The needlepoint cats in their new home

September 16, 2012September 16, 2012 stitchesoftime2 Comments

Hello there

I hope that you are all well and happy.I have had a very enjoyable week, term has started and I have met my lovely new group. I have also spent a wonderful weekend putting the final touches to my new house. All the pictures are up and it is really feeling like home! One of the things that I have had great pleasure in putting up is my stitching, including the oldest pieces, my needlepoint cats.

Before I found cross stitch (courtesy of my sister) I mainly stiched needlepoint which I enjoyed but was very time consuming. However it was very good therapy with small children and I completed a number of pieces. These cats are from a book called Needlepoint Cats by Martin Leman and are now on the wall in my kitchen.

I took time out from house sorting yesterday to enjoy the beautiful weather and my lovely new home’s location on the edge of the Peak District National Park.I went for a walk up the hill, I am very lucky as 10 minutes from my house is this wonderfully scenery. This is Butterley Reservoir in the late afternoon sun.

This is the view from the road up to the reservoir and the picture below is the view back down the valley. The old mill chimney you can see down in the valley is right next to my house.

And this of course is one of the most important things about Marsden and the symbol of our Jazz Festival – a local sheep, famous for invading people’s gardens and eating their flowers!

Am looking forward to many more walks – have got the loan of a couple of friends’ dogs if needed and am hoping to take my bike out soon, maybe tomorrow if I get time.Am feeling so happy now everything is settled and sorted, it is all such a relief!

Take care and thanks again for visiting.

Caldicot 2012

September 11, 2012 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Well we had such a fantastic weekend at our last show of the year, the weather was brilliant, the beer tent great fun, the company excellent and the castle is just the most beautiful place to be – I am so lucky to be able to camp in places like this.

We arrived early on Friday as we were helping organise the event – here are the other two members of the Sisters of Mercia , Kerry and Ellie , (the water carrying branch of our Swords of Mercia group) relaxing on gate duty on a sunny Friday evening.

Although Kerry has been on the battlefield before it was her first time wearing her own helmet! Here she is with Andy modelling it before the battle.

I took lots of pics of the tents inside the castle, there were some beautiful banners so have taken some close up pics of the applique for you.

A brilliant time and thanks to all my lovely friends for helping me celebrate my house move (and to Ellie for not pushing me in the moat for spending all weekend saying how happy I was!)

Term has started and my new group are here so it is very hectic – am hoping for a nice weekend of finishing off bits in the house before chaos descends again next week! Ellie is visiting the new house tomorrow for the first time (and taking some of her stuff back with her!) so that will be lovely.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Green door what’s that secret you’re keepin’?

September 2, 2012September 2, 2012 stitchesoftime7 Comments

You may remember the Shakin’ Stevens song of the same name. Well I have a secret to share with you all – do you want to know what is behind this green door?

It is my very lovely new house!!! I have been planning this move for two years and been trying to actually make it happen for almost a year since I put my old house up for sale.

All seemed to be going well until June when I was expecting to move but a major delay with the chain set us back 2 months. I have been all packed up ready to go since then and have been sitting surrounded by boxes trying to keep myself cheerful but dreading it all going wrong.

But it hasn’t and we moved in two days ago. I didn’t want to post anything until it had actually happened as did not want to jinx things. I have moved to a lovely little house in the country, in the beautiful village of Marsden.This is where I am, the views up and down my street.

You may remember that I have posted about the village before. 2 years ago I started helping as a volunteer with the local Marsden Jazz Festival as a way of getting involved in the community. I have really enjoyed doing this and made lots of new friends here.

The village is fantastic, surrounded by wonderful moorland and reservoirs with lots of cute shops (including a new craft and wool shop – they knew I was coming!) and lots of very practical things like a train station and supermarket. Also a knitting group, book club, Zumba and belly dancing as well as theatre, live music etc so I will not be lonely once Jake leaves for Uni.

The old house was lovely but far too big for just little old me so I have decluttered and decluttered (not that the removal men believed me when they saw the amount of stuff) and thankfully it all fits in here.

