Stash shopping at the NEC

Hey folks, 

Just a quick post about my day out at the Stitching and hobbycrafts show at the NEC yesterday. I went with my friends Clare and Ria. 

We saw some amazing cakes...

Saw costume displays from the film The Kings Speech

And a promotional piece from Game of Thrones. 

And brought STASH...

Paper bags for DD's birthday and jewellery elastic. Lots of buttons, various pieces of fabric (including a grab bag of evenweave and linen offcuts) and threads. 

Buttons and beads. 

Liberty fabric for my quilt, felt and threads.

And a bent creek pattern. I seem to have a thing for alphabet patterns at the moment. 

I had a fab day. Best I start saving for November! 

See you Tuesday for Theme-Tas-Stitch. 

A little bit of stash and a sneaky peek!

Hi everyone, 

I've had a lovely relaxing day off today and managed to have a little treat of some daytime stitching. 

I'm having one of those months where everything I'm making are surprises for others. Here's a sneaky peek at one of the stitched pieces. 

I had my last Christmas present today - hubby had ordered me some fabric from The Crafty Kitten and it arrived today. I've no projects in mind for them, so they'll live in the box until I can find the right project. They are both 28ct Jazlyn. Left is mystical mermaid and right is buttercup. 

I had some other bits of stash for Christmas and some lovely handmade bits too. 

I had some lovely cotton yarn from Steph, giraffe charms from my pen pal Lauren and fabric, threads and tin from hubby and the kids. Laura stitched me this lovely biscornu and also made me a cute crocheted tiny penguin and a folded fabric decoration too. 

Gifted gorgeousness is Friday and I've lots to share so until then...

Malvern craft show

Hubby and I spent the day at the Malvern craft show today. It's a really small show compared to the NEC or the like but they do have good workshops and it is only a few miles away from us. 

Hubs doesn't usually do craft shows with me as its not really his thing, but as this one was offering a workshop he was interested in, it didn't take much persuasion! 

We both did the stained glass sun catcher workshop. The people running were lovely and really helpful. I didn't take any step by step pics but this is the sun catcher I made. 

We were given a choice of kits, it didn't take much for me to pick these colours. There were 5 different designs including a triangle, 2 different squares and 2 hearts. 

The kit had the copper fouling tape, cleaning wipe and the ready cut glass. We were shown how to clean and foil them and then how to solder it all together. 

This is the one hubs made. The glass is textured and called rough rolled (I think).

So we ended up buying 5 kits and equipment too. When I do the next sun catcher I'll take step by step pics too. 

I did end up buying some other bits and pieces too. Some of the bits I needed like the findings and the loose buttons are for a project as are the fabric panels. The  FQ's were £2 each and I loved the designs. I topped up on friendly plastic too and some cutters so I can experiment a bit more too. 

And I always need buttons! 

The travelling box is due to leave my possession on Monday so I'll have a couple of posts next week once the next recipient has it. 

Have a craft filled weekend xx

Hexagon quilt update

Hi everyone,

I can't believe it was january when I last blogged about my quilt. I finally got round to putting a few more rows in my quilt.

One of the wedding favours from my friends wedding last month was a jar of sweets so I saved the fabric from the top and put it into my quilt. It's the green piece with the 3 red flowers. 

I got a scrap pack with some lovely batik fabric scraps in last week, so they went in too. Laura's Hexagon quilt has reached almost 1200 hexagons and is huge. Mine has around 240 in. I've managed to have a few evenings where I've been able sew 20 or so hexies in. I also got all the fabric from Teresa cut ready to make into hexies too.

This is the last blog picture of the quilt. This was taken in January.

Most of the hexagons I've added over the last couple of weeks are to the left hand side. 

Here are a few close ups. I really like the yellow section

and the beach hut...

I'm off to watch the F1 and sew in a hexagon or 3! 

