A sewing tidy

Thanks to the long weekend I managed to get round to working up a sewing tidy from a kit I bought at a craft show a few weeks back. 

It came together quickly as it was all glued on to cardboard pieces - no sewing! The fabric is a piece Hayley bought me a while back and has all sorts of sewing sayings and notions on.

This can now sit nicely on my desk or the arm of the sofa to catch all my threads and rubbish. The magnet for needles will be very handy as I am always losing them!

 

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My first ever embroidery

While doing some clearing out I came across this, which is likely to be my first ever embroidery piece!

I stuck it to a card and gave it to my mum for mother's day. There's no date on it, but I think I managed to capture her look pretty accurately!

Note the weaving of the purple thread in the blue stitches on the skirt - quite advanced methinks!

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Cross stitch peacock latest

Here's the latest update on the cross stitch peacock. See! I have been getting some stitching done! 

He's coming along rather nicely and is going together quite quickly too.

 

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Candlewicking embroidery

When I went home the other week for a few days my step-mum gave me a beautful candlewicking embroidery kit. I believe that the name comes from the thread used - back in the day, if you couldn't afford lots of silks you could embroider with candle wick string.

There is a lot of satin stitch going on, and the flower in the middle are rather fiddly. Plus, the knotted stitch on those big loops was a nightmare to figure out!

But I have made a good start ...

Here is how it should look when finished ...

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Festival of Quilts

Sincere apologies for being a very bad blogger recently. I have been doing some stitching, but there's a lot of stuff getting on top of me at the moment so I'm not in the best frame of mind, to put it mildly.

But yesterday I went on a coach trip with some fellow WI ladies to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, so that was a nice distraction.

We saw a lot of amazing quilts and spent many hours wandering round. I did a reasonable amount of shopping, although I didn't buy fabric!

Here are some highlights ...

At the Embroiderers' Guild stand, putting some stitches into a group canvaswork project.

Meeting Jennie Rayment - amazing quilt lady and so fun to talk to.

Beautiful quilts ...

This lady's were my favourite of the whole show ...

And some more quilts ...

Finally, my stash. A hexagon die to cut out my papers for English paper piecing on my Big Shot. So much quicker! A book on fabric origami. New embroidery scissors. Bobbins. And a postacard of a kimono quilt.

Hayley and I also did a short workshop on Baltimore quilting and this is what I created ...

And finally, I stopped by to see the lovely Katie of Japan Crafts and decided to buy myself a vintage Kimono jacket. It is beautiful. One day, when I am rather more practiced at Japanese embroidery, I will do some decorative stitching on it.

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A cross stitch peacock

As predicted, I am now back to having several projects on the go. 

The latest UFO I have picked up is a cross stitch peacock. It's quite big and will be very beautiful when finished. I have no idea why I ever put it down!

This is where I got up to ...

 

I remembered to snap a pic as soon as I started the first stitch. I've already made good progress thanks to lots of motorsport on the telly box and a few good films to keep me going.

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