Unpicking

Old curtains but with a use?

Sometimes you just have to admit that your plans won't work.  I had hoped to use a backing for the quilt from a piece of fabric I had but after adding the sawtooth border the quilt grew too big.....

So, as I had a set of cream calico lined curtains no longer used around the place I checked them for length.  Do you know that they were about right but only if I unpicked the heading tape arghhh.

So life gives you opportunities I said to myself and got stuck in, after all it only took 40 minutes on a wet Sunday morning, what would I have done if I had not had the unpicking to do?  I might have been gardening in the mud. I don't think so.  They are now in the washing machine.

At last the blocks are done

I started a sampler quilt with Cumbria Patchworkers some time in 2014 as they wanted to do a block a month.  This was challenging and not my usual way of working on a quilt which I prefer to start and finish.... However, I did persevere and now might be able to work it to a finish.  This has been a long haul for me as I prefer to work much faster and by machine not including a lot of hand piecing and foundation piecing too.  I am not complaining as I have learnt a lot but I also know some areas of quilting are not interesting enough to grab my attention for long.  So making a pineapple with fp looked like a no no way back in the autumn of 2014, however I did it.

The first block which sat around for months before it had the border added and the papers removed.

Why I have not been blogging of late

We decided to extend the house and the top picture shows how radical the opening was to the new area.  The second photo shows the new glass conservatory after the fitters left but there is still much for the builder to finish and he is working on several projects at once so we have to wait for him.

After he finishes off all the plastering DH needs to fix the floors and put in under floor heating and tiles. Then we will need to decorate the conservatory, kitchen and my lounge.  So it looks like a busy summer and not much time for blogging about sewing I am afraid, however, I do have a project which I am in the middle of, so it might surface sometime!

I have been busy all week

Busy as a bee, but no sewing for me, instead I have been nursing my DH who had a nasty viral infection which knocked him off his feet! He is better now; I don't know what we would do without antibiotics. So I have been doing all sorts of running around jobs but not one of them was scheduled a week ago...

Meanwhile, I have been looking around for a few items which might brighten up my kitchen dresser where I keep all sorts of crockery confections and this might just be what I need. Of course it comes with a ladybird chocolate too....

Designing again

My grapevine is displaying lovely autumn leaves

And I am sketching them

I have an idea at last!  Sometimes you keep thinking about a little problem and suddenly you see a way forward and I think this might be it.  I love the shape of these leaves and I think the autumn garden is a wonderful inspiration after the summer. Wow, just look at the variety of colours. Thank you DD for leaving me your vine when you went to California. I wish it grew large, edible, black grapes too, but you can't have everything you know.

phew I can type again...

I had a duff keyboard when I came back from holiday on 1st July and it has been a downer to my blogging I can tell you.  The only way I could type a and d was by using the Character Map software built into windows but it was so slow. Then one of my ctrl keys stopped and also a shift key and so it was time to buy a pc and leave my laptop alone. I will be much happier I am sure with this new baby.

Not gone away

I have not disappeared but have been busy sorting out another blog.  My DH's blog on a blog system called blogsome suddenly ceased working last week and its been a real problem trying to recover all of his data.  I am using Google cached pages to get the text back and luckily all the photos were backed up, not so the blog... my fault I'm afraid, but then I did not expect the plug to be pulled....So the moral is back up your blogs. However, I must admit I feel safe using blogger because its Google. So no photo today but just to let you know that I hope to be back here in a few days when I have finished fixing his very important blog all about O Gauge railway modelling.

Happy Thanksgiving

Cushion nearing completion

This has to be finished as I have had it lying around for a month now.  I have sewn on the piped edging and I just have the back to do, then a cushion pad to purchase. It looks better than I expected and DH likes it too; always a bonus.

Well I do have a few readers from "across the pond" and as its a special day I found a quilt of a turkey for you.  My DD in California is having a chicken she tells me, I suspect its less hassle and she is English so I don't suppose she is really bothered, but I know some of you will be having turkey so my best wishes to you all.  We had a humble pie for our dinner.

Making steady progress

Long and Short stitch on the leaves and Stem stitch on the ahem ..  stems

I have been concentrating on this crewel work kit and I think its coming along ok, so too is my sore back.  I am happy with the progress of both at the moment.

So until I have more to show you I will keep this posting short and sweet.

