Compensations

April 24, 2016 stitchesoftime6 Comments

Well unfortunately I didn’t make it to our event this weekend as have been struck down by a horrible flu bug but I have been feeling well enough to sew and have finished off one little fabric basket and made two others.

I may be slightly addicted, but they are so cute! And so useful. These ones will be for Sarah’s stall in September at Yarndale as she is producing another book of patterns and has asked me to make some more things to sell alongside that again.

The first one was to go with some of the things I made for the stall last year that I had left over, I thought this would make a good threads or scraps basket along with the matching pincushion and needlebook.

Baskets April 2016 5

Baskets April 2016 6

I adapted the pattern from the original one from Kelbysews at Hearts and Bees on Craftsy in order to make this smaller one but have since bought the Friends of the One Hour Basket Pattern by the same designer on Craftsy which gives you the sizes to make all these lovely ones. Picture from Craftsy.

Friends of the Hour Basket

I used this new pattern to make two of the Melanie Baskets which are the second from smallest of the sizes. The pattern contains sizes for 8 baskets including a tote bag and is great value at about £3.50.

Do you remember this lovely fabric that I bought at Harrogate last year, (proof that I do use my stash!).

Baskets April 2016 7

Baskets April 2016 8

This is the fabric I purchased recently, just couldn’t resist more sewing notions patterned fabric.

I made the little detachable matching pincushion for this one out of the scraps from when you cut out the corner squares to make the box shape, waste not want not. It has a press stud on the strap for removal.

I am going to make a matching pincushion for the French sewing themed bag as well, the motifs on the scrap corners were too small but I have plenty of this lovely fabric left.

They look so cute in my craft room 🙂

Baskets April 2016 9

Baskets April 2016 10

I may just have ordered a few bits of sheep themed fabric to make some for knitters as well, could not find much in the way of nice wool or knitting motifs but found plenty of cute sheep and as Yarndale is held in a cattle market and is full of sheep stuff thought those might sell well.

Hope you have a lovely week ahead, my students are back this week which will be very lovely and then we have a Bank Holiday weekend to look forward to – yippee three days of making bags!

Thanks as always for visiting.

Sewing in PJs

April 17, 2016 stitchesoftime2 Comments

Hello again

There is nothing nicer on a Sunday morning than waking up to find it is lovely and sunny and feeling inspired to spend a few hours in the craft room sewing in your PJs.

I have had a lovely time making another basket and this time I decided to experiment with sizes so I have made a tiny basket!

Tiny basket 1

This one is a quarter of the size of the one I made yesterday, all I did was divide the first 10.5 inch by 16.5 inch piece from the pattern into 4 pieces giving me a lining as well from that same fabric.

The finished basket is 5 inches in length and 3 inches deep and is probably one of the cutest things I have ever made, I love it 🙂

It took about 2 1/2 hours as I did do a lot of hand sewing as well, the handles would not work well on the machine as they are only 2 inches wide to start with so hand sewed them and also stitched down all of the seam allowance on the exterior as with the foam lining in they are quite bulky.

Also had to hand stitch with Perle thread as it was too small to topstich by machine and wanted to add some buttons as well. I am also proud of the way that the seams match, was not trying to pattern match honest!

This will stay in my craft room and will be used for collecting scraps when cutting. Will absolutely have to make more of these, we have a Bank Holiday weekend coming up so I know where I will be.

I am counting this as number 15, something doll sized, from my Sewing Bucket List which I have extended into 2016.

See you soon, thanks for visiting and have a nice week ahead.

A tisket, a tasket, a fabric basket!

April 16, 2016 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello everyone, hope you are all well and happy. I am fine, had a very busy week with virtually no crafting at all so am making up for it this weekend.

Bizarrely enough it is snowing while I type this – I am just glad that I got home from my Simply Solids class before it started so now I am snuggled up under my fleece on the sofa with my lovely new fabric basket.

The title of my post comes from a nursery rhyme that I used to sing and play the accompanying game to when I was younger, no idea what a tisket or a tasket is but it makes a nice rhyme for basket.

The class was based around pattern for the one – hour basket which is a free pattern on Craftsy that you can find here .