And after two frantic days, with help from my wonderful friends Taru and Bob (who organised lunch and dinner on Fri and humped boxes and ran us around to estate agents) and Kerry (who took me shopping for house essentials and gave me her interior design advice on my lounge while unpacking my endless collection of embroidery books!) we are about 80 % unpacked and I am relaxing on the sofa with the candles lit.

All is very well with the world and I am beyond happy!

Would you like to see a few pics of the house? If you are anything like me you love seeing other people’s houses . If so carry on and I will show you the finished bits. When Jake goes I will move all of the boxed things in the guest room into my new craft room (aka his bedroom) and we will be sorted.

One of the reasons I love the village is the countryside and this is the view from my bedroom window. I am looking forward to lazy Sunday mornings with cups of tea and a good book looking at the hills.

Here is Jake all set up with his computer in his new room (the most important thing for him of course), making the most of home comforts as he leaves in 3 weeks.

This is my lovely kitchen, this really sold the house to me. I have the most beautiful door knobs on the units , I forgot to take a close up picture before it got dark but they are so pretty.

And my bathroom. Another great thing about the house is all my things fit so well with the existing colour scheme here, no redecorating and no need to buy new things!

This is my lounge with my lovely stitching sofa and an ‘in situ’ picture of the other sofa with the quilted throw that I am working on, not finished yet but it will be a lovely housewarming gift to myself!

Can’t wait to be able to show you the craft room when it is done – so excited!!!

Hope that you have a good week ahead, I am on leave for the next few days to finish sorting and then it is off to our last show of the season at Caldicot Castle in South Wales. Really looking forward to that as Ellie is coming as well. A beautiful venue and it is a very special show being the final one of such a wonderful year for me.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

The joys of hand quilting

August 30, 2012 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

Although I started making quilts to improve my skills at machine sewing I find I do a lot of hand quilting on them which I find very relaxing, especially after a hard day at the chalkface.

The current sofa throw WIP is being hand quilted with metallic thread which is always a bit of a challenge to stitch with as it tends to unravel and break a lot but the results are beautiful.

I am hoping that the wonderful fabric and detail given by the hand quilting on this piece will detract the eye from the very inaccurate piecing.

You can’t really see it in pic above but the rows do not align well either side of the central panel. At least some of the very out of sync pieces will be hidden on the back of the sofa when it is in place!

Here are some of the squares in detail, the quilting shows up particularly well on the lighter coloured squares. I am planning to add gold seed beads to the centre of the flowers as well.

I think most of the fabric is by Robert Kaufman and I know some is called Holiday Flourish which is from their Christmas Collection. As always I wish I had bought lots more of it , I do have a few half metres of some of the patterns but not much.

They have some gorgeous fabric in the new collection which is Holiday Flourish 5 – very medieval looking so will be treating myself to some of that at this November’s Knitting and Stitching show.

This is a lovely start of autumn project as it keeps my legs warm while I am doing it. I am planning to make a bigger one in plain fabrics for my other patterned and that will be lovely and toasty to quilt over winter!

I have a busy weekend planned with house stuff and then the planning for the next term starts. It only seems two minutes since the last group left but I am looking forward to welcoming a new group of lovely trainee teachers.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Measuring the bear’s forehead (and other conservation tasks!)

August 28, 2012July 16, 2019 stitchesoftime2 Comments

I hope that you are all well and happy. I have some time off this week so am very much enjoying myself – have just done a bit of gardening and am now continuing with my hand quilting.

I had a lovely time visiting Ellie at Powis Castle this weekend. It was beautiful weather when I got there on Sunday so I took lots and lots of pics. Here is Ellie in her National Trust uniform.

The title of this post comes from one of Ellie’s daily tasks which is to take light readings to check that there is not too much sun coming into the castle which would damage the textiles.

I went round with her when she did this on Sunday and one of the things she has to do is to measure the light on the bearskin rug in one of the rooms. She has a chart on the clipboard in the above photo to record the readings and one of the columns actually says ‘bear’s forehead’.

Years ago when she was very young we went to Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire and as the castle had just been restored the custodian took us on a personal tour and let Ellie unlock the castle with a massive key.