Thanks for reading

Easter, birthdays and RAK's

Hi everyone,

I had an Easter parcel from my friend Steph O, which was a lovely surprise. She sent a lovely ami Easter bunny, some chocs and a bag of buttons, beads etc. I've just looked for the picture and can't find it on my phone so, here is the bunny and bits minus the chocs!

A few weeks ago, Laura ran a competition on her blog and asked about favourite animals and chocolate etc, I didn't win, but Laura decided to RAK me a prize as she liked the challenge of my answer! Everyone knows how much I love Giraffes, but I'm quite fond of snails too, especially cute cartoon and ami ones!  Laura also sent me lots of buttons and a very sweet snail biscornu too. I had a box of Turkish delight and I'm the only one who likes them in our house!

Both my children had birthdays last week so Steph sent them an ami each, she also sent me some fabric and some buttons from her mum. I also had the Mary poppins omnibus to read.

I had a belated Easter present from Laura, containing some lovely things she'd picked up at the shows she's been to recently. Laura sent my children a craft kit and a chicken in a little sleeping bag. Lottie named him Frank! I had a lovely quilted bag, chocolate, fabric and buttons a cross stitch kit and a pretty blackwork (greenwork!) card. 

Here's a close up of the bag. 

And the lovely card.  

I've been working on my quilt lately (more on that in may next post), but I'm experiencing a bit of a fabric shortage as I don't like most of the scrap packs I find and I can't really afford to keep buying FQ's just for a little fabric. I try and get a few charm packs when my local stores have them as they are so helpful and I like to support them. anyhoo, long story short, Teresa came to my rescue as she is a self confessed fabric-a-holic and sent me all these wonderful scraps.

Here are a few of my favourites.

I'm very thankful for kind and generous friends. 

Have a good weekend. 

2nd Blogversary giveaway #4

Hi everyone

So the kids are back to school and my daughter starts pre school tomorrow. She's doing my work days so I won't have time to miss her or have a peaceful house. 

Autumn seems to be here and there is a distinct nip in the air in the morning. Time to get the woollies out. 

So here is the winner of giveaway #3 

Steph!!!!!

Congratulations to Steph and I'll be in touch.  

So on to the last of my 4 giveaways to celebrate my Blogversary. This one represents my quilt so is a little quilted bookmark, made with 2" hexagons and backed in felt with 2 little 1" hexi's hanging from the bottom and hand stitched with gold thread. Talk about trying to big up a bookmark! I'm also going to include a small charm pack of fabric and a bag of buttons and charms.

So the usual rules apply and I'll pick a winner after about a week. 

Thanks for reading

Kerry

2nd Blogversary Giveaway #3

Hi everyone.

A little later than planned but here is the winner of the Rhodes Butterfly biscornu.

Random name generating child picked a winner out of the pot and it is....(Drum roll please)

Kaisievic!!

Well done Kaye, I'll be in touch!!

So here is the third of the giveaways to celebrate my blogversary. I've had a look in my rather large box of kits and picked out 2 card kits and also a bookmark kit that isn't pictured as small child has hidden it! It is a pretty little Anchor kit with a pond and dragonfly.

So if you would like to win these kits just leave a comment in the post below and I'll put the random name generating child to good use again. It's a good thing there are only 4 giveaways otherwise he'll be demanding payment for his services. I'll close this one and launch the last giveaway in about a week.

Good luck.

Summer swap pt 1

Hi Everyone,

I can't believe it's August already. Steph and I decided ages and ages ago to have a summer swap. We decided to each choose two colours. I chose yellow and turquoise/teal/blue/green - so basically anything in that colour spectrum. Steph chose yellow and purple but more on that in my next post.

So this was the fabulous bundle of goodies that arrived on my doorstep today. When I opened it up it was wrapped up in a beautful crochetted granny.

Here are all the goodies together.

There were 3 beautiful brooches. 2 were crochetted and then embelished in a very Steph way! I now own 7 brooches made by Steph. I just love how they are so unique and original. The middle one is a fabric/felt one. Here is a close up.

