Goodies!

This weekend brought a lovely visit from my friend Karol-Ann, who lives in Yorkshire, but came down to London to go to the tennis. Handily, I live very close to the tennis (15 minute drive for most of the year, a lot longer during the actual fortnight) so she came for dinner and to crash for the night before heading back. Her mum, who is visiting from South Africa, came along as well; I also invited my friend Lana, who knows Karol-Ann because they both have Nolting longarm machines (KA acquired hers recently and Lana helped her get it all set up) and who lives nearby and also has her mother visiting from abroad, so we all had a lovely evening of eating and chatting and eating and telling stories and eating...  There was no sewing done, but there were fabricy gifts - a great hexagon bag, which I will probably use as a project bag as it's quite soft (yeah, I know, fabric bags are always soft, but here I mean, not very rigid in structure) so will probably work better in that context than as a handbag.

And she also brought me some nice tonal fabrics in my sort of colours...

There were some little pencil cases and coin purses or other purpose zip-type bags for the kids, but they seem to have wandered off around the house elsewhere, and I can't be bothered to track them down for photos!

A bit of background info...

These are all backgrounds that I'm sending off to be worked on by two other people - hard to tell in this photo but the background behind the leafy paper is very shiny, so it adds an interesting touch to the card already. 

All three background are essentially the same, but the cutout is in a different place.

These are simpler - just a metallic fabric background with some ribbon stitched on.

These are three different rectangles of paper, to create two narrow borders around some text - it's from an old French novel. 

And finally, these have a kind of spritzed background (this is a good example of using all your crafty bits - the paper the background comes from was the piece of paper I put down on my table when I was spraying something and didn't want the paint to get on the table - it looked interesting, so I saved it!).  Each card then has a skeleton leaf stitched onto it with a small zigzag. 

You can see the skeleton leaf better here.

Some more ATCs worked on

I forgot to take a "before" shot of this one, so can't really do before/after, but the before was essentially the background - I added teh metallic strip and the metal charm.  These cards have only been worked on by two people now, and will be sent to a third player to complete.

These charming aliens came to me as heads on a background - forgot to photograph them before I worked on the first one - I've morphed them into Zetti style creatures, which I think works well, even though I don't consider Zetti to be my forte.

[Here's the before of two of them...]

And these three (again, forgot the "before" shot as I was thinking more of making the cards and less of blogging them) came to me as text background with the film strip ladies on them. I added the lettering and the charms.

Cross-stitch update

Good progress this week - I finished all the Iris and stems except a few incidental stitches which I need to go back and pick up.  I even did all the backstitching.  I filled in more of the border (definitely a good idea to do this as I go along as it's quite time consuming), did the Chinese character, and began the dish. I'm definitely liking this one - a more traditional type of pattern than a lot of the samplers I've done recently, but not that tricky - not too many colours at once. This week, back to the Flock piece (the pink fabric) to finish that bird, and then, my first sheep!

A few goodies

My local department store is not big, nor does it have a large haberdashery department, but it does have a small stock of crafty things (mostly aimed at the card-making market, along with a selection of wool, which doesn't appeal, as I don't knit).   Still, when you need a little craft fix, it's a nice place to pop into. I needed some glue with a fine tip, so I picked some up, along with a few sheets of paper, a packet of graduated vellum sheets and some little flower stickers. Nothing too unusual, but some nice bits and pieces, nonetheless...

This summer's when I expect to truly "stash up" - I'll be in the US for a month or so, and fully intend to do some damage in Michael's!

Bags

Amidst my more interesting sewing of the weekend, I made these three bags - two shopping bags with shorter handles and one over-the-shoulder bag with a longer straps. These are part of a group of projects I agreed to work on for the Friends group at our local library (for whom I made a baby quilt for raffle). They had had some fabric donated to them, and put out a call for people with sewing machines to assemble some bits and pieces - they precut the fabric, so all I had to do was stitch.  Not very interesting, but at least it was fairly quick.

Tall Ships

A few ships for this month's block lotto - the theme being blue ships on a white background or white ships on a blue background.  Four is probably all I'll make, as I have a busy month - and also, I'm trying to cut back on the number of lotto blocks I make, as it's getting quite expensive to mail them to the winners, who are usually not in Europe. 

Adding to the backgrounds...

Yesterday I showed the backgrounds waiting to be added to.  Luckily, I had lots of time to do some art in the morning (I decided to skip going swimming with the kids) so I managed to work on those background, plus the three more which arrived in the post today!  To to brown background with hessian "grass" I added some birds.