The creator is KelbySews and she has another pattern for sale on her blog for different sized baskets.

There were just 3 of us in the class today and we had a lovely time, although it is called a one-hour basket it took nearly 3 hours for this first attempt.

The fabric is an ombre from V and Co for the outside and last of my Moda sewing notions fabric from a couple of years ago for the lining.

I have previously made some sewing gifts for my sister -in -law from this fabric so have decided that I will give this one to her for an Xmas gift as basket for all her sewing, am planning to add an embroidered label to the outside.

I am hopefully going to make another one tomorrow as I have bought more supplies of the foam used for the lining so will see if I can make the next one a bit faster.

There are loads of versions of it for inspiration, I found these pretty ones on Craftsy and here and would like to do some patchwork or embroidered ones.

The other thing that is keeping me busy is sewing new braid on one of my daughter’s medieval dresses, that is lovely soothing stitching for evenings when I am too tired to concentrate.

Hope that you have a very nice week ahead, I am really looking forward to our first re-enactment event of the year next week, back to fun in fields 🙂

Thanks for visiting and see you soon.

What I did on my holidays … or what I did in 2015

January 24, 2016April 17, 2016 stitchesoftime2 Comments

Hello everyone, inspired by lots of other people doing review of activities posts I thought that I would take a look back at what I managed in 2015.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, (except for the perennial one of doing less housework and more fun things), but do like thinking about what the year might bring.

I did set myself a number of goals for that year, 12 quilt blocks with our Block of the Month organised by Helen from knitting group, 26 books to be read and 17 sewing projects from the Sewing Bucket List.

I didn’t get any of them completed fully but on the positive side this means I still have things to work on for this year 🙂

I finished 5 of the quilt blocks and have another one cut out but have been having a few issues with my new machine 😦 so need to spend some time sorting that out before any serious quilt making happens.

I have enjoyed the challenge and it has made me a lot more accurate and confident about piecing and if I hadn’t been doing so much other sewing would have managed all of these.

I have read lots and lots of books this year but got diverted from the list so ended up only completing 11 out of the 26.

My current favourite diversion is my discovery of Debbie Macomber, I really enjoyed watching the adaptation of her Cedar Cove series on Netflix in the summer and as usual picked up a couple of her Blossom Street series in a charity shop in Spain recently and am now hooked! Appropriate for a series that starts with the story of a yarn shop.

Blossom street novel

Have ordered four more of these to take to Spain for my next holiday, yes Alison what happened to not buying any more books until all the ones you had were read?

As for the sewing list 7 out of 17 and again lots of other diversions off to stitch Jenny’s beautiful designs and to make lots of medieval kit and a couple of extra things for the sewing room.

Other things I accomplished not on the list, lots and lots of hexagon piecing, my favourites being the pincushions and needlecases with Liberty fabric.

And learning to knit in the round, the wristwarmers and the little knitted pincushions were my first success with this.

The discovery of Jenny’s embroidery which gave me lots of beautiful things to stitch, my favourite so far are her birds, this one is now in my craft room.

So challenges for 2016 then. Well to finish all these lists, to improve my skills at making quilt blocks.

I still have lots of lovely things I want to make for the craft room and think that single blocks to use as mini quilts is probably a better option than trying to make anything bigger.

2016 will definitely be a year of more embroidery and challenging myself to use different stitches.

As for knitting goals definitely lots more of Julie’s little animals, the mouse is coming along very well and love the speed at which I can complete them.

What about you, any challenges that you want to tackle in 2016?

Have a lovely week ahead and thanks for visiting.

More homemade with heartstrings

November 4, 2015November 8, 2015 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello everyone, hope that you are all having a good week, back to normality this week which has been good fun though I do miss my craft room,especially when it is now looking so lovely and coordinated!

I have just finished making some more handmade gifts, the first one for me and also some for my lovely sister-in-law Amanda, it is ok as she doesn’t read my blog so won’t know what I have made her for Christmas 😉

The stitching designs for all three pieces come from the lovely Jenny of Elefantz and can be found in her Craftsy shop.

