Our Spanish holiday

It has been lovely to spend the last two weeks in Southern Spain - we have always visited in the spring before and it was good to see how different the countryside looks at this time of year.
The main difference is that after months of 40+ degrees there is an awful lot of dead vegetation around! Starkly contrasted by the green of the olive trees laden with olives which will be ready to pick in a month or so. A good harvest is expected after last years poor one.
The plants that are dead are a beautiful golden brown and I soon became obsessed with taking pictures of dried seed heads and grasses. Here are a few of my favourites.

Amazingly, every now and then, there would be a glimpse of strong colour and miraculously something was flowering!

This yellow flowering plant is called a squirting cucumber because

when the seed pods are ripe they split open and 'squirt' the seeds all around!

We spent the first week of our holiday in Los Rios, a small hamlet roughly between Granada and Cordoba with friends Clem and Tamara. As we had lovely warm weather most afternoons were spent sitting outside their house in the shade of their grapevine.....

......munching the odd grape or two!

While there I completed my 'Pretty Pouch' for Kim. My package to her has now gone off and I am hoping that it will arrive safely and also that she will like the pouch I have made for her. There were a few little extras in there too. I will show you what I sent when Kim has received her package.

Just before we left for Spain I received this beautiful postcard from Susan. Thank you Susan.

I love the way that the snowflake design on the background fabric has resisted the dye that Susan has used so that they show up on the butterfly. Such a pretty, delicate postcard. A postcard from me will soon be on it's way to Susan.

I have a few more pictures to show you of our trip including my day in Morocco - but that is for next time.

Happy stitching

Lin xx

Introducing Maya

Just a quick post today as time is short - sunny Spain beckons and there is much to do.

I want to introduce you to my new great niece Maya who is the recipient of the bird quilt that I made during the summer.

Here she is with her quilt.

The white quilt underneath is the one that I made for her mother Emma in 1986.

Maya is modelling a colourful little number bought for her by her Auntie Kate in New Zealand!

It was good to meet Maya last weekend and to catch up with all my family.

Best wishes from a damp, cold and miserable St Victor.

Lin

A Reversible Bucket Bag for my August birthday stash

A couple of years ago I bought a copy of 'The Bag Making Bible' by Lisa Lam. Having read through it I put it on the bookshelf with good intentions of making lots of bags! So here we are two years later and it was still there. But, encouraged by the results of my sewing bag from Some Kind of Wonderful I decided to make a bag for my birthday stash.

The Reversible Bucket Bag is exactly what it says. It is one step up from a basic bag but is still very simple to make. I spent one afternoon cutting out and fusing and the following afternoon sewing together. So here is the result of my labours.

I used some ikat fabric from Indonesia that has been in my stash for many years. It is soft but strong and with the interfacing and fusible fleece attached makes a firm bag.

Two more bags, but smaller, for my stash.

This Jacobs Ladder envelope bag uses some gorgeous pansy fabric that I had and the pretty little button seemed just right.

This smaller envelope bag is made from scraps of the Egyptian fabric that I used last month. The patches are 1" squares. It just needs a button - but I have run out of time!!

I have some turquoise beads, one of which may make the perfect button.

We have had a busy weekend so no time for sewing - maybe tomorrow.

September is here and we have a busy month ahead with visits to UK and to Spain. Should be exciting.

Happy stitching

Lin

Dye experiments

Yesterday afternoon I spent a pleasant few hours dyeing fabrics. I actually needed more threads to use on my embroidered hexagon fabric but you can not just dye threads unless you are doing loads! So I had a look through my fabrics to see what I could play around with.

I found a metre of white cotton velvet and as I am thinking about bags for presents this seemed like a good fabric to experiment on.
I divided it into 6 pieces, soaked them in cold water and then wrung them out and put each into a separate poly bag.
I also have a quantity each of white  viscose velvet and a synthetic velvet (for use with disperse dyes) but could not remember which was which so I put snippets of each into each bag. I added a selection of white cotton embroidery threads and some silk threads from Oliver Twists and then I was ready to dye.
I mixed some emerald dye and some marine violet then mixed them together in three different proportions adding each to a different polly bag.
I then repeated using the same proportions with lemon and turquoise dye.
As I don't like solid colour fabrics I did not agitate the bags after an initial squeeze and knead to distribute the dye.
The bags were left overnight and this morning they were rinsed and washed in metapex and I must say I am very pleased with the results.
These are the emerald/marine violet fabrics and threads - the colours are actually much darker than the photograph shows.

These are the lemon/turquise

Some of the dye that was left over was dripped onto a dry linen fabric, wrapped in cling film and left over night.

Then to use the rest of the dye I scrunched some dry cotton fabric into two ice cream tubs and then just pourned on the dye, prodded with a wooded stick and then covered and again left overnight.

Here are the results of these two experiments.

There are some beautiful 'flowers' on some of the emerald/violet fabric

And I now know which is the synthetic velvet!

Once I had put these bags and pots of fabric to one side I was able to get on with another project.

I dyed these shibori fabrics a little while ago but have never been happy with the colour.

So I added them to a bowl of ultramarine dye and am now much happier with the result.

Again, the camera does lie and these fabrics are darker than they show here.

Not liking waste I clamped some folded cotton fabric between perspex squares and soaked these in the ultramarine dye after I had removed the shibori fabrics. Although most of the dye was spent the cotton has taken on a lovely pale blue colour and is ready to be overdyed next time I get my dyes out.

Hope you are all having a good weekend

Best wishes

Lin

Hexies and Applique

If you were reading my blog back in January then you will have seen this picture of hexagons that I made while we were away over Christmas.

I sewed them together like this

and eventually they looked like this.

No, it is not going to be a table runner!

This week I have been having fun starting to embroider onto my fabric.

It is some time since I did some hand embroidery and I am loving this.

This week I also finished work on an appliqued and hand quilted cushion cover front - I have yet to find some suitable fabric to make up the cushion though.

I really enjoyed doing the quilting but I think it will be some time before I do any more applique!

I've signed up for another Mystery Quilt starting in October - I have definite plans for this quilt and have started ordering fabric - and for a Pretty Pouch Swap. I have never done a swap before although have seen some lovely swaps on blogs so thought I would give it a go.

                                                  

So I think I am going to be busy!

Have a good weekend - we have friends staying Friday to Sunday which will be fun - and happy stitching.

Lin