Chookshed Challenge 2025

 I am so pleased that I joined in with the challenge this year as I have some great finishes that may still have been languishing in a drawer or cupboard! Many thanks to Deana for organising the challenge this year and I am looking forward to joining in again next year.

So here are my finishes for 2025.

And well the first one, January, was not a finish but good progress was made and I now have more blue fabric to continue putting together these yellow flowers next year.

February's challenge was to make a bag using my selvedge stash and this has been so useful for transporting quilts to my patchwork group sessions.

I had a few kits tucked away in a drawer and this was one I made up in March. A very simple lavender bag that I picked up in a charity shop.

In April I worked on another kit - Sue Hawkins this time and if you know me you know I love Sue Hawkins! This time a scissor point cover and matching needle magnet.

In May my challenge was to turn an orphan quilted applique block into a cushion. Another straight forward task which I could should have done years ago.

June and I was putting these Japanese folded squares together - another task that should have been done years ago.

In July I put together all my Stich Journal pages that I had worked on in 2024. I knew I wanted a zigzag book and I am pleased with how this turned out.

August was a project I had been looking forward to - making a cover for a little sketchbook I made many years ago.

September was another kit that had been lurking for a few years. Glad this one is finished but I can't say that I am overly enamoured with it!

Finally in October I worked on another Sue Hawkins kit which I picked up at Festival of Quilts. I had put a covered needle magnet on my original list so added to it this little thread cutter pocket.

Lovely to look back at 10 months of completed projects - next year I WILL remember to put the photographs of each months work into a separate folder as we go through the year!

FNSI again!

 So a rerun of last weeks FNSI as not everyone was involved. Many thanks to Wendy for our evening together.

I spent most of Friday prepping (and cleaning!) ready for a family visit today, although I made time after lunch to work on my Stitch Journal. Here are this weeks additions, Fridays was the laced herringbone far right.

In the evening I was working on my crochet jumper - sleeves coming along nicely.

I have been working on the Wedding Book of my parents wedding this week and have started adding photographs. My main reason though for the book though was to make somewhere safe to keep the cards that Mum had treasured for 69 years. And I have made pockets for these to sit safely in as I think it will be nice for family to go through and take them out in the future.

There were quite a few telegrams - over 20 I think, and these of course are a thing of the past so something unusual for grandchildren and great grandchildren to look at. Here are just a few.

There were much fewer cards though. Here are a few, so pretty.

Lots of gift tags though.

There were several keys and shoes. Notice the lucky horseshoes - one up one way the other the opposite.

Lots more to do, so more next week.

Also this week I managed to finish the fuchsia watercolour I started a few weeks back. Happy with this now.

We met some friends at a garden centre this week and I spotted these tea towels in the kitchen section. Just so pretty and there were quite a few designs.

I have unpicked and trimmed these - they are destined to become tray mats next time the machine comes out.

So that is it from me this week. It has been wet and windy here although dry today and a 'good drying day'! Back to the rain tomorrow.

Have a good week.

FNSI October

 Nothing to show for my afternoon although I was busy. Having completed my Chookshed Challenge I wanted to get on with another project that has long been on my to do list. When my parents died in 2019 I found that Mum had kept all the wedding cards, telegrams, notes etc from their marriage in 1950. Photos too of course. So I thought that I would put them all safely into a book to pass onto my nieces and nephew at some point. I have had the book for a couple of years and had already sorted through a large pile of newspaper cuttings that had also been kept regarding family members.

On Friday afternoon I sorted through the photographs and made a plan for how I want to add everything to the book. Next I need to sort through the cards and start adding things to the book. Hopefully some photographs to show you next week.

My stitch journal contribution for the day was the Feather and Chain stitch on the right. I added the Oyster stitches to it today. These are my additions for the week.

I have been working on my crochet jumper this week. Having given up with the pattern I decided to make up my own based on a knitted tunic I have that I find useful to wear over a shirt. It is a simple boxy shape with three quarter length sleeves. Having made a couple of starts and various errors around the neck I am now safely onto the main body which just involves simple rounds of crochet with no decreases/increases. Here is my progress so far.

