1797 Revisited

And I have a finished flimsy!

In November 2018 I joined a facebook EPP group that were using this quilt

from the V&A as inspiration.

I have used hand dyed fabrics many of which are recycled clothing and enjoyed every minute!

Now Iam wondering if it needs a border!

Advent!

December 1st! So now I can get out my decorations.  And the Advent Calendar made it by the skin of my teeth. My makeshift day marker (modelling foam painted with gold acrylic) dried just in time.

Another finish for me this weekend is another round on my 1797 Revisited and if I am counting correctly then the next round is the last complete one!

I had nearly enough ultramarine fabric for this round so I have been able to get on with cutting and basting some of these while a batch of fabric dyes. However...

...today is the 1st of the month - BOM day, so decks have been cleared and my box of fabrics found all ready for the off later this afternoon following a visit to a Christmas market.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

FNwFriends, November already!

Many thanks Cheryll for getting us all together again - you can see what everyone was working on here

I had about half a dozen pieces to add to my latest 1797 round so I made myself do that first.

This is now going away out of temptation as I need to complete some Christmas projects and a few other bits and pieces.

However, the great excitement of the day, being the 1st of the month, was that the instructions for the first border of the Red Manor House BOM popped into my inbox! And so that is what I spent the rest of my Friday (and Saturday morning while watching the rugby) working on.

First there is a narrow floral border - cut and ready to machine on. Then there is a diamond border. Now the instructions use foundation paper pieceing for the diamonds - I don't care for FPP. So I decided some nice hand pieceing would be great for working on, on the sofa in front of TV So that is what I did.

These are all pressed and ready to have their ears trimmed before I machine them together.


Last Friday Jenny released the last embroidery for 'My Vintage Kitchen' and earlier this week I got all the blocks machined together, quilted and bound.

I kept the quilting simple and decided not to add a border  as I do not have a large enough space to display it! I am very happy with this especially using up some of my stash of vintage Laura Ashley.

I also added the background to my watercolour

which I am pleased to say worked out not too bad! However, I have just noticed that pale 'hole' in the middle of the picture! That leaf is going to need darkening up next time I get my paints out.

Hope everyone has a great weekend - we have a big storm heading towards us for tomorrow morning so a bit of hatch battening is in order this afternoon.

Friday Night Sew In

The months are rolling by and another Friday night has passed in the company of friends. Many thanks Wendy for getting us all together again. You can catch up with everyone here.

Well, I have very little to show I am afraid as I spent my afternoon working on some secret stitching and then in the evening I got out my crochet and made these.

The Persian Tiles crochet project that I kept in UK to work on while visiting Mum and Dad came back to France with me this summer and has been sitting in the cupboard.

As I have finished all the tiles and just need to make the joining pieces I thought that it was about time that it was completed. So this is my evening task for the coming week.

In other news I have completed another round of my 1797 Revisited.

And I have the next round of turquoise cut out. So if I get fed up with crocheting tiles together I can always baste a few hexies!

Hope you are having a good weekend.

Catching Up

Earlier this year I started putting together a collection of fabrics that I liked but with no specific purpose in mind. Some of them came from a shop that was closing down, some from my stash and a few just caught my eye elsewhere.

As I say, I had no real plan for these fabrics - I just liked them.

Then the Quilters Guild announced over the summer that they were planning a BOM and when I saw the quilt I knew that this was what my fabrics were for!

The Red Manor House BOM is based on a  quilt in the Guild's collection The Red Manor House Coverlet dated to the mid 1800's. A stunning quilt with so much detail.

To sign up for the BOM this is the link.

The first block was released on October 1st and here is my Red Manor House.

So looking forward to November 1st and the next section.

I have also been working on the Jenny of Elefantz stitchalong 'My Vintage Kitchen'. This is the latest block.

I loved those big chunky creamy beige mixing bowls. Two more blocks to go I think.

There has been some secret stitching with these gorgeous Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

And after dyeing some more fabric I now have all the hexies basted for the next round of my 1797 Revisited quilt.

