Month: June 2017

Natural beauty

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Ellie and I have just come back from our long weekend camping in North Wales. Originally we were booked into a re-enactment at Conwy but our group had to cancel so we thought we would make the most of the opportunity for a visit to some of the National Trust properties in the area.We stayed at  Conwy Touring Park which was a lovely site with great views.

Since it was nice weather for most of the time we not only got to visit several properties but also go for a walk in the mountains in Snowdonia. We saw such beautiful places so I thought I would share some of them with you.

First we visited Erddig , which is a house that dates from the early 1700s and it has been beautifully restored after falling into a ruinous state in the 1960s. The formal gardens were gorgeous and I particularly loved the less formal borders with thistles, poppies and lilies.

Erddig 2

Erddig 3

Erddig 4

Erddig 1

On Saturday we drove into the Snowdonia National Park to an area known as Cwm Idwal which is also owned by the Trust.

Cwm Idwal 1

Cwm Idwal 2

It was a perfect day for walking, cloudy but not wet and the clouds added to the dramatic scenery. We had a brilliant walk round the lake and then a picnic by a waterfall, just perfect!

Cwm Idwal 3

Cwm Idwal 4

Cwm Idwal 5

In the afternoon the sun came out which made the wonderful Bodnant Gardens look fantastic. The house is still in private ownership and the gardens that surround it are just gorgeous with the most beautiful views towards Snowdonia.

Bodnant 1

Bodnant 2

Bodnant 12

Bodnant 13

We really loved the hydrangea bushes, the heads were all at different stages of flowering and it was amazing to see the colours develop on these blue ones, so beautiful!

Bodnant 10

Bodnant 9

Bodnant 11

A great weekend and I will be back later in the week with some of the lovely interiors from these and the other places we visited.

Meanwhile I am working on some more Steampunk stuff as I want to update my outfit. We have been dressing up in the evenings at events and here is a picture taken by my lovely friend Silke at Tatton.

Alison Steampunk - Tatton - small

I love my top hat and am awaiting a new skirt, gloves and choker that will be delivered this week.I am decorating a pair of boots and velvet jacket with lace to add to my collection of outfits.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

 

 

Thank goodness for trees!

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We British are never happy with the weather are we? After complaining all week about it raining and hoping for a dry weekend we then spent all of the Tatton event saying it was too hot.It did get up to about 30 degrees so there was a big difference between that and the grey wet weather earlier.

Thankfully we were camped near some very shady trees so spent a lot of the weekend in this beautiful spot, sitting catching up with friends before roasting on the battlefield.

Tatton - Trees 1

Tatton - Trees 2

Tatton - Trees 3

Tatton - Trees 4

I managed to do some interviews for my doctorate, among them the man who plays King Edward at Tewkesbury, Mike who is a gunner and a new member of a friend’s group, Sian, who was skinning and tanning rabbits.

This is beautiful tent belonging to Dave the king, the paintings on the hangings are done by his wife.He has very impressive fluted armour which looks wonderful on the battlefield.

Tatton - Kings Tent

Here is Mike with his flintlock, he is normally a hand-gunner in the battles and also has taken part in displays with larger guns as part of the gun crew.

Tatton - Mike with gun 1

Tatton - Mike with gun 2

Sian was skinning and cooking with the rabbits on Saturday and on Sunday the heat had meant that she was able to start the process of de-fleshing the skins to use the hide, normally that would take 3 days.

Tatton - Sian with rabbit skin 1

This is one of the larger skins from a previous tanning, it is so beautifully soft.

Tatton - Sian with rabbit skin 2

In this photo you can see the difference between the skins still with the flesh on them in the left of the picture and the finished skin. It was fascinating to watch her doing the whole process.

I know that I normally include some lovely costume pictures for you but it was so hot we were all dressed down for most of the time, here is our friend Dave in a fetching combination of medieval undergarments, sunnies, straw hat and trainers back at camp.

Tatton - Dave in soft kit

We had a lovely weekend and are really looking forward to next weekend when we are going camping in North Wales, just a little holiday for Ellie and I visiting some Trust properties though friends are at an event at Conwy Castle so may pop in and see them there.

Hope you have a great week ahead and thanks for visiting.

Family Heirlooms

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During our recent craft evening at Rosemari’s house I was able to take some pictures of the things that she has been working on and with. She has inherited her grandmother’s sewing box containing a lot of unfinished items so for the last year has been working on this hexagon quilt which is now completed.

Rosemari's quilt

This is a Grandmother’s Flower Garden pattern with smaller flowers in between the flowers, a very apt pattern for an inherited quilt! This Pinterest page has lots more pictures of this type of pattern, they are so pretty and were really popular as a quilt pattern. There is some more information on the pattern and links to instructions here at Patterns from History.

The quilt is a fascinating mixture of fabrics and many of them had the backing cards still in them, I love vintage things like these, not just for the item but for the social history aspect of them as well. It has been really lovely to see the progress on this quilt.

Rosemari has now decided to make a patchwork back to the quilt in the colours that will suit her bedroom decor so that it can be used which means she will have a great combination of her work and her grandmother’s.

The other thing she has are some embroidery cases containing stitching thread. The threads are not vintage but the cases are. This one is made of linen with beautiful embroidered flowers that are very similar in design to some of the ones I have on tablecloths and other vintage stash.

Rosemari's stitching roll 2

These embroideries were probably sold as transfers or given away free in magazines which explains why there are so many similar ones. With some of the ones that I have just been using for my log cabin blocks you can still see the blue outline of the transfer.

