding a few bits of iron on coloured foil. I covered the cards with a sheer fabric and then did some free motion stitching all over. I enjoyed making these - and especially eating the chocolate to get the foils!
Hope you are having a good week

FNWF for December

The first Friday in December and it is Friday Night with Friends hosted as usual by Cheryl. Thank you Cheryl and welcome to any new visitors to my blog.

Having completed my latest crazy block I was looking around for some hand sewing to do in the evenings and decided that it was time that my Dear Jane saw the light of day again!

I already had some blocks cut out and ready to sew and decided that this one needed to be tackled asap so that I could get on to something a little less complicated!

Fidly this one and I must admit that I had already started it the night before, after I had completed this one

 

which took no time at all.

It is very chilly here now, winter has definitely arrived!

I hope you are having a good weekend.

Autumn Crazy finish!

My Autumn crazy block is finished!! Well apart from a few additions around the edges when the sashing is on.
This has been fun to do - I've tried out a few new stitches and techniques and love my finished block. Here are a few details.

Another finish this week has been this little pincushion using a Jenny of Elefantz design.

This is a gift for a friend so I added a pocket on the back for a nice new sharp pair of embroidery scissors. I hope she likes it!

In the post today was the lovely pack of Kona solids that I won in the Canada Blogathon from Sew-Sisters. What a lovely collection of colours.

And, finally winter has arrived. Temperatures have dropped from 25 on Sunday afternoon to 5 degrees today! The birds are busy feeding on our fat balls and peanuts and, hopefully, the numbers of flies and hornets around will decrease rapidly too!

It seems very quiet in blogland - I expect everyone is busy with Christmas stitching. Hope you all have a good week.

TAST 140 Threaded Cable Chain

This is the last TAST for this year. Thank you very much Sharon of Pintangle for this series, it has certainly made me try a few new stitches.

The top row shows the normal Threaded Cable Chain.
In the second row I have made elongated chains and links.
In the third row I have threaded the link rather than the chain and then filled the chains with beads.

I like this stitch very much especially the richness of the third row.

I hope that Sharon will continue this series in the new year, meanwhile I have a lot of stitches to catch up on!

Amigurumi..

.. are definitely NOT my thing!

Here are the two that I have completed

Flutterby and Fish. Perfectly nice, nothing wrong with them but I did not enjoy making them one bit!

So I have one copy of this book

to give away. Thirty lovable little animals waiting to be crocheted and loved! If this is your thing then please leave a comment saying that you would like this book. Should more than one person want it then I shall ask Mr RNG to adjudicate. Happy to post anywhere.

Normal service will soon resume!

FNSI for November

Thank you once again Wendy for hosting a great evenings sewing.

I started in the afternoon with work on this little Amigurumi fish.

I am not enjoying doing these at all and will be glad when this one is finished!

My next pleasurable activity of the day was making my mincemeat ready for Christmas. A simple task of weighing and mixing with the delicious smells of spice and brandy.

Here it is ready for it's overnight soak - I put it all into jars this morning.

And so on to the evenings sewing and I was working on my Autumn crazy block.

Specifically I was adding the blackberries, leaves and flowers.

Not far to go on this one now and I am starting to think about sashing fabric to hold the blocks together.

You may have noticed a new button up there on the left of my blog. It is for the Crazy Quilt Journal Project for 2015 and I have committed to making an 8" crazy block a month next year! Well I do need a project to keep me focused. At the moment my plan is to base each block on a different colour or colour scheme for instance my first one will be black/grey/white. Other themes I am thinking of are pink and orange, purple with a hint of yellow and turquoise. Nothing to do with being my favourite colours of course!

Hope you all had a good evenings sewing.

TAST and the Death's-head Hawk-moth

The latest two TAST stitches from Pintangle are 138 and 139 Barb stitch and Beaded Barb stitch.

Here is my quick sample.

This is a simple stitch - just two back to back rows of buttonhole which are then whipped together - but with lots of possibilities for variations and decorating.

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Do you remember my pictures of the Death's-head Hawk-moth?

When she died, which they do at this time of year, we took her to a friend who had volunteered to set her out. Earlier this week we went to collect her and here she is in all her glory.

Beautifully boxed and labelled.

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We had a sudden storm last weekend and I managed to get some photographs.

This was during the storm with the promise of some sun to come afterwards.

And this one later across the valley looks like smoke from a huge fire!

I have been sewing too - some of it secret stuff though! I have finished this pincushion from the Gail Pan Christmas book which I can show you.

And there will soon be more pictures of my Autumn crazy block which is coming along nicely.

Have you been following the Sew Sisters Canada Blogathon? If not then do go and have a look. There are some fantastic fabric giveaways all of which can be shipped internationally and, of course, lots of lovely blogs to read and new people to meet.

And finally - tomorrow night is Friday Night Sew In!

There is still time to sign up - just pop over and see Wendy to do so.

See you there.

TAST 135/6/7

Managed to catch up with the latest TAST stitches this week.

First up is 135 - Beaded Fern stitch

 

Poor choice of thread colour and thickness on my part but I love the idea of this. Am finding Fern stitch useful and have used it on my Autumn block.

136/7 Knotted Buttonhole Band and Beaded Knotted Buttonhole Band.

Adding beads to the right hand side proved a challenge!! Both of these are lovely decorative stitches.

Linking up with Pintangle's TAST pages.

FNWF for November

It is a while since I joined in with FNWF but good to be back. Thank you Cheryl for hosting. You can see what everyone else got up to here - just click on a name and it will take you to their blog.

I have finally made a start on my autumn crazy block. Autumn has been slow arriving here (more about that later) and so inspiration was a bit slow to come.

I put the fabrics together some weeks ago but don't seem to have kept a photograph. I completely missed those parallel lines until I started on the sewing but hope they will not be so obvious once stitching is complete.I have now been working on the embroidery for about a week.

Last night I finished adding leaves to the large fern like plant and worked on the ivy.

 

I had a great evenings stitching - I hope everyone else did.

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We have had glorious weather all through September and October. Last weekend the weather changed and temperatures have been down to the teens and we have been lighting a fire every evening. But no frost and so the garden is still looking very green and lots of our summer flowers are still blooming and some spring flowering plants are flowering again!

This morning glory is looking good in the vegetable garden.

The pink shamrock is flowering beautifully again and the tobacco plant that I thought was dead is also flowering.

The fuchsias in the window boxes outside my (north facing) kitchen window are still flowering beautifully as is the lobelia in pots all around the house.

This is the best autumn colour we have had in the garden.

and it has looked splendid for several weeks now.

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It is not very often that I fall in love with a range of fabrics but when I saw Chrissie D's blog about a range of fabrics called Meadowlark I knew I would have to have some! They were released for sale in October and Sue from Passion4Quilting ordered some in. Here are the ones I chose.

I love the colours of these and especially the beautiful birds.

You can read Melanie's blog here.

I have no idea what I am going to do with these fabrics but I am sure inspiration will soon strike!

Hope you are all having a good weekend.