Stitching down the Wind

Wow! What a storm! I do hope that you aren't among those poor unfortunates who have lost their homes, or have had to move out while repairs are effected. We escaped here in our corner of West Norfolk but up on the North Norfolk coast they took a real battering, and I know in other parts of the UK the wind, rain and high tides have wrought devastation and loss of life.

In expectation of a couple of days of bad weather Jim and I planned for staying home and 'pottering' - home chores, long coffee-and-crossword breaks, and blissful hours to tie flies and order from fishing catalogues (Jim) and sorting threads and stitching (me). Mind you, the wind was so strong on Thursday afternoon in the little conservatory that is my sewing room, that I thought the roof would be ripped off and judiciously repaired to the Big Table in the dining room!

I made more headway into the task of tidying up the thread straggles - you know, when you cut into a skein of thread you always end up with an impossible tangle eventually, so I have started to wind the threads onto bits of card. It's a deliciously mindless occupation, high on the list of anyone with OCD I'd imagine! If you do it before things get too bad it's not such a task.

I did a little more on the Farmhouse Quilt. Some of the fabrics are quite gorgeous to quilt through, and this pale flannel here is one of them - see how the stitches just melt back into the cloth?

All the applique pieces will be embroidered when the quilting is finished and I have bound it. Yummy!

I'm using one strand of a hand-dyed 21st Century Yarn 4-ply cotton to quilt with - so much softer than quilting thread against the flannel, and I love the way the variegated colour changes just add a little something to the stitches.

A little Christmassy felty something. Bet you can't guess .......

And some more wool felt bangles. On a roll with these now. The bowl in the top photo contains tiny felt squares ready for embellishing the bangles. I must get my bead boxes out and see which ones will work with the wool.

So that's how I've spent these last couple of stormy days, stitching down the wind and really quite enjoying being 'stuck in the house'. I hope they have been good days for you, and if not, my good wishes to you.

Now then before you whizz off to your next blog stop, do me a favour and pop over to Potter Jotter, as Cathy is doing a really fab give-away of some of her lovely ceramic buttons. Hop across and say hello!

Bye for now and thank you all for your lovely comments these last couple of weeks about my lengthy wait for a hospital appointment. Believe me I know I am not in dire straits and other bloggy friends have been having a much more drastic time of it, health-wise. But it has been so good to read your remarks, thank you.

Knitting and Stitching and Hooking

Hello, the friendly face in the photograph above is Sue of crafts at home blogspot. Yvonne and I fought our way through the crowds at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show on Friday, to find Sue and her stand in the designers and makers section.

 Sue was selling her ingenious little mirrors, magnets, badges and hair slides beautifully decorated with colourful fabric backs. We spent ages trying to make up our minds which ones we would take home with us. We especially wanted to meet up with Sue as she had very kindly sent me two complimentary tickets to the show - how great was that! It's always lovely to meet friends from the Blogosphere, and I'm sure Sue and I will meet again.

We then went to say hello to Mandy Patullo whose work we both adore. Mandy is giving a workshop at Jane-Ann's studio next year so we were mightily excited you can believe me, to see her work 'in the flesh'. I can also reveal we both came away with one of Mandy's little bird textiles, I'll have to show you in a later post. I didn't take any photographs there and then.

I was delighted to come across a new-to-me stand selling  Donegal Tweed. This is such beautiful fabric and if you love wool and felt and blanket, you wouldn't be able to resist it. I wasn't! I had a lovely chat to Margaret, who is herself from Donegal, and she is sending me the most gorgeous book which I will show you next time - they had sold out on the second day of the show!

Here's Margaret, smiling at my inability to choose between the gorgeous rolls of tweed - I could happily have happily taken the entire stand home with me!

Look! What's not to love! If you google Fabric Affair, Donegal Tweed you will find their website. I can't wait to get going with my little stash! It will make great bangles, and is also great to applique with.

Here is Louise, who does much of the stitching of the samples on the stand. I didn't get chance to speak to her as she was busy with customers.

We managed to see the stands we had marked on our programme, Yvonne renewing her acquaintance with Val Holmes, machine embroiderer supreme, me finding that Jean at Oliver Twists does indeed still hand-dye the soft cotton I love to stitch with, both of us swooning with pleasure at the tactile and visual delights at 21st Century Yarns. I did indulge myself with some hand-dyed variegated wool felt. It is SOOOoooooo beautiful!