The hexi flower stitch design is a freebie and I had just enough of the lovely Cath Kidston style fabric to make this gorgeous little needlecase.

I am very pleased as this was the first time I had ever done lazy daisy stitch.

The needlecase is lined with a white on white print and has a layer of wadding in between and felt for the needle storage.

I also used the decorative stitches on my new machine to quilt the back part.

For Amanda’s presents I used Jenny’s Stitchin Machine and Stitch in Time designs, I have already used the full Stitch in Time one for the paper piecing case for my Mum but just used part of it to make a cute little scissor pillow.

I have used some gorgeous variegated thread to stitch these as I thought it went really well with the fabric. It is called Cottage Garden Threads, this colour is 601 Tulip. They are an Australian brand and I got them from Quilted Hearts.

The lovely sewing notions print is one that I got from Simply Solids last year and made Amanda’s sewing case out of which I have put pictures of below.

I was lucky enough to find the last fat quarter of this print there last weekend so have some more of it for future gifts 🙂

I really love these stitching designs from Jenny and am planning to do them again for me as a wall hanging for my craft room – they will look wonderful next to my new sewing machine themed wall rack!

Have a lovely rest of the week, see you all soon and thanks for visiting.

A woodland wedding with wellies!

October 18, 2015 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello everyone

I can finally reveal the wedding outfit that I have been working on for so long as we celebrated my brother’s wedding this weekend. The jacket and shirt were finally finished with three days to go before the wedding!

We had a brilliant time, without a doubt one of the loveliest weddings I have ever been to, full of personal touches from Ben and Amanda that made it really special and very memorable. There are not many weddings where the bride gets to drive a tractor as part of the day!

Amanda works at Oakwell Hall, a beautiful Tudor house and country park so most of the wedding took place there. They did have a short legal ceremony at the Registry office, here are all the family with them after signing the register.

Amanda had chosen a gorgeous silk brocade for me to make the wedding jacket from, with black silk collar and cuffs. I also made a linen shirt and Amanda’s Mum stitched a blackwork acorn design on the collar and cuffs.

The most important part of the day for them was an exchange of rings in the woodland that is part of the parkland, Amanda helped to build the faith circle where we sat for that ceremony.

It was brilliant, starting with Amanda in her tractor leading all of the guests from the hall to the circle where we were all given bubbles to blow as the bride arrived.

Here are the kids and their cousins Sam and Sarah enjoying the bubbles.

The ceremony featured wooden rings that Ben and Amanda had made themselves and very moving vows where they promised to be each others ‘forever friends’ and go on adventures together.

We had all been asked to wear wellies or colourful boots for that part of the ceremony so here are mine, my sister Jackie’s and Ellie’s boots in the leaves.

The reception took place in the barn which had been decorated with bunting made by Amanda’s Mum Eileen and sister Kate. Ben and Amanda love wood-turning and had made all of the serving platters for the cheeses as well as a mushroom for each guest as a wedding favour.

It was Ben’s 50th birthday as well as their wedding and so they had a woodland cake with models of their two cats on and a wedding cheese cake, they also made all of these little mice to decorate the cakes.

The evening ended with a fantastic firework display, one of Ben’s favourite things.

A wonderful day made all the more special by the fact that they did everything themselves, with help from friends and family, from the food to the decorating all of it was very much the way they wanted it to be.

This is one of my favourite pictures from the day, Ben in a very fetching apron serving the canapés!

The kids have gone home now so it is all very quiet and I am looking forward to a very relaxing afternoon catching up with some Christmas stitching. Have a happy week ahead, see you soon and thanks for visiting.

Just in time making!

October 2, 2015 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello everyone

Hope you are all ok, it is a beautiful sunny morning here in Yorkshire and I am looking forward to a lovely weekend of sewing and crafting.

This is the weekend to finish the wedding jacket and make the shirt and I am hosting another crafternoon tomorrow for friends from knitting group to work on Christmas ornaments.

I have been working very hard on all of my stitched things for Sarah’s stall at Yarndale and managed to finish everything just in time last Friday for her to pack up the car and head off. She and Sharon had a great time which I am so glad about, Sarah has worked so hard for this.

