Catching up

 First of all a reminder that the powers that be are removing the follow by email feature so if that is how you follow my posts then you will need to find another way. Hopefully this post will sneak in under the line!

After a brief hot spell we are back to cooler weather and showers here. One bonus of this is that I have been able to crack on with quilting my tablecloth. The quilting lines are all marked and fortunately I got back to the beginning without being way out! I'll save pictures until it's complete.

I have also worked on four more Field Journal embroideries - and here they are.

I am going to try and do one of these a week although the next one on my pile has got a lot of work in it! Maybe its something for FNWF which should be coming up next week.

Also for Ausust there is a new RSC colour to work on - aqua. Mmm lovely, I'm sure I have some of those to work with.

A few weeks back I saw a lovely post by Freezeframe Annie here where she recycled some junk mail return envelopes into lovely tag pockets. I thought this was a great idea and decided to have a go by adding some into my sketchbooks. First up though was a lovely envelope and stationery which arrived in the post from Australia. It was far too nice to throw away so I thought I would try out the pocket technique on it. I used the back of the letter paper to line the envelope which I glued into one of my sketchbooks and also used some of the paper to cover a tag that I had been saving.

I then enlarged some of the beautiful flower and leaf shapes from the paper, using them to fill the rest of the double page spread. I spent a couple of happy afternoons drawing and then paiting these.

I am sure I will be using some of those flower shapes to make print blocks from at some point.

I then turned to something completely different!

This return envelope was cut in half and glued onto a page in my sketchbook challenge sketchbook. I then covered the envelope and page with a layer of gesso.

You cant see it here but the laft hand page is mostly covered with a piece of green/black splodgy paper which I had added when I started the sketchbook. So I next rubbed a black oil pastel over parts of the spread before splashing on some greeny blue paints.

Rummaging through my tag basket for something to put in the pocket I found a couple of pieces of experimental newspaper/painted bondaweb/printing/sheerfabric/machine stitching in colours that go perfectly with my page.

The print on it is a Hundertwasser spiral from when I had a Hunderwasser phase a few years back. So I pulled out the print blocks that I had made then and used one of them to print onto my page and the pocket.

I stabilised the tag and added some gold around it's edges.

And that is as far as I have got. I can see some gold script on the page somewhere - maybe a Hundertwasser quote about spirals. We shall see.

Well if you have made it to the end of this post - thank you! and well done.

Have a good week and I shall see you at Cheryll's place next week.

Friday Night with Friends for August

Many thanks to Cheryll for getting us all togeher again yesterday. Pop over to Cheryll's blog here to see who else took part. I shall making some visits later today.

It was 40 degrees here yesterday afternoon and so I shut up the front of the house early on and settled down to work on my Red Manor House BOM. The final part of the BOM arrived last Saturday and I have been working steadily during the week on making lots of Flying Geese. This is where I was at when I started out yesterday afternoon

and this is where I was several hours later!

I now need to make eight dark blue Flying Geese to make the centre X at the middle of each side and then they can be added to the quilt. Not far to go now!

During the evenings I have been working on the applique on my tablecloth. The vine and basic leaves are all sewn down now along one side of my cloth.

Not easy to get the lighting right but you get the idea.

Trawling through my inbox recently I came across a link to a pattern I had bought back during lockdown. No idea how I found the pattern, anyway, as it happens it was a timely find and of course I set about instantly making a Zip Up Tray Pouch

I soon realised that the finished pouch was considerably larger than it looks in the picture



To me that looks like a pencil case whereas opened out it is 11" x 7" x 4". What I actually wanted was something square so it was quite easy to downsize the pattern so that the opened tray is 7" square.

Next problem - no opened ended zips in my stash! Never mind I thought - I will just add a tab and button, much easier than fiddling with a zip too.

To stiffen the box double sided heavyweight fusible interfacing is needed but I dont have any of that. I do however have some heavyweight pelmet vilene that is fusible on one side so I decided to go with it. Although double sided fusible would probably have made the end pieces easier to put together, I found it worked well and with the unfused side inside it means I have a looser lining which I quite like.

So here is my finished box

The lovely linen spot on the outside has been in my stash for some time waiting for its moment to shine! The contrasting fabric is a pretty butterfly print.

Everything went swimmingly until I got to hand stitching the binding down to the end pieces. I think it took me as long as putting the rest together! It may be that my pelmet vilene is stiffer than the suggested stiffener but I still think it would be difficult. In the end I was stab stitching through to the edge of the binding on the front of the box using tiny stitches.

Should I ever decide to make another of these - at the moment, highly unlikely! - I would use 1/4" seams on the two ends. I find those 3/8" seams bulky. And I would used doubled over bias binding rather than her single as I think it is stronger.

Well, it is marginally cooler today. I am off to make some more Flying Geese. Have a good week.

The week that was!

Another one has gone by so quickly. The temperature has gone up again and looks set to continue for the next 10 days at least. So back to gardening in the mornings and staying indoors in the afternoons. Lots of sewing that I can be doing of course and there is test cricket to watch! - summer is finally here.

Having gone as far as I can with my Red Manor BOM until my fabric order arrives, I turned to my flower basket tablecloth. When I left it I had made these diamonds to go into the flower baskets.

So I carefully cut out the pieces to make up the baskets and started putting them together. The Y seams went in like a dream so I was disappointed to find that nothing was quite square! The baskets are all together now as you can see here.

Unfortunately where the flower blocks meet there are a few points that are severely chopped, however there was nothing to be done about it so they will have to stay. This is now another project on the back burner until my fabric order arrives.

So what to do next? Well I suppose I could have got out one of my many UFO's but I didnt want a major project that I would have to put aside again when the fabric arrives. So after reading a couple of blog posts recently about organising scraps I decided to tackle my scrap box. Here it is pre sort - it is shoe box size.

I decided to sort it all into three piles - anything 2" square or larger, strips less than 2" and crumbs which went back into the box.

I decided to tackle the larger pieces first and spent an afternoon pressing and then cutting into Scrap Therapy squares to add to my collection. The squares are 2", 3.5" and 5". They work well together and I regularly dip into them when I am looking for something to make a border.

The next day I was side tracked as I came across a new pattern on Instagram called the #weeboxybasket. The pattern is available from @sweetcinnamonroses Laura Cunningham and comes in two sizes - the rectangle I made and a small square one that sits inside. The original pattern uses mesh for the pockets and although I have mesh I dont have any elastic for the top and anyway I find the mesh a bit annoying as things get caught in it!

This didnt take me very long - the instructions are clear and easy to follow.

It holds the machine threads and feet that I use most and sits neatly under the arm of my sewing machine when not in use.

So then it was back to the scraps and I wanted to tackle the strips. I pressed them and straightened those that needed it then sorted them into two colour groups - pink/purple/green and red/yellow/brown autmn colours.

I have used the pink collection to make 6 x 6" string blocks which are all ready for me to turn into a new sewing machine mat.

I think there are enough autumn strips for a couple of pot holders so they could be next.

Just time to show you a small piece of applique I have been working on in the evenings.

This is to be the centre of an autumn mini quilt. Before I go any further though - I am changing those end leaves for something larger!

Hope you have all had a good week - speak to you again soon.

EPP Tuesday

It's been a while since I posted for Anthea's Piece Yourself Together.

Following on from FNSI I found some time to finish adding the yellow hexies to my tablecloth and now all the complete flowers and their borders are added.

Next up is to even up the edges and for that I suspect I shall need some more yellow fabric. So pleased to have got it to this stage though.

Don't forget to link up if you have any EPP to share - we love to see what you are doing. Many thanks Anthea for hosting.