Stitching has commenced!

Weatherwise we are experiencing a very late 'Indian Summer'. Today it was 30 degrees on our terrasse and we are expecting higher temperatures over the weekend. However, the rain that we have had over the last few weeks does mean that the garden is coming back to life and looking green again. But, as I found yesterday when I started digging over part of our vegetable garden ready for planting broad beans for next spring, the ground is very dry still.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Friday Night with Friends and Rainbow Scrap Challenge for October

Many thanks to Cheryll for getting us back together again on the first Friday of the month. Pop over to Cheryll's blog here to see what everyone was working on.

On Thursday evening I completed my RSC block for October. The colour this month was 'darks'! brown, black or grey. I chose brown so pulled out my brown box from the back of the cupboard and found some lovely browns! Anyway back to FNwF and my first job on Friday was to photograph my RSC block.

I am very happy with this. In fact I am very happy with all my blocks. I allowed myself the treat of putting them all together to see how they looked.

It's not the best photograph I am afraid - it was wet out so I had to do it on the sitting room floor. My aim is for 20 blocks altogether so another year of RSC to go.

I have been thinking about getting my 1797 revisited out again so next up I pulled out my fabrics to see which colour to go for next.

I have decided to reverse the colours back to the centre from the green row so searched my supply of mixed turquoise and emerald for the next row.

Not quite enough so then I searched through my supply of white recycled fabrics for suitable pieces to dye and enough for the next turquoise row. That will be my next job after finishing this post.

After popping out for a couple of hours to visit a friend who is recovering from an op, by the evening I just wanted some quiet hand stitching to work on while we caught up with a few TV programmes.
I decided to crack on with my Advent calendar and added all the red and silver cross stitches separating the numbers.

Which means that I am now ready to add the backing fabric. Maybe a job for later this week.

I am very happy with my progress yesterday - thank you all for your company.

FNwF August

For Friday Night with Friends this month I had decided that I would complete the next round on my 1797 Revisited quilt. I had been adding hexies at odd times over the last couple of weeks and decided now was the time. Well, time passed and come bedtime I was nearly there but I still had a few to go.
Eventually I finished the round off yesterday evening.

Feeling very pleased as this is the last complete round - I can start squaring off now. First though I need to decide what colour to go for.

Many thanks to Cheryll for getting us together again - pop across to her blog for the links to everyone else who joined in.

FNSI and a catch up

Lovely to join in with Wendy and friends for another stitchy Friday - thank you Wendy for inviting us round.

So, the summer solstice and longest day and not a drop of sunshine in sight! In fact it rained all day until early evening. However, we are promised a canicule - that's a heatwave - next week, so once again our temperatures will be going from one extreme to another

I spent an hour early afternoon working on some secret stitching! Then we had to go out - Philip gave a talk to our History society which was followed by a fish and chip supper. I sat next to a French lady who loves English fish and chips!

So by the time we got home I was ready to relax with some soothing hexie sewing while Philip caught up with the football. I have been working on the next round of my 1797 and had hoped to complete it last night but this is where I got to when bed called.

So this afternoon while catching up with the Archers I added the last two hexies.

I think I am going for green for the next round so I shall have to see what I have in my stash.

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Last autumn we went to a house sale and I managed to collect a small haul of goodies.

The little cloth is embroidered in all four corners and was in pristine condition. Its perfect for a small occasional table in my sitting room. I love rummaging in button boxes and I found a few interesting buttons in this lady's. The clog pin cushion and thimble holder was filthy! And the pincushion bit really mankie. I quickly ripped out the pincushion and gave the clog a really good scrub - and it has sat on my desk ever since! So this week when I gave the desk one of it's rare cleans I decided that actually it really would not take very long to add a new pincushion and that I had better get on with it! I have some fabrics that came from Holland many years ago and so I used a scrap of one of them, stuffed with batting snippets, to make a nice firm ball which was then glued into place. Here is my finished pincushion. And it really took no time at all!

It is going on the dresser with all my other antique sewing tools.

