Oh - such fun

Hello all.

I hope you've had as nice a weekend as I've had.

Thought I'd share some photos of what I've been up to.

So this pile of fabric was added to the old saucepan containing Potassium Permanganate and hot water and stirred. 

 They are then rinsed in cold water until the water is clear

 And then you hang them out to dry

And this is what you end up with. Lovely brown fabric. 

 Oh - such a pile of lovely fabrics.  As usual not too sure what I will do with them, watch this space

And here is progress with the incubator top I'm making. It's very bright - but that's the idea. 

I also made progress with my mystery quilt and made up a pieced back and started to hand quilt in black cotton perle with black running stitches.

Hope you all had fun and I'll let you know how I'm getting on

Cushions galore

Hi all.

I had a lovely day yesterday with the girls from the Market Bosworth Quilters.  We were making things for the Market Bosworth Festival.  

So - as I'd seen some great Union Jack inspired cushions I thought I'd draw up a pattern myself and test it out.

Here are the results:

One cushion made up

 And one almost a cushion.

Anyway - must get back to finishing my cushions...

Apologies

 Hi all.

Sorry for not posting.  I'm trying to post a couple of times a week, but am obviously failing.

Anyway - you can see I've been busy.  I really enjoyed making this small 8 x 8 piece.  I wanted to start trying out some new design ideas and this format is great.  I'm not sure if it's finished yet - I'll let you know if I do any more.  I'm pleased I was able to use up some of my own dyed fabrics.

And here is the start of me chopping up a jelly roll.  I have to do this a bit at a time as I find doing lots of cutting results in a stiff back.  I'll show you how I get on.

I also wanted to let you know about a great book I've recently read.  I've harped on about it to everyone else, so I thought you should get some of it too.  It's 'The Chimp Paradox' by Dr Steve Peters.  It's a really good read and has provided some insightful comments into peoples behaviour.  Give it a go.

Take care and I'll be back soon.

sewing and cooking

Hello.

Well here's some fabric I bought this morning at Kisko (The Fabric Guild) for a project we're going to do next Saturday at a neighbouring village's hall. I shan't spoil the surprise but I'm sure we'll have a range of colours used with the same pattern.

Now I'm rather proud of this - it's my very first large fruit cake I've ever made - it's for Christmas. It's actually a Fig and honey Christmas Cake from the November issue of the BBC Good Food magazine. I do love looking at cookery books and magazines - but I'm not an overly confident cooking. I think one of the issues is that when there are only 2 of you if you make a big anything - you have to eat it for ever and it kind of spoils it. But I'm really going to try to be a bit more adventurous with my cooking as I enjoy it.

Lets hope it tastes as good as it looks by the time Christmas comes. I think, as it's a bit on the large size, I'll cut it at the start of December - so be warned if you're coming round you've been warned - every cuppa will have a slice of cake with it.
QUESTIONS
A couple of questions for you out there:
Do you have any ideas about food you can make for people for Christmas?
And
Have any of you done the OU course on Digital Photography? (And if any of you consider it don't forget you can use Tesco vouchers to pay and for each £10 of vouchers you get £40 worth of OU course)
Hope you're all enjoying the glorious autumn day today. Cold but very very sunny.

Hello all. yes I'm still here. Sorry for the lack of posts but I've been away with work for quite a bit and I seem to have spent most of the weekends washing and ironing getting ready for the next week - and that's what I'll be doing when I finish this blog. Luckily July includes Sewing Camp - I can't wait.

In spite of lots of washing and ironing I have managed to play. I've decided to work through Jenny Rolfe's book 'Handmade Embroidered Purses' - I thought it would be a relatively easy to work through the examples and learn some new things - and learn how to put in zips.

So here's my first one.

I used my buttons I got from E-bay and I like the result.

An here are my naughty purchases... I thought I'd increase my stash. I bought lengths rather than fat quarters for a change. At £3.00 per yard you can't really complain.

Any way I'm off to pack my case - again.

I'm in London for the week commencing Monday 23rd of June. If any of you are free for a cuppa in Libertys please do drop me a line - it would be great to meet up with more bloggers.

Have a good week.

Almost March already

I managed to finish work in London a little early on Monday and went along to the V&A. I wanted to have a look at their Japanese things - as you can see from the photo they have a really good collection.

And just look at this in the main foyer - wow. It's huge. And amazing to see.

On Tuesday evening I dragged a colleague along to Liberty's. I just love that shop. I treated myself to a couple of bars of posh soap - they smell great. We treated ourselves to a cup of tea in the cafe - tea leaves and a mini tea strainer. It was lovely. The only problem I had was I fell up the stairs at Oxford Circus - I've now got a great collection of bruises of varying colours.

My class at the Bramble Patch went really well and it was great to see what everyone had been up to. They have a new range on fabric in called 'In the beginning'. It's really different to any others I've seen - very contemporary. Please do take a moment to have a look at the collections Floragraphix 1 and Cho Cho no Sanpomichi.

I bought a bag pattern from the shop that uses one of these fabrics. I promise I'll post a photo of it when it's made.
I finished and bound my piece for the Easter exhibition. It managed to shrink by 2 inches so it's only 50 inches long and not 52 as it should be. I've also sent my entry form for Malvern for the same piece - so some of you will see it in the flesh.