Neglecting this blog

Today's mayhem

Well yes, I have been busy on my other blog and rather 'blogged' down with doing my C2C posting, but I finished it a few days ago now and still did not have anything new to show on this blog.  But hey I went to Wasdale over the mountain passes last weekend carrying all my gear in a rucksack and back the next day, so I have been busy. Trouble brewed with my back though as it had been a bit tetchy the couple of days before we left and by the time we came back on Sunday it was telling me it was not happy. Result, see that hot water bottle and the messed up sofa, that's where yours truly has been hanging out since Monday, apart from when I crept up to bed and gingerly slid in. However, the stiff back is better tonight and maybe tomorrow I will be able to help out with a few chores around here as DH has been a brick as usual. The good news is that having immobilised myself I did not know what to do and no current novel was lined up either, blast I thought, then I remembered my crewelwork....Yes its been a while in this frame, if I want to find out I only need to check back in this blog, but I don't think I'll bother.  I also intend to finish it this time round and not leave it again, so wish me luck. Oh well back to the hot water bottle treatment.

Sneak a Peak

Oh what a shock, blogger has changed the way you post, I hope this comes out ok.

Anyway, without further ado, let me show you a photo.

The drawing is compared to the fabric shapes

This first shot shows you a drawing of a lighthouse detail which I am representing in cloth. Basically this first stage was to break down a lighthouse into component parts and then to make them so they fitted back together. Quite long and involved it was too, I had to cut out the template shapes then apply them to freezer paper and then cut them out again and iron the freezer paper sections onto starched white fabric. Then I carefully cut around the fabric leaving a small seam which I turned under onto the other side of the freezer paper and secured it with pritt stick glue. I then assembled all of the parts together by sewing them onto a thin T bag paper backing.  Once the shapes were sewn down I could wet the T bag paper and cut away the backing of each shape in the centre to remove the freezer paper.
The result was perfect. The fabric was stabilised and turned under all ready to apply to my quilt, but before I did that I had to refer to the drawing and carefully mark on the white fabric the lines I wanted to follow for the stitching. I also wanted some permanent colour in there so used Inktense pencils by Derwent to apply the colour and then dampened it so it spread just where I wanted it.

I have started to machine embroider the railings on the lighthouse

This photo shows the stage I have reached with the lighthouse so far, I have placed stabiliser behind the quilt where the light house is and have started to embroider on with free machine embroidery the lines I want to emphasise. This is not quite complete and needs more doing to finish it off.

Hand coloured flowers with beads

I had made some flowers to go on the border of the quilt which are shown here, they were all cut out of fabric after I had coloured and tinted it with the Inktense pencils and some had a wash of pink silk paint on them too. It took 2 hours to do but the result is well worth it and they only needed a hot iron to set the colours so they will be colourfast. I used Bondaweb to set them onto the quilt and then machined around each flower to make sure it stayed in place. Lastly, I added beads to the centre of each flower.

Comments problem

Hi Miriam,

I tested the comments on my other blog today http://keswickrambles.blogspot.com/ and they are working fine and I did it from this laptop too, so still don't know why I am having problems. It really is most frustrating to hear that you had problems too. My DH has another blog which is not blogger based and he manages fine with no hiccups and he is really not into computers at all, so I am concerned.  I hate these distractions which take the fun out of blogging.

Comments still not working

Hi all, I am beginning to be neurotic about this as I now cannot make any comments work, I just tried leaving a comment on the site and it would not work and I also tried leaving one on another blog and that did not work either. What is going on?

I know blogger crashed the other week and loads of blogs could not be used for days but should that mess up comments?  The only other change on my blog is I updated my browser to IE v 9.

So is it all a Microsoft blunder I wonder? Also my Skype has stopped working too. I need to look into all of this but not today.

Tempus fugit



Landscape showing cliff and seaweed island at dawn

I can't believe I last posted about this project on 10th October. Where did the time go? I remember an inscription under a clock in Folkestone Kent which said something like "Tarry not thy time is short"  I always passed that clocktower with a shudder.  Well I have now completed the base for the top and I have to decide how best to continue. The view is a cliff at Noup Head, Westray, Isle of Orkney in Scotland. The actual place has a wonderful lighthouse on it and that is what I need to do next. My original plan was to make a separate machine embroidered and applique piece and attach it to the white wall you can just see in the top righthand corner. I will let you know how I get on.............

I've been working on a project

This one was suspended over the Christmas period and has only just surfaced from the cupboard again, but it is now on track to be finished. At least the top is as it's a quilt. I don't have any new photos tonight and it's getting late, so I will post again tomorrow or the day after depending on how it goes.