FNSI and a catch up

Lovely to join in with Wendy and friends for another stitchy Friday - thank you Wendy for inviting us round.

So, the summer solstice and longest day and not a drop of sunshine in sight! In fact it rained all day until early evening. However, we are promised a canicule - that's a heatwave - next week, so once again our temperatures will be going from one extreme to another

I spent an hour early afternoon working on some secret stitching! Then we had to go out - Philip gave a talk to our History society which was followed by a fish and chip supper. I sat next to a French lady who loves English fish and chips!

So by the time we got home I was ready to relax with some soothing hexie sewing while Philip caught up with the football. I have been working on the next round of my 1797 and had hoped to complete it last night but this is where I got to when bed called.

So this afternoon while catching up with the Archers I added the last two hexies.

I think I am going for green for the next round so I shall have to see what I have in my stash.

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Last autumn we went to a house sale and I managed to collect a small haul of goodies.

The little cloth is embroidered in all four corners and was in pristine condition. Its perfect for a small occasional table in my sitting room. I love rummaging in button boxes and I found a few interesting buttons in this lady's. The clog pin cushion and thimble holder was filthy! And the pincushion bit really mankie. I quickly ripped out the pincushion and gave the clog a really good scrub - and it has sat on my desk ever since! So this week when I gave the desk one of it's rare cleans I decided that actually it really would not take very long to add a new pincushion and that I had better get on with it! I have some fabrics that came from Holland many years ago and so I used a scrap of one of them, stuffed with batting snippets, to make a nice firm ball which was then glued into place. Here is my finished pincushion. And it really took no time at all!

It is going on the dresser with all my other antique sewing tools.

I promised myself at the beginning of the year that I would spend more time painting and sketching. Apart from when we were in Spain when I worked in a little travel sketchbook most days, I have hardly done any. So over a couple of short sessions this week I decided to have a go at a simplified drawing of one of my fuchsias. It is just a simple outline coloured in with aquarelle crayons but I am pleased with it.

It's large - A5 - so I am thinking it would make a nice applique design with a few leaves added. Something else for the to do list!

Have a great weekend.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge

A very quick post to link up with Angela's husband at soscrappy as Angela is out of town! The RSC colour for June is blue so here is my blue Dresden block.

I have bought some new fuchsias this year and these two are particularly gorgeous!

I love the pink and orange skirt in the bottom picture.

Hope you are having a great weekend.

Friday Night with Friends

So here I am in UK braving blogger on my kindle and hoping I will be able to add a picture or two!

Friday was a busy day and so it was good to relax in the evening with my crochet and an old episode of Foyles War knowing that I had friends keeping me company. I keep my Persian Tiles project here and the pattern soon came back to me. I managed about half of one of the octagonal blocks - two more to do after this one! Right, here goes - hopefully picture coming up!

I travelled to UK on Thursday to visit Mum in hospital and Dad in a care home. Sadly Dad died before I arrived. He will be very much missed. Here he is on his 90th a couple of years ago.

Mum had a big hip operation on Friday afternoon which she came through well. She was much brighter when I visited yesterday although she will be in hospital for some weeks yet.

Thank you all for your company in Friday night and thank you Cheryll for hosting us.

Partying with The Chookshed and a milestone!

It was fun to join in with Chookyblue for her annual Chookshed birthday party over the weekend. You can catch up with what was happening in the Chookshed here. Many thanks Donna for your invitation and I hope everyone else had fun too.

Unfortunately, a last minute Sunday BBQ lunch plan due to surprisingly good weather, meant that I did not have as much sewing time as I had hoped. It was our first opportunity to entertain outside this year so apart from all the food prep the terrasse needed a good clean as did all the furniture. However, I did manage to get a big job done and dusted over Friday and Saturday evening so that was great.

Having finished last week adding the facing hexies to my swap hexie tablecloth, I was able on Friday afternoon to get it layered up with some backing fabric and pinned in place. For some reason I do not have a photograph of this but never mind. After two evenings hemming, the facing hexies were all stitched in place and now the tablecloth is ready to quilt.

On the subject of quilting, I have been pondering how to go about this all the time that I have been putting this top together and have not been able to come up with a plan. I don't want an allover pattern as I don't want to lose the definition of the flowers. My big hexagon quilt is quilted around the outside of each flower but I have never really been happy with that and of course it is not suitable to ditch quilt because of the opened out seams.
So, I have decided to tie it, or knotting as Averil Colby called it in her Patchwork book. I am going to use a yellow perle thread and knot the centre of each flower first of all and then see if I feel it needs anymore. As I have not used any batting it is not a matter of keeping the batting in place.

The BBQ by the way was a great success!

Yesterday the patchwork ladies came for the afternoon and great progress is being made on their sampler quilts.

All the blocks are completed on the yellow quilt to the right - it just needs the rest of its sashing and a border. One of our group lives in UK and her version is coming along very nicely too.

Hopefully we will get all five finished quilts together for a photoshoot later in the summer.

The wind is building up here and it is very sultry - storms coming our way overnight!

Oh yes, the milestone. This is my 400th post!

Hope you are having a good week.

Log Cabin update!

When I posted here about the Log Cabin block I was using for the Mystery Quilt for my friends I had lost the link to the original designer of the block. Here is my block.

Fortunately, via Instagram, I have finally found the designer of the original block - JanineMarie of Quilts from the Little House. Many thanks JanineMarie. Click on the link to find her original design.

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

Another week...

...has raced by and Sunday has come round again already. The blue tits are still busy feeding their young and the squeaking from the box is getting louder!

With four days of rain forecast this weekend I rushed round the garden on Thursday afternoon cutting sprays of elderflower to make cordial with.

I love these flowers so much - not only do they smell divine but they look so delicate and beautiful, like antique lace. However, they were soon trimmed and popped into a basin with sugar and other good things and left to marinate for two days.

 

Yesterday I was able to strain it all off and ended up with this bottle of gorgeousness. All we need now is some sunny weather to be able to sit out and enjoy a glass!

 

 

However, it is cold and damp - hence the slow cooker is out and a couple of duck legs are slowly simmering away with some lentils for a nice, warming dinner this evening.

I have been busily quilting away on the border of my mystery quilt and have now completed three sides - not far to go now. I have also been making up the Liberty Zip Pouch that I was given as a gift at Christmas. Whilst I like the design and am happy with my finished pouch I did have a few issues with the instructions!

Amongst other things a lace zip was supplied but only instructions for inserting a hidden zip. I have not used a lace zip before so went straight to Google for instructions and although my zip looks much better than I had first thought it would, I am sure it could have been better. Does anyone out there know of a good tutorial please?

It is a while since I did any raw edge applique and free machine embroidery so I very much enjoyed working on this part of the pouch - for which there were very good instructions. But didn't it take an age to cut out the flowers!

Meanwhile I am spring cleaning our sitting room and I still have about a third to do. With coffee guests coming tomorrow and more rain forecast I think I had better get a move on and finish!
Have a great week.