FNWFs September

 Many thanks once again to Cheryll for getting us together. Pop over here to see who else joined in.

A dry day after a week of showery weather - and much needed rain - so a day out was called for. We headed to Dunster Castle, one of our favourite places for a walk and some lunch. Although overcast it was a lovely warm day, perfect for walking and with an incredibly clear view across the channel to Wales. Sorry no pics. But some of the gardens. We took the riverside walk along to the water mill. Apart from hydrangeas there was very little in the way of flowers and the river was low but the bridges always fascinate me.

A walk through the water mill takes you out of the main castle grounds and to the Watermill Tea Rooms

where we spent a very pleasant hour in the garden eating lunch and listening to the birds and the running water.

Next we walked around the main road to another castle entrance and called into the Dream Garden which is always quiet and peaceful. This garden was very colourful as the borders were full of dahlia's and it was lovely to have a wander and a sit in the sunshine.

OK, so what did I sew? Well of course I worked on my stitch journal

Friday's contribution was the pink flowers in the pot/basket.

This week I have been concentrating on my Chookshed Challenge which is progressing nice and quickly. The stitching is all complete and on Friday I concentrated on cutting out the leaves. These are backed with something called Steam a Seam which I have not come across before and evidently just need to be ironed into place - no sewing necessary!

I think I will get them positioned and ironed down this afternoon. Then I just need to get the sewing machine out - again! - to get the backing and top and bottom borders in place. Should be a quick finish.

Also this week I finished off the first of my scrappy DK socks and am very happy with the result.

The second one is under way and with an evening of cricket ahead I should make good progress.

Have a good week every one. xx

Chookshed Challenge

 My August challenge #9 is now complete and I am very happy with how it has turned out. My little sketchbook now feels much more booklike and is lovely to hold. Here are the pictures.

Here is the link to how I made the little book back in 2017 and I am now going to make an effort to finish working into the unfinished pages. Very happy to have this finally done.

September's challenge is #3 and that is this sashiko project. I am not sure why I bought this kit, other than that it was on sale, and have been putting off making it up for a while. But I am going to get it done now and maybe it will come in handy as a Christmas present!

Good luck everyone with your #3's.

Thank you to Deana for organising our challenge - you can see what others are working on here.

The end of August

 And it has, as is usual with all months it seems, come around far too quickly. September 1st tomorrow, the first day of autumn although I must say the mornings recently have already had an autumnal edge to them. We have had rain over the last few days - very welcome rain - and no doubt the grass will be greening up again soon.

I don't seem to have much to share with you today sadly. But it is the end of the month and so the end of another Stitch Journal section. I have not covered much ground this month but the Hundertwasser section is quite intense.

The next section is going to be fun - you can just see the start of it in the picture above. The linen I am working on is a strip cut from a rectangle that was originally a bag - 18" x 18" - with a fold over flap. I am thinking it was originally a nightdress case. The flap was heavily embroidered with whitework flowers and it is these that I am going to be embellishing in September.

Chookshed Challenge

I have made progress this week and am now ready to construct the book cover.

I started the week with this

added gold paint

then enjoyed embellishing with thread and beads

Now I need to add a lining - which requires the machine, so I will need to be in the mood to drag it out from it's hidey hole! Definitely one day this week! Looking forward now to seeing which challenge comes up for September.

Both socks have made progress and are past the heel and on the home straight. Pics next week.

And that is it from me. Hope you all have a good week.

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.