Sue Spargo butterflly sampler

With my lovely new LED lamp I have been able to do some hand sewing in the evenings which has been wonderful. (My eyes aren't great and I really struggle if the light is poor).  I have been working on the Sue Spargo Craftsy class.  I've pieced together my background fabric and cut out some butterflies.  Seeing the fabric in a photograph makes me wish I had toned down the yellow and white fabric down the middle of the felt.  I had to improvise on the instructions because I don't have access to wool, so have used 100% wool felt instead.  Hence the strategically placed pieces of fabric to join the four rectangles of felt!

But I'm looking forward to getting onto the embroidery part and learning some new stitches!  Before that I have to embellish the butterflies with more fabric and felt!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

The Christmas dinner has been slaved over, and consumed in what seems like minutes (but it was delicious even if I say so myself).  DH is asleep on the sofa with dog slumped across him and number one son is model building (he always asked for a model to make at Christmas and hes now 28!).  and I can start to play with my lovely Christmas presents!  There were so many crafty things this year.....

This lovely blanket was crochet by my daughter.  I knew she had been learning but I'm so impressed with how well made it is, and its huge!

 I love receiving books and two of them are by my favourites, Mandy Shaw who does amazing redwork and a Tilda book.  DH also bought me a soldering iron (I won't have to borrow one at Textile class any more) and a book by Margaret Beale who does some beautiful work using a soldering iron!

Here are some other goodies.  A 3 in 1 lamp (hopefully DH will assemble it for me soon) a 365 day calendar - with a quilt block for every day (I'll never run out of things to do now), fabric, bird feeder and some great DVDs - how lucky am I?

Art Journal and other things!

 I made myself one of these lovely little Mandy Shaw Christmas hearts and thought they would make a nice present for my Sister in Law and a girlfriend from work, so here are all three before I wrapped the other two for gifts!

 Today I've been doing some finishes touches to my Art Journal pages.  Its a little hard to see but I have put a decorative hand stitch around two of the pages and the bottom left page has some french knots and large daisy stitches to represent one of the sun flowers.  I've also put some more stitches on the right hand page.  A very enjoyable day (but then I have got Faye home for a few days and she was wrapping presents while I stitched!) 

Thank you Kathy for the fabric!   My name was picked after I posted at Kathys blog.  Its a very happy piece of fabric and makes me feel quite spring like! You can see what other people are stitching today at Slow Sunday Stitching

Art Journal

I have now had two months working on my Art Journal, but don't really have a lot to show for it!!  I only have one completed page (the pocket with the photos of sunflowers) but the other five pages are almost there!  They all need some writing on them, but will do that at the end when I know which order the pages will go in.  At Mondays class we were working on making stencils and stamps.  Page 1 and 5 show the negative and positive stencils.  I'm rather pleased with the way they turned out.  I have also made a stamp from 'funky foam' but haven't tried it out yet.  Yesterday for slow Sunday stitching I was working on exploding the fabric printed sunflower (page 4 - bottom left) and doing some hand sewing, trying to reproduce the centre of the sunflower - not sure how successful it was but a really good exercise in observation. You can take a look at Kathys blog to see what others have been up to!

Christmas wreath and 100% wool felt!

What a glorious day it is today!  I'm writing this waiting for my son and his girlfriend to arrive for the day, and really looking forward to lunch with them and then a walk along the sea front (doesn't get much better)

While waiting I walked along the lane and gathered some holly and ivy to make the Christmas wreath for my front door.  I'm rather pleased with this years attempt, I rather like the red baubles!

It was black Friday last week and I purchased a class from Craftsy!  It's with Sue Spargo who does a lot of Folk Art quilts.  You can see her website HERE.  The class is to make a wall hanging of butterflies, using felt and lots of different embroidery stitches.  I of course had to buy myself some 100% wool felt to start my new project!  So really looking forward to starting!