Bit of a change!

 In the weather - last Saturday it was 33 degrees here, today the forecast is for 14 degrees! We have had some rain at last although a couple of big storms missed us and all we got was some light rain from the edge as they passed by.

Instagram has been tempting me again. There has been a stitch along this week for these tubs

which I thought looked very useful. The smallest one in the picture is made using selvedges and I need to make use of my overflowing box of selvedges!

So here it is. The instructions were really clear and easy to follow.

The small tub measures 4.5" diameter and is perfect for storing my label collection.

Now that the weather is cooler I want to get on with quilting Red Manor House and so it needed layering up. I took advantage of a clear dining room table to take a picture of my tablecloth now that all the flowers have been added.

It needs lots more leaves and I have ordered a few more batiks so this is now on hold for a couple of weeks.

I started layering up RMH on the dining room table but it really was not working so I relocated to the outside table which worked a treat!

Played 'thread chicken' with the safety pins!

And so I have made a start on the quilting.

Not easy to see in this picture but I am going round the window frames and the door before outlining the house itself. Nice to have it tucked around my knees now it is chillier although now that it is layered up it is very weighty!

Last weeks use of the new blogger seems to have worked OK thank goodness and all the comments have come through safely. Next bit to investigate is replacing my header picture - I wonder if that procedure will have changed at all!

Have a good week.

Friday Night Sew In

 Well the old blogger seems to have disappeared without trace now so here I am back with the new version. Lets hope I can remember what I learnt first time around!

Many thanks to Wendy for kindly hosting us from ICU - I do hope that all is going well for Mr B, Wendy. Click on the link above to see who else was taking part and catch up with what they were working on.

I received a couple of packs of these papers

as gifts with orders from Lina Patchwork a couple of years ago and have been meaning to make them up for some time. Now that my RSC Dresden project is coming to an end I thought that it was about time to try them out. So I pulled out some pretty fabrics and here is what I got up to on Friday.

They measure 4" at the widest point and I am wondering now if I could use this size to make a border for my Dresden quilt. So I am going to put them to one side until next month when I put all my Dresdens together to see if they would work.

The rest of my Friday was spent working on my tablecloth - nothing new or exciting to show you there though so I shall move swiftly on. This week I made more hexie flowers which are now winging their way down under

and a new little pouch for my handbag.

 It measures 5" x 2.5" x 1" and should have been a quick little make, however, the first zip I used I cut with the pull tab in the wrong place (where was my brain!) and then while cutting the second one also managed to snip the end on my forefinger, ouch. There were various bits of unstitching and I am not toally happy with the zip but it is doing the job I wanted it to do which is the main thing.

We spent 5 nights away in the Pyrenees last week which was a lovely break. Good to be out and about in the fresh air and seeing some stunning scenery - just a few photographs!

This last picture was taken from the window of our apartment. The buildings on the left are the Thermal Baths, closed for the last three years, which means the little town of Eaux Bonnes is sadly dying.

On our last day we visited friends who have recently moved to a town about two hours from where we were staying. After lunch we went to visit the Abbaye de l'Escaladieu. Once a busy Cistercian monastery, the buildings are now mostly ruins but there is some restoration work taking place.

There was an art exhibition in the grounds a lot of which did not appeal but the one thing that we all loved was this enormous tree stump!

It is completely hollow so you can see how it was made using thousand of pieces of wood and even more nails with lots of struts inside - annoyingly I didnt take a photograph! - and we all squeezed in through the narrow opening for a look.

So here I am at the end of my post and I have not thrown any toys anywhere! They have changed the labels system which was my main gripe and everything else seems quite straight forward.

So with my fingers crossed I shall press the publish button!

FNwF for September

Lovely to get together again virtually with friends around the world. Thank you Cheryll for inviting us - you can see who else took part here.