Not much else has happened - I have been reading a lot!

We had a nice day out to Dunster visiting the castle as always and having some lunch in the Water Mill tea rooms. On the way we stopped at Watchet which has a great community bookshop, which will close in a couple of weeks for the winter. Picked up a nice crochet jumper book - could have done with that a couple of weeks ago - a novel that was on my reading list and an artist book to add to my collection.

We have lots of autumn colour here - this is a neighbours tree which I look at every day from our conservatory

and these looking to the left from our garden

so I was hoping to find plenty of colour on our walk along the river at Dunster. However, it was all still looking very green, presumably because it is on the coast and therefore milder. However we did find plenty of flowers to enjoy on our walk.

The root area of this fallen tree was covered in cyclamen.

So that was my week - well we had flu jabs this morning and I had dentist and eye apts during the week but that is not very interesting!

Hope you all had a good week and I will be back next week.

October Chookshed Challenge - a finish!

 Yes, finished already, although I loved doing this so much it was hard to put down. So here it is - my Sue Hawkins Fritillary thread cutter pocket and matching magnets.

As anticipated there was plenty of thread left over from the cutter pocket for me to be able to make the magnet covers using the same design. Very very happy with these, the colours are so pretty - I may NEED to see what other kits are available in this range!

This is the last challenge of the year - many thanks to Deana for organising us and I am hoping we are going again next year because I have already started my list!

In other news. I emptied the last two dye jars that were lurking in the greenhouse and I am very pleased with the results of these.

Earlier I had used some dead hollyhock petals which I had picked up from the ground. Some were still soft, some dry but they all had a sort of pod attached to the base of them. Although the dye looked inky black the result was this green.

So I tried again using more petals but cutting away the pod. And this lovely blue is what I got.

In the other jar I had put the dead flowers from a deep purple buddleia and I got this lovely greeny brown.

I now have a bag full of threads and scraps which I am looking forward to using next year. 

Meanwhile, this years Stitch Journal continues on it's way - this week I have been playing with chain stitch variations.

My crochet is coming along nicely now - hopefully a picture of progress next week. I also have another challenge to work on and more about that too next time.

Have a lovely week.

Blast from the Past!!

Very strangely, this post appeared today as being unpublished! Written in 2015 where on earth has it been sitting. So just to get it out of the unpublished box here it is - enjoy. xx


It's Piece Yourself Together time again - and thanks to Anthea for hosting this linky.

Sad to say - I have done no EPPing over the last fortnight!! But I have remembered a small project that I did a few years ago that you may be interested in.

Averil Colby was a well known patchworker back in the 50's 60's and 70's. She wrote several books including one on patchwork which covers the history of patchwork as well as her own EPP methods and work.

In 2011 the Quilt Museum and Gallery in York held an exhibition of her work and I was asked to make a handling sample based on one of her quilts.

This quilt is called High Summer. I apologise for the quality of the pictures, I had to scan them from the book as I cannot find any pictures online.

 I would have loved to see the exhibition as this quilt must be stunning.

And here is my sample based on a small section of the centre panel.

It's about 8" square. You will notice that there is still some tacking holding three papers in place. This was because the sample was not backed in order to show the construction method.

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 This year Bergerac Football Club celebrate their centenery and in honour of the occasion they invited Chelsea Football Club's Under 21 team to come and play a match here in Bergerac.

So Saturday morning saw us sitting in the tribune stand at Bergerac Rugby Club watching this match. Fortunately it was a cloudy morning which made it very pleasant and we even had a few spits of rain!

The band played the national anthems

with the teams lined up infont

On what must be the greenest grass in the drought hit Dordogne at the moment! It even got watered at half time.

The score was Bergerac 4 Chelsea 4 so plenty of opportunity's to wave our flags!

We were even joined by the owner of Chelsea, Roman Abramovich.

A well attended match and good fun - my first live football match.