And to the black and white backgrounds, I added some words (a different word on each card) and some coloured gemstones

I got these backgrounds - sort of vintage ad reproductions:

And to them, I added some pictures of vintage couples, using some rusted paper as mini backgrounds.

I also got a set of little red watercoloured flowers, which stumped me for a while (I'm not good at drawing, so I couldn't just add some leaves or stems or butterflies or something)

In the end, I went down a totally different track, and cut a very thin border from a piece of red fuzzy material and added a tiny bit of vintage lace. I'll be interested to see what player three does!  All of these cards are ones which need to go to a third player to be finished, so room needs to be left for someone else to work.

And finally, a card on which I was to be third player. This is a card I admired when the first person posted them - it was just the birds at that point - and the second player said she'd send them to me. Which is great. Except that I can't really draw or paint, as I've mentioned before, so I was a bit nervous about working on them.  They are so delicate, I didn't want to do anything which would overwhelm them. 

Here's what I chose to do in the end - tiny paper leaves, from a hand-made paper (not by me) with leaves in it, and a label of the name of the bird. All three cards have the same bird, though they are slightly different in shape. And all three branches are slightly different in shape, so the leaf placement is different on each card.

I think they are really sweet!

It's a great challenge working on a card as part of the finished product instead of just making one from scratch, but what you end up with can be really interesting and lovely.  If I remember, I'll try to update all the cards I was second player on, when I get them back after the third player has worked on them!

A few backgrounds to add to!

June, for some reason, seems to be the month that everyone I know wants to visit London - our weekends are very busy.  Still, I'm hoping this weekend to have a little time to sew and craft - included to be able to add something to these backgrounds, which I've received in the post.  Luckily, working on a round robin ATC takes a little less time than (usually) than making one from scratch; as there are three people who work on it, you don't want to add too much, as you won't leave space for the following player. I am the second player on both of these sets of backgrounds, so I need to leave space for a third person to add something before the cards are complete (we each get one of the cards in the end - it's fun).  I'll probably try to make some backgrounds of my own to send out as well, but I guess that will depend on time. Watch this space!

Fabric buying

As those of you who read this blog regularly will know, I try to limit my fabric buying to a few times a year - e.g. the sale at Farnham Maltings or a trip to a quilt show, though of course I occasionally see bargains I can't resist. I've been sewing from stash quite a bit in the past few years, which is great, but what it does mean is that I've really depleted my stash in some areas, especially because I play the block lotto, which requires specific fabrics - a wide variety of different fabrics and often with a lot of leeway, which is great for using up small bits of stash - but what I've depleted in my own stash is the sorts of fabrics we tend to use for backgrounds - like white, cream, white-on-white and so forth. So I've caved in and ordered a few FQs of white-on-white fabric - not the most exciting thing to show, but I'm happy to see it in the post, as it means I can try to make a few blocks for the June block lotto, which is lovely blue boats on a white background (and vice versa). Maybe this weekend!

Cross stitch update

It's been a while since I worked on this piece, but as I had finished the Spring Sampler and had one evening left before my tradtional, self-imposed, switching over day of Wednesday, I decided to have a go at the latest installment of this piece. As the installments are quite small, I knew I could get a good chunk stitched, even if I only had one evening...   I worked on the bird with the spirally tail - he's almost done now, except for beak, eye, legs and filling in the little heart. There is also a bit of branch and a word, a small section of top border, and a round design at the top border. None of this will take long to finish, when I next pick it up.  This summer, when I am away on holiday, I probably won't take two pieces to switch between, which will be a little odd - of course, I probably won't get as much stitching done either, as I mainly do it when I am sitting watching telly, and I won't do much of that on holiday. Though I'll do more sitting around chatting, so I might stitch quite a bit at those times!  Anyway, back to the irises for the next week, and then I will finish this and start one of the little sheep virtues - really looking forward to those - they are very cute.

Spring Sampler

Yes, I know it's not Wednesday, but I've finished the little Spring Sampler tonight, so thought I'd show it anyway. The leaves on the flowers definitely work better with a darker colour. I picked out the fence as well (you can hardly see it in the bottom photo) and redid it in a light brown so that it shows. I think the model was stitched on a darker fabric than mine is.  Tomorrow I will pull out the next installment of the Faith bird piece (on the pink fabric) and do some work on that - it's not a large piece, so it won't take too long to stitch up, though I shan't get it all done in one evening, so it will have to wait a while in rotation anyway... But I can make a start!