Here they all are at Yarndale with the stall, (picture copyright to Sarah).

She sold a lot of her brilliant book of Elven inspired designs and also some of my things sold as well which is lovely. I was actually hoping that not all of them would sell out, partly as I want some of the stuff for me and for Christmas presents!

If you would like a copy of the book you can get one from Sarah’s website Alder Sign Designs or individual patterns are available from her Ravelry shop as well.

You will have already seen work in progress pictures of all of these pincushions and needle books but here they all are on my little display stand.

Sarah said it looked really good on her stall and brought people in to have a look at everything else which is nice.

Just peeking out behind that are the larger needle cases I made, I my haste I didn’t take pictures of the fronts of these but they had the same large Liberty hexagons on as the rolled ones.

I made two knitting needle cases for circular needles and accessories and two knitting needle rolls for circular needles, I have seen lots available for straight needles but wanted something for circulars now I have learnt to use them.

As you can see I have been taking full advantage of my new sewing machine’s lovely embroidery stitches for all of these things.

I love my new machine so much and am really looking forward to using it more over the autumn and winter. I have so many lovely quilting projects planned!

The last two accessories cases were for scissors and tape measures.

I am also counting these as project number 12 on my 2015 Sewing Bucket List which is a bag.

Right off to do some more work now then later a bit of cutting out of the jacket lining. Have a lovely weekend whatever you are doing and thanks for visiting.

Made Up – blogging for good causes

August 23, 2015 stitchesoftime3 Comments

Hello again, hope you are all well and happy. The sun is shining here after a hot day and an impressive thunderstorm last night so all in good is this little corner of the world.

We got all the planting done and then they were very well watered in by the storm 🙂

I have just dropped in to share with you an initiative by another one of my, ‘imaginary friends’, as my children called them, the lovely Karen of , ‘Did You Make That?’.

I really value blogs as a source of knowledge and ideas and reading them makes me happy as well. Karen has decided to use her very popular blog for a good cause, she is an editor and is raising money for the National Literacy Trust through her Made Up Initiative

As an adult education tutor for 10 years and now as a teacher trainer for 14 years working with trainees who are in the same field I have seen first hand the effects that poor literacy has.

It is not just about reading for pleasure, it is about not understanding rights and responsibilities, not being able to get a good, stable job, the risk of being exploited by employers, landlords , financial institutions etc because you haven’t got the skills to understand information.

Karen is asking people to pledge through her Just Giving Page and to comment saying what they will make by Sept 10th. Everyone who does fulfil that pledge will be entered in a prize draw to win £300 of stitching loveliness – full details on the blog post above.

There is also a Facebook page for updates on the campaign.

I have pledged to finish a Christmas ornament by the 10th Sept, just a small thing but this will be done alongside the making of the jacket. Karen has been so helpful to me with her advice that I was very happy to support the initiative.

I love the fact that blogs and social media can be used in such positive ways, every little helps and as Mother Teresa says ….

I have been working on the wedding jacket, cutting out the toile from an old sheet

Karen is working on a toile for her Made Up pledge as well and suggested that you could mark the toile to make it easier to sew together so I have done that with my new fabric marking Zig Millenium pen, (bought on the advice of Jenny of Elefantz).

Just a sneak peek of the work so far, today’s job is to sew the toile together for the first fitting.

It is all very exciting, I haven’t made anything from a proper pattern for a few years!

Take care and thanks for visiting.

The first of many

August 22, 2015August 22, 2015 stitchesoftime3 Comments

Hello everyone – welcome to another damp weekend in Yorkshire 😉

This weekend I do have some outdoor activities planned, a little planting of the new things I bought while out with Sharon garden centre visiting yesterday and a walk with Ted, so am hoping for some bright spells to do those.

I wanted to share with you the first of my lovely Jenny of Elefantz stitchery patterns. I have just had my first monthly Stitchery Club PDF e-mailed to me and there are some gorgeous Christmas designs which I have started on as ornaments for family.

This earlier design is one of my absolute favourites and will be stitching it again in different colours to frame for my craft room as the sentiment is so good as well as the design being very pretty.

