A last post for February

 I have mostly been quilting Red Manor House so no sewing to show today. And it has also taken me, mostly, away from my sketchbooks. However a couple of things to show. I added the watercolour of a (it seems we have at least three) wagtail to one of my sketchbooks.

and I finished the pencil drawing of same wagtail.

You may remember that last year we visited Taunton Minster to see The Moon.

Last week we visited Exeter Cathedral to see Gaia - The Earth.

Gaia rotates and is much bigger than The Moon. Both spectacular and well worth viewing. The blue lighting in Exeter Cathedral was also stunning.

Have a good week and I will see you again in March!

Friday Night Sew In - February

 Many thanks to Wendy who has been out and about having a great time! for getting us all together again. You can pop over to Wendy's blog here to see who else took part and what they were up to.

I had a fairly lazy afternoon looking at a couple of DMTV videos to get some sketching/painting ideas. I then worked on this little sketch of Waggy the pied wagtail who has been visiting our feeder recently. Now he may not be the most exciting bird - and it turns out there are three although they only come to feed one at a time - but despite all the tasty treats I have been putting out these are the first birds who have stopped to feed. So we are really excited. There are plenty of birds around especially in the trees in the park at the front of the house, but not having any trees in the back garden there is no where for them to perch and check that the coast is clear before feeding. We shall be planting a tree this spring!

Anyway, back to my pencil sketch - it is not finished but I am happy so far.

I must admit to 'cheating' and tracing the outline but then I am doing a series of these and don't want to spend too much time fiddling around getting the basic shape right when I want to concentrate on the technique. Here are a couple of pictures from earlier in the week.

This was my first water colour attempt - not enough water I felt.

I was much happier with this one.

I also had a go at an oyster catcher on an previously painted sketchbook page. He is pecking around in some seaweed in case you wondered!

I spent the evening working on my Red Manor House. The quilting is coming along nicely - and quickly too.

That red sashing will need quilting when I have finished the flying geese. I looked high and low a couple of weeks ago for the stencils I use before starting the flying geese and had given up. Yesterday afternoon while looking for the fabric I want to use for the #sipteaandepp Winter Mystery SAL, which I am way behind on, lo and behold, there were my stencils! No sign of the fabric though haha. Oh well, it will turn up sometime.

Have a great week everyone.

A Couple of Finishes

 Well, small finishes! Two more Wings and Pretty things blocks are complete.

As usual not easy to photograph - the background fabric always comes out darker than it is and the applique lighter! Looking forward to moving onto the next blocks now.

Some gorgeous tulips have appeared in the half barrel that is planted up in our garden.

I had to use these in my sketchbook and these two pages are the result.

A long weekend here which means a car boot sale on the local playing field - I wonder what treasures we shall find! Which reminds me that I havn't shown you last times treasure yet - something for my next post!

Happy May Day

Friday Night with Friends August

 Scraped in by the skin of my teeth to Cheryll's sign up page, yesterday afternoon by my time - well into the Australian evening I am sure! Anyway, many thanks Cheryll for organising us once again.

Well, I dont have much to show for an afternoon and part evening's sewing!

I decided to work this Field Journal block in a frame as it has quite dense stitching but of course it takes a lot longer to work and by the time I got to those pesky satin stitch flowers I started going cross eyed! Will have another crack at them this afternoon.

Otherwise my week has been spent quilting the tablecloth and I finished the Hundertwasser spiral sketchbook page that I showed you last week. I wrote out Hundertwasser's statement on the spiral in gold pen - it isnt very readable but that is fine as the point was to give the page some pattern, more colour and to link the two sides of the spread.

If you would like to read what Hundertwasser had to say about the spiral - The symbol of life and death - you can find it here

Right, I am off to read what everyone else was working on yesterday - have a great week everyone, WE are promised some nice weather for a change!!!

FNSI for April

Friday Night Sew In! And what better time to start a new project!

 Last year I spotted a beautiful poppy wall hanging that Lou had made here. As the pattern no longer seems to be for sale, she very kindly shared and so that was my project for Friday. Could be getting ahead of myself for a change!

Anyway, by the end of the evening I had the background machined up (although I shall need to unpick the bottom border to tuck the leaves and stems under) and most of the applique pieces basted.

Very happy that I had all the batik fabrics in my stash and pleased with the look so far.

Thank you Wendy for organising our Friday Night - pop over to Wendy's blog here to see what everyone one else was doing.

I had a request last week for a picture of the hexie border I was working on so here it is.

Not the best of pictures but the light is not good today. There is a norrow border to add between the centre block and the hexie border - one of the darker fabrics. This is on hold now as I have to source fabric for the next border and I need to be in an actual shop to get the colour right. So it could be some time!

Anyway, secret stitching from last week is now complete and I have also been playing around with ink and bleach in my sketchbooks which has been fun. I am pleased with the results so far too!

It has been a cooler week here although out of the wind the sun has been lovely and warm. The frosts have continued though.

Hope you all have a good week.

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.

February!

What happened to February? Here we are on the last but one day and it seems to have gone by in a blur! We started off with horrible weather and now are enjoying beautiful sunny days - long may it last.

This last week has seen me busy quilting and I have finished another couple of blocks of my Red Manor House. A quarter of these blocks are now completed.

So I have now decided to put RMH away until next winter and work on a lighter project. Next week will see me start quilting the appliqued tablecloth which will not be so heavy to work on.

I have also added some more applique to the Dresden centre block of Wings and Pretty Things.

I will finish off the corner hearts when I have added the first border.

I have also been working in my sketchbooks this week - this is a finished page from one of them.

I carried on with the pomegranate theme with these collographs

using a tutorial from Design Matters TV. They will be cut out and used in my sketchbooks.

With the weather warming up the garden is coming to life and there is a lot more colour around.

Lovley to see green shoots everywhere.

Have a good week everyone.

Friday Night with Friends

 Many thanks to Cheryll for getting us together again for our first Friday in 2021.

My day started with a walk around the garden - it was frosty and sunny, just perfect for a photograph or two, or three, or.....

During the afternoon I was able to spend some time playing in my sketchbooks - having collected a few nice bird pictures I found homes for them and splashed a bit of paint around.

I spent the rest of my time by the fire, quilting on my Red Manor House - it's coming along, slowly!

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