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Showing posts with label canvas work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label canvas work. Show all posts

Saturday, 4 October 2025

FNWFs October

 Storm Amy is passing through and from where I am sitting I can see the trees on the green swaying in the wind. We had rain most of yesterday, Friday, and a lot overnight. So yesterday was a perfect day to stay home, bake, paint and sew.

As always the first thing on my list was to work on my Stitch Journal and Friday's contribution was the red black and yellow woven crosses centre right. This picture shows my work for the week


and these the month of September.



After the hot dry summer, our fuchsias now have a new lease of life and the flowers are fabulous. I started a small watercolour of the flowers on one of my plants.


These flowers need more depth of colour and then I shall move on to the leaves. Time passes quickly when concentrating on this.

Then in the evening I was working on my Chookshed Challenge which is coming along nicely. I am having to pace myself here otherwise it would be finished in no time!


Philip has been clearing out the greenhouse now that the tomatoes have finished  and I was asked! to remove 4 solar dye jars which I had forgotten about. So far I have emptied 2 and these are the results.


Sambucus berries. Looking a little washed out in this picture, the silks have taken on a delightful purple colour while the other fibres are a pale purply green. Unusual but pretty.


Rosemary leaves. Again slightly washed out but the silks are a lovely pale yellow.

We had a lovely day out earlier in the week. We were given vouchers for the West Somerset Railway last Christmas and finally got around to using them. The train starts at Bishops Lydeard, just a 15 minute drive from home and the line goes out to the coast at Donniford and then along the coast to Minehead. This is the engine that pulled our train, the Odney Manor.



All the stations are beautifully looked after and most of the work is done by volunteers.

First glimpse of the sea.


We decided not to do the full journey to Minehead but to get off at a favourite place - Blue Anchor. Although we have visited Blue Anchor many times we had never walked up onto the station so it was nice to get off there and have a wander. There is a small museum showing the history of Blue Anchor and the railway line.
As always the station was beautifully kept and the flowers stunning.









It was a lovely sunny day and we had a good view across the Bristol Channel to Wales and three ships queuing to get into Bristol Docks. Here is the view left to Minehead


and this to the right towards Watchet which is around the headland.


As is traditional lunch was a bacon sandwich - not photogenic but delicious.

On the crochet jumper front, I have made another start with a larger hook and the next size up but I can see that it is not going to work so my next move is to measure up a jumper that I have which is a simple shape and make something the same. Maybe I will have something to show next week. In the meantime, happy stitching.



Wednesday, 1 October 2025

Chookshed Challenge - the last for 2025

 And it is #1 and one I have been really looking forward to! On my list it was a needle magnet covered in canvas work embroidery. Having bought a lovely Sue Hawkins kit at Festival of Quilts I added that to my #1 and am planning to use the leftover threads - there are usually plenty - to make my magnet cover to match the kit.

This is the kit, a cover for a thread cutter.


Of course I was itching to start and so I did at the weekend. Here is my progress so far.


And I love it. For once these colours are pretty true to life, and just gorgeous. So some happy stitching ahead.

I case you missed it my post for the September challenge and finish is here.

Thank you Deana.

I will be back later in the week, in the meantime happy stitching. 

Sunday, 6 September 2015

The Perfectly Pleasing Pincushion Parade!





This linky for us to show off our pincushions is being run by Ida and you can see all the lovely and interesting examples that have been entered HERE. Many thanks to Ida for hosting this parade and having such a good idea.

Here are the pincushions that I use regularly.


But I am just going to talk about the two that I really enjoyed making.

First of all this Anni Downs pincushion.


I can't remember now if I made the bag first or the pincushion but I love them both and they are perfect for taking with me when I take sewing out for the day.

This set I made some years ago.


The design is my own using perle cotton on canvas. They live in my sewing basket and are used nearly every day.

There are some stunning pincushions in the parade - I do hope that you will go and have a look.