I am not sure where I got the tape measure charm from but the cute clock one is part of a set that Kerry gave me for my birthday.

The fabric came from the Barrington Patchwork shop that we found as part of our National Trust visiting holiday in early June, I knew it would come in handy for stitching related gifts!

I am intending it to be for carrying English Paper Piecing templates and this is going to be added to my Christmas gift pile.

It is a really easy and pleasurable design to stitch and am very pleased with my end result. The binding could be neater and I have attached it to the two sides differently but it is all about learning from experience!

I am also counting this as Project Number 1 on the Sewing Bucket List – a project for your sewing space, ok it’s not for me but I think it still counts!

I am very behind with projects due to the still poorly wrist, it is officially tendonitis and I have to rest as much as possible so will be extending the list into 2016.

This weekend’s crafting activities are to cut out and sew up the ,’toile’ for Amanda’s wedding jacket. On the advice of Karen from, ‘Did You Make That?‘, I am making a mock-up of the jacket from an old sheet to get the sizing right before cutting into the £30 a metre silk brocade!

Will give me a chance to play with my new machine which makes me very happy!

Hope that you have nice things planned as well. Thanks for visiting.

In colour order

August 19, 2015 stitchesoftime2 Comments

Hello, hope that you are all having a nice week, I have been busy stitching away at my hexi pincushions and needlebooks, in between some sorting out of the craft room.

One of the many quilting blogs that I like reading is called, ‘In Color Order’ , run by Jeni Baker who regularly contributes to quilt magazines that I read.

I have long admired those quilters who have their stash organised by colour as mine was piled in a few boxes which meant getting everything out if I wanted to find something for a specific project.

Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom even has her scraps sorted by colour – go and have a look at this storage bucket tutorial for details of how to make the cutest scrap buckets!

Not any more! My lovely friend Sharon has been doing a bit of sorting in her own craft room, when we went round a couple of months ago to help her with a stash sort I admired these drawers and said if she ever wanted to get rid of them I would buy them off her, (she had two sets so still has some herself).

They arrived on Monday and then something else arrived yesterday – more on that later – so I had a good sort out in the craft room yesterday and I am very happy with the result 🙂

I also got the chance to declutter this area, this old shelving unit is very rickety and was just getting used as a dumping ground so things have been made much neater by its removal and it will now have a new home in the shed.

I can see exactly what I have got in the pinks, blues, turquoises etc. I had great fun sorting and found fabric I didn’t remember having!

I also got chance to put up some new pictures and pin boards for my quilt blocks, thanks to our block of the month challenge I now have four of those – more to come as I am still behind, (given that it is the eighth month of the year ha ha), so will take some pictures of those once I have finished a few more.

This very cute little embroidery was in one of our local charity shops so had to come home with me for the vintage embroidery wall.

It was only 75p and the amount of work in it is amazing, look at the detail of the little mother mouse tucking up the children and the picture on the wall.

The other arrival for the craft room was very exciting – took a bit of getting out of the box!

I have a new sewing machine, a very sooper dooper, 80 stitches brand new quilting machine with an extra-large additional plate for doing machine quilting, lots and lots of feet for quilting and automatic needle threading 🙂

I was not really planning to buy myself a new machine at this point though was getting very frustrated with my 5-year-old Janome which just kept losing tension and jamming all the time.

Had put it to one side for a service and got out the older spare machine but when using it this week for a small piece of finishing realised that the reason that I had retired it was because of the faint burning smell when you use it!

Was just doing a little browsing of new machines as you do and came across this little lovely, reduced and with free quilting accessories so treated myself to a very early Christmas present.

Well I do have the special sewing to do and it would be nice to spend more time actually sewing than sorting out a machine!

Looking forward to spending more time this weekend practising with all those lovely embroidery stitches. Hope that you have lots of nice things planned and thanks for visiting.

Stitches of Time

I have created this blog to share my interest in all forms of stitching, quilting, sewing, knitting, medieval re-enactment and costume making – particularly my love of historical embroidery. I also love travelling,especially when it also involves any of my other interests.

Category: sewing