Another week....

 ......has flown by! The weather cooled, now it is getting hot again! However the garden is at it's best and I will add in a few photographs at the end. But first up this weeks progress on my stitch journal.

Coming to the end of the month, the end of the fabrics I have been using and threads are now restricted. So it is time to finish up this journal and make a start on a new one, so more on that next week. However, I have been working this week on a small envelope bag which will be a home for this journal.

Some years back I used some of the same fabrics and threads to make a small memento of our home in France following a Cas Holmes online workshop.

6 was the number of our house, the sunflower was made for me by a friends son and we could see fields of sunflowers from our terrasse each summer and lots of flowers from our garden.

I tea dyed a damask napkin, cut it to size and hemmed all around. Then I covered it with the picture and other oddments of fabric before stitching all over with running stitch to hold everything in place. 

I then just overstitched the two sides together and I have a bag.

You can just see that I have added the date to the front flap. Now all I need is to do is add some threads to make a wrap around tie - my brain is still working on that one! I shall be back on Tuesday with more pictures.

I opened up a couple of my solar jars this week with interesting results.

I am afraid the colours do not show up well in the picture. However, the threads on the left were dyed with carrot tops which gave a very pale lemony yellow. The threads and fabric on the right were dyed with Sambucus flowers which look very similar but have a definite lime green tinge which you may be able to spot better in the silk waste. Both very pretty.

Now, as promised, I will leave you with a few pictures of the garden. Have a great weekend.

Gelli prints and a postcard

 A few weeks ago I showed you this picture of some collograph gelli prints that I had made using a tutorial from Design Matters TV.

I have started working into a couple of them

but I was soon distracted by the idea of printing the designs onto fabric and came up with these.

The top two are printed onto white cotton sheeting and the bottom three onto hand dyed cottons. I was very pleased with how these turned out - even the ones that dont show up very clearly at the bottom. Needing something for a postcard I took the print on the bottom left 

and bonded it to some pelmet vilene before adding some machine stitch to the background to emphasise the shapes, and to the pomegranate seeds.

I used some gold paint to hightlight the hexagons and the pomegranate and there we are, one postcard!

It has been lovely to watch the garden coming to life during March so I will leave you with a few of my favourite photogrpahs.

FNSI for May

Many thanks Wendy for hosting our sew in this month despite being so busy. Lovely to be sewing along with everyone again - you can catch up with what went on here

We were out to lunch on Friday - and very nice it was too! When I got home I spent a happy hour with my sketchbook and paints before settling down to finish basting 90 something yellow hexagons which are going to edge my swap hexies tablecloth.

Managed to get them all done before bedtime so now I am looking forward to start sewing them in place as soon as I finish this post. There is exciting cricket on TV - no, not England v Australia but Somerset v Hampshire in the final of the Royal London one day cup! Come on Somerset!

My sampler quilt is finished - I added the last quilting stitches a couple of nights ago. So here are a few pictures.

And to finish, a few pictures from the garden

Hope you are having a great weekend - happy stitching

Catching up

It's now a week since we returned home from Spain and March is starting to zip through already! So time for a catch up on what I have been doing.

The Pansy Scissor Keeper that I stitched in Spain is now complete - I forgot to pack any stuffing so it had to be completed when we arrived home.

This was a kit from Sue Hawkins Needleworks and as with all her kits the instructions were clear and easy to follow, plenty of thread and a gorgeous colour combination. Very happy with this.

While we were away I bought some yarn and started crocheting squares to combine into a blanket. I had lots of fun trawling the internet looking for free granny square patterns - some simple some more complicated. Most of them were written with US crochet instructions which it took me while to come to terms with! So here are all the blocks I made while away.

This project has now been stored away until our next trip. Ooops! Just noticed that my heart is upside down in the picture!

Since our return I have started a new cross stitch project - sorry, I don't seem to have any pictures - and been working on the next round, brown rose, of my 1797 revisited quilt.

This #weebrawbag was completed in January as a birthday gift which has now been gifted.

It is a while since I have made a postcard so I have really enjoyed designing and embroidering this card for a special friend. It just needs ends sewing in and then it can be posted on it's way.

It has been fascinating to watch how the garden has changed over the last week with so much early spring colour around now. So I will end with a few pictures from the garden.

Not much time to sew!

But it is lovely to have visitors (Keith and Lorraine) especially at this time of the year when the garden is looking so lovely.

A lovely surprise in the post last week was this super postcard

from Monika Kinner-Whalen. Such a completely different style for Monika and you can read all about the fun evening she had with friends creating these modern cards by clicking on her name. Thank you very much Monika - am enjoying having it on my easel.

I can show progress on my May crazy block

not quite finished but I need a quiet afternoon to myself to do it.

Hope you are having a great weekend.

A Finish, WIP and a Giveaway!

Earlier this week Jenny of Elefantz shared this tutorial for her sewing caddy which she designed to sit over the arm of a chair.

 

With so many projects going on here  I of course immediately decided that I had to have one and so dropped everything to get started!

Fortunately I had to hand all the necessary ingredients. This Jenny of E stitchery that used the beautiful Cottage Garden thread that Maria sent me.

I also had these fat quarters that I won in a giveaway a couple of years ago. They were so lovely that I have been keeping them for just the right project.

That fruit fabric is gorgeous but sadly there was no info on the selvedge as to what it is.

Anyway, here is my finished caddy.

I made mine slightly larger than Jenny's so that it will sit nicely on my lap and also contain all the necessary for an afternoons sewing while 'watching' the bowling during the summer. Thank you Jenny, it's a great pattern.

I have also found some time to get on with my April Crazy block and have added some more seam treatments.

I am pleased with the way it is coming along and should have it finished by the end of the month.

So now to the giveaway! Next Sunday is my birthday and so to celebrate I shall be giving away  a collection of goodies - here are some of them.

That gorgeous floral is one of the V&A vintage florals collection and I am sure something delicious can be made with it using the matching spot fabric and the rickrack. If you would like to win these (and I am happy to ship anywhere) then please leave a comment below. Next Sunday I shall ask Mr RNG to choose a winner.

Lots of pink and purple in this post so I shall leave you with some more, in pictures I have taken of our garden. Have a good week.