Steph said a while back she hadn't swapped any ATC's so we decided to swap some with a summer theme. Steph made these 5 amazing ones. If you look carefully the bunting spells...BEACH. so clever.

There was also some incense cones for the smoking dragon Steph made Hubby and I for our anniversary in June, a box of jelly beans, some fabric charm squares and Cornwall postcards for my collection. I'll show you those in my next 101 round up.

There was an amazing cushion stitched on some of the most beautiful hand dyed fabric, I just love the waves of colour. It is so tactile as it has all the waves of beads and buttons and little gold dragonflies. It is beaded around the edge too.

The back was as beautiful as the front. It had so many french knots and lazy daisy stitches and then all the seed beads on another glorious piece of fabric.

There was also a very bright and bold biscornu with a pretty leaf pattern.

And here is the back, you can see how bright the fabric is. You can't miss it in my biscornu bowl!

I'll be back in a couple of days to show you my makes for Steph. It was a brilliant exchange. I had so much fun crafting for it. 

Bloggers are the best!!!

Hi Everyone,

I'm blessed to have very generous blogger friends and Laura is no exception. I've had 2 lovely parcels from Laura in few weeks full of goodies for me and my quilt along with fab postcards to add to my collection.

I've already put alot of the fabric into the quilt and I'm thinking up some ideas to use the animal panels. There were 2 giraffes so one may end up in the quilt too.

Laura also sent me a sweet parcel from her holiday. I really should photograph things as they arrive as I'm sure there was something else in this one too. The stash postcard Laura sent me seperately but isn't it fab! The pink one contains the opening to the novel Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.

There is a beautiful pair of Milleflori earrings and a green glass bracelet along with some very cute pirate and crab fabric for my quilt.

Laura has had a hectic couple of weeks at work too so I decided a little care package was in order. I only had time to make a little pair of earrings, but they're purple so Laura should like them! You can never go wrong with chocolate and stash! I'm pleased to say it was very well recieved and the chocolate and sweets provided some rather useful sugar boosts.

I hope everyone is having a great week so far.

Love Kerry

A little stash to help me on my way

I've had a bit of a stash accumilation this week,

Firstly came the Made in felt bookazine, Its actually quite good. I don't usually buy the bookazines as they tend just to be a collection of charts from the magazines but this had some lovely projects both in felt sheets and to needle felt too. I loved the mermaid and am very tempted to do that one, also the needle felting projects were lovely too. I actually think it was a good investment for the needlefelting projects as you don't tend to see them covered in magazines much - when they are its one project and a fiver spent.

You can see with the felt mag 2 Lizzie*Kate charts I brought. The work Pray Trust one is for a housewarming for 2 friends and the home one is just for me! It may get to the point when I just frame the chart as my to-do list is so long at the moment it may never get done!

It is my wonderful best friends birthday on Friday and I always try and make her something. It's usually jewellery as she wears a lot so I brought some fab pink beads and some charms to describe her. The ones loose on the table are the ones I intend to use and the rest were from the packs the charms were in. the charms were from a fab etsy store here

We had a lovely day at the Evesham Country Park which is near where we live, seeing the trains as they have a narrow gauge railway there and it was they Gala today so they had them all out. There just so happens to be a needlecraft shop so it would have been rude not to go in. I popped in and got the new cross stitcher magazine and chanced upon 2 FQ's of fabric for my quilt. I couldn't quite see what was on the label style one so brought it hoping it would be nice. Here is the section of it before it repeats, it's a bit wedding-y but there are some lovely bits too, I love the doves and I'm going to use that this weekend to make an engagement card for my colleague. Well that's the theory anyway!

Lastly I started something new last night, It's a game of Thrones themed design I'm stitching for my hubby for our wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks. He's a huge GoT fan so I'm hoping he likes this. I had a bit of help chosing it as I've never seen the programme/read the books so thank you Steph for explaining it to me. The chart was from Etsy and you can find it here Ok you can't see al lot but there is a little bit done...honestly!

With all that shopping done, best I do some crafting, enjoy your weekend everyone.

Kerry. x