Well I plan to have an easy weekend and do lots of sewing - hopefully my BQL March bag too.

Have a good weekend.

Photos at last

Sorry for the last lot of photoless postings - I think a photo really helps on blogs.

So here are my latest magazines - Selvedge:

And this morning my new Quilting Arts magazine arrived - I can't wait to sit down after dinner and have a good look at it:
I also bought some fabric - here's a little bundle:
I did buy a pile from the sale at Kisko - but it needs washing and ironing still - so I'll let you see that in dribs and drabs.

And now the class from last week:
Some of you may recognise these two. Part of the class was for us to critique an artists work - and here are two of our class doing a Ant and Dec style presentation.

I also took my work in for some constructive comments - I already had an idea what I needed to do - but it's reassuring when others agree. So it was a very quick bit of screen printing -

in brown:
And black.

When I got the pieces if calico back home I tea dyed them, cut them up and added them to the final piece.

And here we are - with the words tacked on.

I'm much happier with the result now. There's still quite a bit of work to do - but I can see the end in sight. I'm just pulling together all my entry forms tonight to see about deadlines and exhibition dates. Yes I know - I'm a control freak...

I hope you've noticed I'm doing quite well (so far) with doing something towards my creativity everyday. How are you all getting on?

Hope you all have a nice weekend.

Brenda's class

I didn't realise it had been a week since my last post - sorry about that.
We had another great class with Brenda at the Bramble Patch. Luckily the brook at the bottom of the car park kept at the same high level and didn't break into the car park. The photos above a piece I worked on on Saturday. I traced the shape of bricks onto freezer paper and used a craft knife to cut out some of the shapes. I ironed the freezer paper onto the rust dyed fabric I'd made last week. Using the Castell Pit Artists pens I coloured in the fabrics areas and the freezer paper gave a nice crisp edge. I will probably embellish the piece more - but I'm pleased with it as a starting point. I used the pieces I'd cut out on another piece of the rust dyed fabric and coloured around those - again another good starting point.



And here I am drying all of the bits of fabric I've bought over the last few shopping trips. Unfortunately the washing machine broke last week so I had to wash and wring them out by hand - you forget how long it takes. I've collected a new washing machine today and hopefully we'll have it fitted tonight.
I was also busy printing off lots of images onto fabric I'd pre-soaked with Bubble Jet Set 2000 and ironed onto freezer paper. These images will be cut up and used in a few different ways - I'll share these with you another time.

At long last ......

At long last it's finished. My first large (96 x 78 inches) quilt.

I'm really pleased with the pieced binding. It took a while to finish off - but I really like it.

I've still got a bit of tidying up and I need to add a label - but the hard slog is finished.

So I feel a bit lost now without a huge quilt to sit and stitch when I fancy.

You can see from below I've already got the fabric for my next project from Strawberry Fayre. And yet again it was great service - really fast. I've washed the fabric and now it needs a good press. I also need to make sure I think about how the cut the fabric so I don't end up with lots of bits. The larger pieces I'll piece to make the back.

Opinions please

Well here is my orange and blue fabric from the Strawberry Fayre cut into pieces. And below are the 3 samples I've put together.
Which one do you think? Top, middle or bottom? I'd like to hear any comments but can't promise I'll go with the consensus. I'm going
for the brightest one - I'm not too sure the colours have come out on the blog too well - but to be fair they are very close shades

I did experiment a little with transfer paints today. The fabric on the left is 100% polyester organza (Bramble Patch) and on the right 100% polyester lining (Fenwicks). The idea here was to test the colours on their own to see how they worked on the different fabrics - a point of reference.

For those of you who use The Bramble Patch you might like to know they have an 'arty farty' corner. Very nice - I did buy rather allot.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll experiment a bit more.

Shopping.... mail order

I wanted to let you all know about Strawberry Fayre - a mail order only fabric shop. The idea is you buy a set of samples from them of their whole range and when you place an order you staple or tape the sample to the order for them to match (this is returned with your order). The fabric is reasonably priced and the range extensive. As you can see I bought a few oranges as I wasn't too sure which one I wanted. I wanted to let you know how great the service was. When you order you can either ask for standard or urgent delivery (you pay a small premium for urgent). I posted my order on Sunday morning for a Sunday post collection and my whole order turned up on Tuesday morning - very impressive service.
I know the combination is a bit bright, but one of the things I'm trying to do is to be braver with colour combinations - for me orange and blue is brave.


This is also the start of making things for the sale table at the festival. So here are a few bags (just the right size for magazines) and some hearts with lavender (from my own garden).
The fabric was a real find. I was in Fenwicks in the curtain department and saw their remnant bin. Oh dear.... They had loads of pieces from their sample books - about 10 sample pieces for £1. So - as you can see for £1 I managed to make 5 bags.
I also bought some pieces left over from when they must have made curtains for customers. I'll probably use these for more bags.





I also wanted to say I'm still getting very excited when I see the new red spots on my map - thanks for viewing and commenting on my blog.