I promised myself at the beginning of the year that I would spend more time painting and sketching. Apart from when we were in Spain when I worked in a little travel sketchbook most days, I have hardly done any. So over a couple of short sessions this week I decided to have a go at a simplified drawing of one of my fuchsias. It is just a simple outline coloured in with aquarelle crayons but I am pleased with it.

It's large - A5 - so I am thinking it would make a nice applique design with a few leaves added. Something else for the to do list!

Have a great weekend.

May's Friday Night with Friends

It's a month since my last post and that month has whizzed by so quickly! We spent two weeks in UK over Easter which was lovely especially as there was exceptionally good weather over the Easter weekend.

Many thanks to Cheryll for hosting our FNwF's especially as she is only just back from a trip herself. We were a select group - you can see what everyone got up to here.

My first job was to cut out my Dresden pieces for this months RSC block. There is very little orange in my stash so I had to supplement what I had with some golden yellows.

I got the borders attached to this QAYG sampler this week. Looking at it now maybe it would have been better balanced with the spools and the log cabin swapped around! Too late now.

My patchwork group have all been working on the same project and so it will be good to see their projects with borders on next week. As soon as they are all finished I will post pictures because it is so interesting to see how different they all are with different fabric choices.
Anyway, I now need to complete the quilting on the blocks and I am adding ditch quilting around the outside edge of each block to make the sashing stand out. Then I will have to quilt the border.
Last night I was working on the ship block - just the cloud to quilt now.

I am looking forward to seeing what everyone else was working on.

Also this week I have completed another round of my 1797 revisited quilt.

 

Two more complete rounds to do, then I can start squaring it off.

Hope you are having a great weekend.

Friday Night with Friends

Many thanks to Cheryll for getting us all together again this week. You can see what everyone else got up to here

I managed to fit in a hours sewing yesterday afternoon - we have had cooler, damp weather here this week but Friday afternoon was warm and sunny so we spent most of it in the garden. However this is what I was up to in my sewing room.

The sampler quilt I have been working on along with my patchwork group has finally got to the border stage and I was very happy to be machining on the border strips yesterday afternoon.

I am so looking forward to showing you all the completed quilts as everyone has worked hard and made very individual versions. Hopefully next month.

I have been sewing my  1797 revisited quilt along with a facebook group and earlier this week I spotted a gorgeous pincushion on the site and just could not resist having a go. Yesterday evening I was busy sewing the patches together and this afternoon I made up my pincushion. Here is my version.

The hexies are 1 1/8" long and super cute.

My Easter wall hanging is now finished and ready to take with us on our Easter travels.

It is wet here again this afternoon so I am going to get on with my RSC project - more on that next time. Hope you are having a great weekend.

April!!!

After a couple of weeks of beautiful sunny weather we have woken up this morning to cloudy skies! Well, good things cant last forever and we could now do with the rain that is forecast for later in the week.

These beautiful fabrics were gifted to me a couple of years ago and they have been waiting in the cupboard for the right project to come along.

I decided last week that I needed some storage in the bedroom for my current book selection and these fabrics came to mind. So I whipped up a quick basket and am so pleased with how it has turned out.

I quilted the outer fabric to some Soft and Stable which has made it lovely and firm, then added the loose lining. It has a 7" base and stands 9" high so is a good size - it may get some baby sisters!

 

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Easter is just around the corner so I thought that it was high time that I finished off the Easter hanging that I started after last Easter! So out came my completed embroidery.

 



Looking at my design with fresh eyes I realised that the tulips looked very stark! So my first job was to add a few leaves.

Next to chose some border fabrics. I wanted to use the gorgeous blue floral fabric that I had lined my basket with as the outer border but what to use next to my embroidery? Having auditioned various fabrics in my stash I suddenly spotted these rolls of batiks and there was the perfect fabric.

So the borders are cut and ready to machine on when I have trimmed the embroidery.

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I have completed another round on my 1797 revisited piece

and basting of the pieces for the next round is under way.

Well I think that is enough for now - I shall be back soon with my RSC project for 2019.