A few more purchases at other stalls and we felt we had had enough - impossible to get through the crush to the food outlet, and not prepared to eat our lunch sitting on the floor - why are these events so woefully badly organised for the comfort of the paying punters? - we decided to make our escape about 1pm. We were extremely lucky with the weather so it wasn't a bad drive both ways, though we were very tired when we reached our respective homes.

And the gorgeousness didn't end there - Saturday found us trundling along the damp and dirty November Norfolk lanes to Jane-Ann's at Swanton Novers. It was a hive of industry.

Yes, I did find and take with me the rag rug seat cover I'm working on! And I did hook away for a couple of hours too. Then I completed another bangle for Yvonne.

Yvonne finished her sunflower cushion with wonderful attention to detail.

Jackie worked on a commission from the craft fair........

Nadine got stuck in to another of her geometric rugs .......

Monica hooked away for a while then decided she wasn't satisfied so she engaged in what we quilters
call 'frogging' and rug hookers call 'reverse hooking'!

Jane-Ann demonstrated a brilliant braiding technique, made us a lovely lunch, and kept her work-space looking spic and span. I'd love to say my sewing room looks remotely as tidy as this - but that is never going to happen!

                        Just a few shots of the treasure trove of lovely things found in the studio.......

I hope you've enjoyed the luscious textile eye candy in this post. It has been a couple of full-on days dedicated to cloth, wool, thread and colour. We'll need a week to get over all the excitement! See you soon, have a good week.

Thread Drift

Hello again, I hope your weekend is going well and you haven't suffered much weather-wise. We had a tremendous wind-storm last night I'm surprised the tiles are still on the roof! But today is chilly, windy but SUNNY! Hoorah, I can bear it if the sun shines.

Right, I'm afraid after the quilty loveliness of the last few posts this is going to be sadly disappointing, but it does come to you from the vasty depths of my sewing room, which is a little tidier than when you last saw it. Not much, but I am making an effort. Part of that effort was Sorting Out my Threads. This delightful displacement-activity, the kind us procrastinators just love, has occupied my time for a whole afternoon. And look! I saved a whole bucketful of thread scraps! Oh come on, don't tell me you don't too - long enough to come in useful but not long enough to wind round a skein. Any way, my current thread storage was getting past it, and I needed to tidy things up as well. My stranded embroidery floss is in one of those purpose -made plastic folders and is staying there. I'm not going to show it to you because .erm .......it's a bit messy. But it is sorted. Ribbon thread, slubs, metallics and oddments are in plastic boxes. But the rest I had been keeping in zippered plastic envelopes. This had worked for years but the zips were going and the plastic looks old and faded. (I know the feeling)

DMC Perle 5 and 8

Hand-dyed mostly variegated soft medium cotton.

Hand-dyed silk

Hand-dyed variegated 4-ply cotton - mostly from 21st Century Yarns (some from when they were 20th Century!)

          A mixed bag here - I can see silk, soft cotton, and some interesting twisted threads in there.

                   More silks and soft cotton here - why they are in the same bag I don't know.

          Oh my goodness  these gorgeous jumbo silk threads - I will use them one day, I really will!

       Hand-dyed perle cotton, form a variety of sources but Oliver Twists and 21st Century probably

And these tangled hanks have been hanging around for years. You buy them at Quilt Fairs thinking you will use them but never get round to it. Because they are in such large hanks. So I unravelled......

......and EVENTUALLY arrived at this nice, usable little collection of various weights of thread and wools.

And then, having ditched the tatty plastic envelopes, I sorted the threads into their new storage place.

So there we are, all tidied away and gone are those big hanks, the threads now sorted and accessible. To any of you who might possibly think this is an excessive amount of thread to keep in one house, I will say that it has been collected over at least a fifteen year period, and it does get used! To the left of the above photo you can see another set of plastic drawers, which contains all my other sewing threads: machine sewing, machine embroidery threads, household sewing threads ..... again, collected over many  years.

So with everywhere nice and tidy I am enjoying using the space again. Nothing wildly exciting at the moment, just a few more wool pincushions on the go, and ..... well, you can see in the lower corner some interesting felt shapes worming their way into the photo. No, I'm not telling you yet. I'm just having some fun with an idea.......

........ watch this space!

Until next time.

What's a'foot?