Friday was a lazy sort of day as we went out to lunch to celebrate friends 55th wedding anniversary. On yet another 30degree plus day it was very pleasant sitting socially distanced under a very wide tree and eating delicious food. Having given our hosts a lift to the venue it was late afternoon before we returned home and I spent an hour or so catching up with blogs and mail plus half an hour talking Paw Patrol and the return to school that didnt happen with my great neice in Ghana!

Then it was time for cricket and I finally got around to doing some sewing. Having completed the applique of all the vine and basic leaves on my tablecloth earlier in the week I was able to make a start on adding the flowers.

Not many done but the cricket got exciting! And having written England off early in the Australian innings there was a nailbiting end with England winning! Whew. And then it was time for bed.

In other news this week I have my autumn hanging in place with a selection of my favourite autumn postcards

My swap hexies for the month are winging their way to Australia.

This months RSC colour is red.

Just one more month to go and then I will have the twenty I need for a quilt. I may need to play around with placement of my Dresdens before next month to see if I have any gaps, or if I go with the colour of the month.

So thats me all caught up for this week. Things are winding down in the vege plot now with just courgettes producing and the odd tomato ripening. Philip has cut most of the grass that we leave long during spring and early summer for the wild flowers, and so we shall soon be pruning and tidying for the winter. Lots of digging to do but that might need to wait until we get some rain (?) as the ground is very hard.

Covid numbers are on the increase here in France - as indeed they seem to be everywhere and it now
seems odd to see someone out and about without a mask instead of the other way around.

Stay separate and safe and have a good week.

Autumn Mini

I have finished the Autumn mini hanging so it is all ready to hang next week - although it is feeling autumnal this morning with a grey sky. We had some rain overnight but once again only just enough to wash off the dust. Anyway, back to the hanging.

I ditch quilted by machine around my Migrating Cranes, the centre block and the little squares. Then I spent some happy time hand quilting the centre and around the hexies.

 I am very pleased with how this turned out and sad though I shall be to put away my summer flowerr baskets I am looking forward to seeing this every day on my wall.

Meanwhile work continues on the tablecloth....

Have a great weekend.

Friday Night Sew In - August!

Many thanks to Wendy for inviting us to join her - see who else joined in here

Hard to believe that we are over half way through August! Autumn is just around the corner and so this week I realised it was time to crack on with my Autumn wall hanging. When you last saw it, it looked like this

and was desperately in need of some red berries to bring it to life - which I was dreading doing! So I spent a couple of afternoons adding borders to the piece and plucking up courage to do the berries. Like all these things, in the end, they were no trouble at all once I had worked out how to do them.

And so my task for Friday afternoon was to add a swag of 1/2" hexies to the bottom border of the quilt and layer it up ready for quilting.

The flying geese along the top of the panel are actually migrating cranes which we see a lot of here in the autumn. I plan to do some basic ditch quilting by machine around the border and then hand quilt the applique to add some detail.

In the evening I worked on the applique on my table cloth. The basic vine and leaves are now complete on two sides and the third is nearly done.

In other news I have been working on some secret Christmas stitching and have completed my purple RSC Dresden.

It has been hot here again with just the odd shower to wash the dust off - not enough to soak the ground though which is what we need.

So I am looking forward to seeing what everyone else was working on last night and will be round to visit soon. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Red Manor House

And yes, it's a flimsy!

What started out as this collection of fabrics

became this

then this

and this

this

and this

and finally this!

The only extra fabric I needed to buy was the red for the outer sashing.

So pleased with how this has turned out.

This was a BOM from The Quilters Guild and was based on this coverlet

dating from 1840 - 1860 and in their collection. It has been a great project to work on and I have loved the variety of motifs and techniques. I shall definitely be making some more of those butterflies!

Now all I need is some cooler weather so that I can get it layered up and ready to quilt over the winter. It is a big quilt - 80" x 80" and is going to keep my legs nice and warm over the winter months as I work on the hand quilting.

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.