Buttons from Napa Valley!

Another glorious day on the South coast, but it is oh so cold!! Which of course means it is a perfect day for curling up and stitching.

I've decided I'm only going to show my '1 year of stitches' project every month because as it gets further into the year it is quite hard to see progress but once a month should be just fine.

Last week I received a wonderful parcel of buttons from Esther at Warm Quilts (I love receiving parcels through the post, I always get a ripple of excitement when I open them) And I've had such fun playing with them, drooling over them and thoroughly examining them (I especially love the grape cluster button)!  They've all been carefully placed onto my project, arranged and rearranged! Yes I know I need to get out more!! I had to really restrict myself to only sewing on seven this week but they look fab and thank you Esther for sending them!

Well the Olympics sadly come to an end today, but they have been really good - I might get some housework done now though!! I am linking up with Kathy over at Slow Sunday Stitching where you can see lots of beautiful hand stitching projects.  Have a lovely day.

Quilting and the Olympics

We have been glued to the TV watching the Winter Olympics and loving it.  There's something about watching people leap off the side of mountains or snowboard the half pipe that is riveting.  And yesterday was Super Saturday for the UK with three medals won!!

I have been doing some sewing while I watched, although not too much gets done.  If I look down at the stitches for to long I always miss something important!  But that said I have completed a few of the blocks and am considering stitching around the houses (not sure yet though)

Here's a close up.

I then opted to try stitching some more 60 degree diamonds, much easier to do (wonky lines don't matter in this!) And of course my '1 year of stitches' project (I'll show progress on that next week)

I'm linking up with Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching where I know there is lots of hand stitching going on along with watching the games.  Have a great Sunday!

RSC - mauve

I haven't spent much time in my sewing room this week, mainly because I wanted to watch the Winter Olympics, so it's been mostly hand sewing.  But I did make a mauve Frances Firefly from the Fancy Forest pattern by Elizabeth Hartman.  The grey background looks more blue in the photo but in real life it does shows up the mauve really well.

My other mauve finish for February is a Hazel Hedgehog cushion.  It will go to its eight year old recipient some time in March!

I am linking up with Angela for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge where you can see what other mauve projects are going on today!

Free style machine stitching

Everyone in my creative embroidery group is leading a class on what they love doing (I did red work embroidery just before Christmas). This week was a session by Lesley on free style machine stitching and it was great fun!  I didn't go with too many expectations and those sessions generally turn out the best.  After placing lots of scraps of fabric onto my background base and putting the fabric into a machine embroidery hoop I just let rip. They are supposed to be seed pods and dandelion heads (not true to life LOL) but it was a really enjoyable session. The piece is about twice the size of this and I think I'm going to make a book cover.

Winter Olympics (yay) and slow Sunday stitching (yay, yay)

This is not a very inspiring or interesting photo but I actually want to leap up and down and yell eureka! And the reason is I've been struggling with hand quilting my hexie quilt, but I pick it up (occasionally) and have another go but with not much satisfaction or success.  But I set myself the task of picking up a different UFO each month to work on and February happened to be my Tilda House quilt which has been on the go for several years (not quite the same amount of time as Kathy who is going for gold in slow stitching!)  Again I knew I wanted to hand quilt it but opted for using a Perle 8 (it has quite a bit of embroidery on it using the same thread). I've completed a couple of panels and I can safely say 'IM HOOKED'.  I've enjoyed every single stitch and even if I say so myself I think its pretty even! Maybe that's where I've been going wrong, I went for a fine thread and a huge quilt and just got over whelmed. Which leaves me in a dilemma.  Do I unpick every stitch I've done on my hexie quilt and redo in a thicker thread or persevere with the finer thread?  I think I'll carry on as I am at the moment and reassess when I've finished this one!  In the mean time I'm off to watch some more of the Winter Olympics (an Austrian outsider has just won gold in the Luge - the first gold they have won in 50 years, I love it when that happens!) and put some more stitches in Tilda House.  I am linking up with Slow Sunday stitching (the link is above).  Have a great day.

Slow Sunday Stitching

I realised I hadn't posted the cover I made for our 2018 diary this year.  This is a piece of felt I made a long time ago and added bits of embroidery and beads to but hadn't finished and didn't really know what to do with.  So I bought a plain A5 diary (I normally buy quite an expensive diary with lots of pictures/photos with the excuse that it gives 12 months of pleasure - I still believe that and wish I had invested more, there's something nice about turning the page on a new week and seeing what the picture is and then used the embroidered felt for a cover, still I will bear that in mind next year!) Anyway this is the end result.  It was fun to do and although I wished I hadn't used one of DHs old work shirts for the cover and chosen a darker fabric, I still like it and it's actually quite a tactile piece!

The more I do on this, the more I love it! But it's February (so I'm putting this one away for a while) and I've picked another project to work on for the month and that will be my Tilda House quilt. Today I will sandwich it and baste before I can start hand quilting it.  I'm planning on using a thicker thread (perle 8) to see if its easier than my hexie project to quilt.  I'm linking up to Kathy's Blog for some slow Sunday stitching (does basting count?).  Have a nice, restful Sunday!

xx

Rainbow Scrap Challenge

The colour for the RSC during February is purple and I'm very glad it is! I bought some mauve fabric in the January sale with the intention of making a cushion for an eight year old who loves the colour. There was no hurry to make it but like most fabric enthusiasts I wanted to pull some scraps together for the Hedgehog, and as you can see we are on day three and I've made the hog and put together the top of the cushion and quilted it!  This afternoon I will complete the whole cushion, such happiness!  I am linking up to the RSC where there are already lots of links to explore and see what other sewers are creating out of their purple scraps this week!!