Hello Dear Reader, I've dragged myself out of a drug-induced stupor, in order to communicate with you from my Bed of Pain.......oh, no sorry, can't keep that drivel up. A little off my perch at the moment - well, off my feet at any rate. However, I prepared some piccies before the minor op, and I can always dredge up a spot of idle chat to tide us over til I can be out and about, bein' hip and happenin' and all that.

The District Nurse popped in this morning to re-dress The Toe - I did, briefly, consider treating you to a photograph of the offending piece of anatomy, but felt that the world would be a better place without it. Instead you've got an artfully draped chair - after a tense battle of wills I got my own way regarding painting the furiture! Pictured is daughter-in-law K's quilt, which I hope to complete a fair amount of work on whilst I am 'laid-up'. Other stitchery stuff to keep me occupied are two more versions of this:

                                               The basic wool applique, which became..........

                                         ............this! And is obviously in great demand!

To keep me going while I stitch, a few hours of audio books - Whodunnits, of course.................

And when I am too fatigued to raise a needle and thread, Pam has loaned me this:

Last in the series, I believe. I remember how excited I was when we bought the very first one, ooooh years ago now. I had meant to put this on my Christmas Wish List, but forgot. I shall enjoy it. But first I must finish this:

     I've read a couple of Jo Nesbo's thrillers, nice chunky books to get your teeth into. Are you a fan of the Nordic Crime Scene? Quite a lot of them about, aren't there. J and I are currently enjoying watching The Bridge on Saturday nights.

Oh yes, I meant to say. J bought me a new camera. Well, he bought it for himself as I was rather monopolising our Samsung which has 10.4 megapixels (do I sound like I know what I'm talking about???? Don't you believe it!) but when he saw the detail I was getting with the new one, a Canon IXUS117HS with a massive 12.1 mega wotsits, he very generously bequeathed the new one to me and will make do with the old one. And in turn I have magnaminously offered to let him 'borrow' it back should he need to take some fly-tying close-ups. I'm like that. Now for all I know you are sitting there reading this laughing up your sleeves from the lofty heights of your 47.9 megathingies. But to me, my modest little new camera is a real sweetie, and very slim and sleek it is too. I won't pretend that my photography has improved, mind you.

Day before The Op was May's Stitch and Bitch. We were somewhat depleted as LynneK is away in the Antipodes annoying her relatives; we get occasional 'home thoughts from abroad' emails, which is nice, but a little irritating when you compare our weather....in blooming spring, and theirs.....in what is their late autumn!

Pam has completed her beautiful Laurel Burch horses, isn't it great? The amount of work required when you use this reverse applique technique is huge. Stunning colours.

I really do intend to crack onwith K's quilt, but I bet I'm still doing the binding when they get here in June! Luckily I'm quilting with a fairly big stitch, using a single strand of 21st Centuy's hand-dyed 4-ply cotton thread. I used the same thread, brighter colourway for youngest grandson's quilt, it's really pleasant to quilt with. Totally different vibe going on with the colours, as I'm sure you'll agree!

           

I am really partial to log cabin patchwork, I love the juxtaposition of small pieces of patterned fabric, and it is so quick to actually construct the top; how on earth did people embark on making huge log cabin quilts without losing the will to live, before rotary cutters and strip-piecing were discovered? 'Cut x hundred squares 1"x1", cut x hundred rectangles 1"x2". cut x hundred rectangles 1" x2 1/2".......ad nauseam!' I certainly would never have got started if we still had to make them this way.

                     One of the small cot quilts made for the craft fair. Looks nicer 'in the flesh'.

Oops, caught red-handed - just a little sustenance to keep us going! Lovely tulips, thankyou Victoria. 

I'd like to add that we four ladies did NOT see off the contents of this tray! J sustained himself through coffee and lunch, and generously sustained the builders who were re-pointing the front and gable end of the cottage. Some of the very old bricks - 300 years - had crumbled and needed replacing and the 'concrete' pointing which had been done about 40 years ago was replaced with lime-mortar, as it should have been. Paul, our builder did an excellent job finding just the right bricks for us, and it looks really good.

So that's what the last few days have looked like round here. The 'TOE' was certainly not the ordeal I had been dreading, and after tomorrow's visit from the Disrtict Nurse I should be able to have it dressed at our surgery, and hopefully driving by mid-week..........? I know someone who will be pleased to have his chair back! Thanks to everyone who sent good wishes, flowers, chocs and good company. See you soon!