If you want to have a look at some more vintage motifs there are lots of sites that offer them for free, this one French Knots   has over 300 motifs to print off. The brilliant NeedlenThread site also has a vintage embroidery page with links. This site also has lots of other beautiful free embroidery patterns to print off.

Rosemari's stitching roll 3

Rosemari's stitching roll 4

Rosemari is now working on one of the embroideries that were left as well, it is about half completed and as you can see she has all the threads she needs for that and any more she wants to do.

Rosemari's stitching roll 1

It is lovely that she is able to carry on, not only the tradition of stitching but also her grandmother’s actual work. It makes them very special pieces.

I have been doing lots of embroidery myself over the weekend and have been having a lovely relaxing time, hope that you have had a nice weekend as well and thanks for visiting.

Little Pretties

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I am very much looking forward to the weekend ahead, I have some time off in lieu of all the marking that I have been doing the last few weeks so have a four day weekend to look forward to 🙂

There will of course be much crafting and hopefully a couple of walks with Jake and Ted the dog. Hoping for some blue skies as we have had a dreadful week here, gales and cold wet weather, not at all summery.

However there has been distraction in the form of very pretty fabric being delivered. I was in need of more Liberty to widen my choice of patterns for the vintage log cabins so was very pleased to find some new suppliers of Liberty who offered different selections.

Liberty squares 1

This first set came from Zuzucrafts on Ebay who have lots of choice of colourways in their packs, this is a 5″ by 5″ scrap pack. Lots of gorgeous little prints!

Liberty squares 2

Then I found a mini charm pack of Liberty from Vickbmouth at Ebay. There are 50 squares in this pack and they are perfect for making the sorts of needle books and pincushions that I have done for Sarah for Yarndale.

Liberty charm pack 1

Liberty charm pack 2

Liberty charm pack 3

My final purchase for this week, though I really must stop buying fabric now 😉 ,was a scrap pack of Lecien fabrics, which I have taken a selection from for the picture below.

Lecien fabrics 1

I have wanted some of these ever since seeing them on Jenny of Elefantz’s blog. I am also planning to use these with some of the vintage embroidery for log cabins and they came from Pretty Fabrics and Trims.

They sent me a lovely personalised e-mail to confirm my order and then this little tag on the order, what great customer service. They asked me to share what I make with the scraps which I will do.

Lecien fabrics 3

I really love all of the small flower prints and may turn some of these into little house pincushions like the one in the first photo again as I gave away all the last ones to the girls at our recent craft evening.

Lecien fabrics 2

I have finished the Splendid Sampler block which I was embroidering, this was on my to do list for this year and I love the way that it has turned out.Excuse the photo quality, no light here this morning!

Elefantz Splendid Sampler completed 1

I altered the design slightly from the original which I posted about earlier and used variegated Cottage Garden hand dyed thread that I got from Quilted Hearts. This is being made into a hanging for my craft room.

I am currently stitching another one of Jenny’s designs in variegated thread as well, a gorgeous bird design which is one of her free designs from here. I will probably finish that over the weekend as her designs are so quick to do and so beautiful.I am hooked on Orange is the New Black on Netflix again, am half way through Season 4 in preparation for the new season which is released today.

So I do hope you all have plans for a lovely weekend as well, I am feeling very happy and relaxed at the moment, it has been a great year in my new role and I am looking forward to a summer full of fun stuff and lots of opportunity to use my new fabric!

Take care and thanks for visiting.

 

 

 

Come rain, come shine!

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Well of course it was like most Ashby events, somewhat wet in parts. We did at least have glorious sunshine on the Sunday, it was very hot in the afternoon for the tournament and then we had a lovely evening and it started raining after we went to bed and never really stopped.

So we were not able to do much on Monday except a few demos like our head dress talk. Here are Ellie and I sewing coifs for the poor. At least we got some lovely pictures from Sunday.

Ashby - Ellie and me sewing -small

Here is what I think must be my favourite one of all time, Luke was doing his armour talk while getting dressed for the tournament and he had just put on his great helm and was telling the crowd that he could still see in front of him but not what was happening behind him so I took that opportunity to do a little happy dance for the crowd 😉

Ashby - me and Luke -small

He knew nothing about it until this appeared on our Facebook page later in the day. Thanks to Adam Kucharczyk for these brilliant pictures.

Ashby - Ellie and King - small

I love this one of Ellie in her new crown with the King.

Ashby - Group -small

And here are all of the group at the end of the tournament, we have new fighters this year so it was great to see so many people in the arena.

Ashby 2017 Luke and Mark

The boys had new kit as well, of course. They have been making some beautiful things. Here is Mark in his new coat and chaperon hood.

Luke’s partner Wendy had made him a new chaperon as well and he had a new hat, a bycocket courtesy of the mega -talented Kat of Kat’s Hats.

I didn’t get a picture of the stunning goldwork on the front however Kat had posted this one on her page, she is such a brilliant embroider.

Ashby - Detail of goldwork

The boys looked amazing in their armour as usual, Luke has new leg armour to match his colours.

Ashby Luke in full armour - small

Symon has been doing leather work and has made this wonderful coat of plates and belt, it is all hand tooled, he had to cut out all of the leather from the leaf pattern by hand, just beautiful!

Ashby Symon coat and belt 1

I am very proud of the group and look forward to lots of lovely events with them this year.

Hope that you like the pictures, there is also some video of the fights on our Facebook page as well if you are interested.

Will be back next week with an update on an embroidery finish, until then have a good weekend and thanks for visiting.