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!!!

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.

FNSI and RSC!

First of all Friday Night Sew In and many thanks to Wendy for getting us together again, good to sew along with friends. You can see what everyone was working on here.

I felt it time to get my RSC dark blues finished up and made six crumb blocks to add to my collection along with my little dresdens and a couple of scraptherapy blocks. So this month this

turned into this.

I am linking up with Angela here for Scrap Happy Saturday.

The rest of my Friday was spent quilting my tablecloth - the cooler weather has been a bonus as far as quilting is concerned but now that the weather is warming up again I suspect that I shall be working on my Field Journal hexagons.

In other news, this week I finished my watercolour still life.

I really am not happy with the background but it is my second attempt and the paper will not take any more fidling I am sure, so it it is as it is. Very happy with everything else though.

Many thanks to Wendy and Angela.

Have a good week.

It might be July....

 but it is certainly not summer as we know it! The weather continues on its wierd and wonderful way with a mixture of sunny days and showery days and cooler temperatures. I even dug out my jeans this week.

On the sewing front I have made a start on my RSC blues - my little Dresdens are made and scraptherapy blocks made. The crumb blocks will have to wait until I clear my desk.

My desk is currently home to my watercolours and I have started on a still life using what I have learnt over the last couple of months. Here is my piece so far.

Still a few more days work to do on it especially the background which I am really nervous about!

In the evenings I have finished a couple more Field Journal hexies

and I have been continuing with the quilting on my tablecloth.

So that is me all caught up - hope to see you next week at FNSI - have a good week.

Friday Night with Friends

 The beginning of another month! And I have to say that here in the Dordogne the weather is not at all July like - its been cool and wet and last weekend I had to resort to warm trousers and a fleecy top. It's humid at the moment after yet more rain although not enough to soak my pots. But I digress.

Many thanks to Cheryll for organsing our cyber get together for July - you can seewhat everyone got up to here.

I am afraid I dont have very much to show. I spent an hour in the afternoon playing with my watercolours - practising for a still life which is the culmination of the course I have been following. Nothing to share at the moment though. In the evening I picked up my next Field Journal stitchery and this is as far as I got.

There is more football tonight so I shall easily get it finished - need to sort out some backing fabric for it.

Happy mail this morning in the shape of some stabiliser which means I can get a lot more of these designs traced up and ready to work on in odd moments.

Since my last post I have completed the lavender hexie and also this thistle

and am very happy with how they are looking together.

This months RSC colour is dark blue so I must soon get out my box of scraps and see what I have - I am sure there plenty there that I spotted when working on the light and bright blues.

Hope evryone had a good Friday night and I shall soon be round to see what you worked on.

Blogger has been playing up - thankfully I have been relatively free from the problems that most people seem to have had so now it is catching up with me. My apologies if I didnt reply to your comment on my last post - they stopped coming to me by email which is annoying. I hope I picked up everyones comment but if I missed yours then sorry.

Also you will notice the tiny damsel fly picture at the top of my blog. A recent update changed the gadget for adding the picture and it wont make it any bigger! If anyone has suggestions I will be pleased to hear them! Thank you.

See you soon.

FNSI June

 It was time to sew with friends around the world again last night - and relieve the tedium of yet another football match even though it was England v Scotland. For those of you down under, its Euro 2020 (yes I know, it's a year late) and there seems to be three matches a day at the moment. Anyway, to more interesting things.

Friday Night Sew In and thank you Wendy for organising our get together - please pop over to Wendy's blog  here to see who else joined in and what they got up to.

In the afternoon I spent an hour working on my tablecloth and listening to this podcast about positive language and creativity. It's the latest in a series of podcasts about creativity and very interesting. 

My tablecloth has spent the last week or so on the back of the sofa as it has been too hot to work on it, but yesterday, following a few storms, was a cooler day so it was good to get back in the swing of quilting.

In the evening I was working on a new project. I am very fortunate to have 'inherited' the patterns for Field Journal from Fiona. I have so enjoyed watching her work on these beautiful designs over the last year. So last night I worked on this pretty lavender design.

I am not a fan of satin stitch so, being positive, I decided to get this one out of the way early on! My first instinct was to make these little designs into a book but when I realised how many there are I thought my book would be a little unweildy! So my next plan was to make them into finished hexagons which I can then sew together - no idea what the finished size will be but who cares - the fun is in the doing. So here is my first hexagon - the one I finished off a couple of times to get the sizing right!

It measures 4.5" side to side.

In other news my watercolour course has now moved on to fabrics, specifically stripey fabrics and lace, so nothing difficult lol!

For my first attempt I used one of the photographs supplied.

Having happily finished this and thinking that I would never be doing another stripey picture, I remembered my brightly coloured Basque napkins, so I couldnt resist having a go.

Happy with this one too. So then to move onto lace and this is the corner of a small tape lace mat which I have had for years.

This was not as difficult as I had imagined. My only problem was with the background as it was so hot the paint was almost drying as I put it on the paper!

So I have put my paints away now for a few days and am going to have a play in my sketchbooks instead. But for the moment, I am off to find some pretty lavender fabric to frame my embroidery.

Have a great week everyone.

FNwFs and RSC June

 Friday Night with Friends, being at the beginning of the month, is always the ideal time to work on my Rainbow Scrap Challege blocks for the month. And this month is no different. Earlier in the week I got out my scrap box and pulled all the purple scraps - and anything mauve or lilac too as I felt they went together. Just as well too as surprisingly my purple scrap pile was not very big.

So on Friday afternoon I cut out my little hexie Dresden flowers ready to sew in the evening and cracked on with the crumb blocks. Just 3 crumb blocks and only 4 squares for my Scraptherapy box. Still, I did use every last scrap so that was good.

Thank you Cheryll for inviting us round again - pop over to Cherylls blog here to see what everyone else got up to.

Also linking up with Angela here for ScrapHappy Saturday where you can see lots more purple!

I have been busy on and off with my water colours since I last posted and have now moved on from glass to china. First picture my last attempt at glass,then two china pieces.

I also joined in with the #7daysketchbookchallenge on Instagram and did a sketch a day - well I fell behind and did 3 in one day but you get the idea. Having chosen my sketchbook I then discovered on day 2 that our theme would be the 7 colours of the rainbow. My sketchbook wouldnt take wet paint so I stuck with just pencil drawings. I am glad I did though as really sketching was my whole reason for doing the challenge. Here they are in order starting with my red kettle

and finishing with my amethyst ring, the only violet I could find in the house. So glad I joined in with this and I look forward to joining in with the next one.

Well I think that is quite enought from me for one post - have a great week everyone.