Low volume baby quilt - finished!

And here's the baby quilt with the binding stitched down - it's off to the library tomorrow so the organiser can have it a few weeks before the fair to sell raffle tickets. It's very sweet - I'm sure someone will enjoy winning it!

One I prepared earlier

Only a tiny bit of sewing time today, as we were expecting guests for lunch - I did have time to attach the binding to the baby quilt from yesterday, though I haven't stitched it down yet. Instead of showing that not-very-interesting stage of the process, here's a top I put together a while back.  I realised when I went to lay out the blocks that I hadn't made the right number of each type, so it took some creative arrangement, but it works ok in the end, I think.  Another for Project Linus.

Low volume baby quilt

Due to various changes in my weekend plans, I had a little time today to do some quilting - luckily, there was only a little quilting to be done. This is one of two tops I put together from the low-volume heart blocks I won recently in the block lotto.  The other top will go into my baby quilt stash for the next time it's needed, but this one is going to the Friends' group at my local library to help fundraise at their summer fair. 

It's not quite finished yet - still have to do the binding, which I hope I have a chance to attach tomorrow - but at least it's quilted - I just used a simple loop meander with some hearts thrown in. Quick and easy.

More organising

A few days back, I showed a sort out of some paper drawers - well, I have now really completed the job and gone through all my drawers which hold paper and card, very thoroughly.   They are now sorted to within an inch of their lives - hopefully I can keep them this way!

The drawer at the top has card and greeting cards and playing cards in it; also some ATC sized backgrounds I have either cut, made or swapped.   This drawer has thinggs like postage stamps, words & phrases, etc., each in an appropriate envelope. 

Here I have a drawer with stickers, stick-on gems, transparencies, transfers, and anything else which isn't strictly paper but still falls under the general "paper" umbrella.

This one has printed pictures and cut outs, image sheets, etc.

And this one now has paper and card in all sizes, not just the larger pieces, which is what it had before. The smaller pieces and off-cuts are in envelopes to the side.  

This really does make it much faster to find what you need for making ATCs and other things, but keeping it organised can be a real pain. 

Splash of Lime - the final

I know I showed this before, but here it is with the binding completely on - totally finished. I really like this quilt - almost a shame to be giving it away!

Cross stitch update

Not a huge amount of progress this week, but that was expected, as I put the binding on the Splash of Lime quilt (which I will show, completely finished, later) and bound, sleeved and added a label to the Cotton Robin quilt (which I can't show yet, but will do in the fullness of time). 

Still, I did get a bit done - teh top two flowers are now totally done, although there's still a leaf that needs finishing at the top of the lefthand one. I now need to work on the leaves below the middle flower. I decded to start doing the inner (black) border and some of the outer border as I go along, to keep it from being a boring finish at the end of the project.  So far, so good.

Make do and mend survey

A while back I was contacted by someone at moneysupermarket.com, asking if I was interested in taking an upcoming survey about crafters and mending & recycling and so forth. I was happy to do this, as I do make a number of things from scratch, but also, believe in mending things where possibly rather than simply replacing them.  Nt that I enjoy it, particularly, mind you, but I believe in it in principle). It just seems wasteful to buy a new pair of trousers rather than simply fix the split seam on the old ones...I don't make clothes anymore (though I have in the past) but I do mend and alter, and I think it's a shame more people don't.

Anyway. I digress.

If you are someone who mends or reuses - or if you have strong feelings on the subject - you are more than welcome to take the survey, too. It's not long and is quite straightforward (though there were some questions I would have liked to have been able to answer with more of a "a bit of both" type answer rather than yes/no/don't know, which are the options for most of the questions).   If you want to give it a go, it's here:

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/money/surveys/make-do-and-mend/

Cotton Robin Sneak Peak

I've been taking part again in the Cotton Robin, a mini-quilt round robin organised by the lovely Julie. I really enjoy the round robin, though sometimes it's even more of a stretch than I had anticipated. The one thing I don't like, though, is not being able to share what I'm working on until the whole thing is finished (though of course, I enjoy having a surprise when my own piece comes home).  Anyway, here's a tiny sneak peek of the piece I quilted for this round (final round) which is on its way home later this week. In time, I hope to show all the pieces I worked on and the work I did on them!