Ellie has always remembered that but these days she has the big keys herself and she gets to lock the beautiful doors like these on the coach house.

She is living in a house in the grounds which overlooks the gardens – here she is on her doorstep and the view of her garden – and the croquet lawn!

The castle is amazing and full of the most beautiful things – we were not allowed to take photos of the interior as usual and it was too dark to take good pics anyway but you can go and look on Ellie’s blog where she details all of the wonderful things she does and has lots more pics.

I am so very proud of her, it is a brilliant job and she is having a wonderful time. I went out for a meal with her colleagues and they are all very lovely and Welshpool is a really pretty little town to live in.

Here are a few of my fave close up pics from the garden – taken with my new camera which is working very well (until I break this one of course!) I am going to frame some of these for my new craft room.

And the beautiful gardens – some of the best I have ever seen. Well worth a visit if you are in the area.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

A Wet Saturday

August 25, 2012August 25, 2012 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

Oh the joy of having nothing to do apart from sit and watch movies and stitch!

I was contemplating doing some gardening (which I did not want to do as it was boring lawns) but it being a Bank Holiday weekend it has been pouring down along with thunder and lightning so I have the whole afternoon to do as I please!

I am still working on the hand quilting of the throw, this will be a long job but a very pleasurable one. I decided to hand quilt some of the flower motifs from each of the patterned squares with metallic thread rather than just outlining the squares and it is looking really good.

I am still not very confident with my machine skills for doing any other type of quilting – I look at Crazy Mom Quilts with envy. One of my targets for this winter (in my new craft room!) will be to get better at this.I think I will make some little art quilts for the walls to practise.

My Summer Exchange piece has arrived at last in the USA so I can reveal it to you. This was organised once again through the Seasonal Exchange blog and was sent to Sarah who does not yet have a blog herself.

Strawberries always remind me of summer so I stitched part of an Elizabethan knot garden design from a book I have had for a while, ‘Elizabethan Cross Stitch’ by Barbara Hammett. It is a beautiful book with loads of lovely designs.

Once again it is stitched with Silk Mill threads. I made it into a pincushion with plain green evenweave for the backing and I have put a little strawberry charm from my stash on the back and a couple of beads from my Xmas ornie making stash on the front in the middle.The strawberries also have seed beads on them.

Am off to see Ellie tomorrow so lots more stitching time on the train – what a lovely life!

Thanks for visiting and see you soon.

Blackbird Designs

August 23, 2012August 23, 2012 stitchesoftime3 Comments

Hello everyone, hope you are enjoying the last few bits of summer where you are. Weather here has been variable but I am having a lovely time, have had a quiet week at home this week, marking work, reading lots of lovely books and generally mellowing out.

And I have been stitching from my new Blackbird Designs patterns which arrived last week from Thread Bear!

I really love these designs and have been admiring them on lots of other blogs and in exchanges so I have treated myself to one of their books, ‘A Stitcher’s Journey’, and two other patterns. I have started stitching from the book but cannot reveal anything as it will be an exchange but am loving the way the pattern is stitching up.

I need to get started on my Xmas stitching as I will be away in China so much this Autumn which will mean little time to stitch. I ordered the Christmas set of stockings, ‘Merry December’, and will make all three for me.

The final design is this little Wild Lilies pin keep which will look so good stitched in these lovely Silk Mill lilac threads.

I bought a little bit of new fabric when I was away last weekend – ned to get more stash for my lovely new craft room and these Cath Kidston lookalike fat quarters will come in handy for something.

I have also been doing some quilting on a WIP. A long time ago I started this throw for the lounge.

I have now pieced and backed it, stitched the borders and am hand quilting it, am very pleased with the progress so will take some nice pics to show you soon.

Am off this weekend to visit Ellie at Powis Castle which I am very much looking forward to. It will involve two very long train journeys as well so lots of lovely stitching time! Hopefully the weather will be beautiful and I can take some arty shots of the castle for you.

Thanks again for visiting and see you all soon!

Family History – part 2, the future

August 18, 2012August 18, 2012 stitchesoftime3 Comments

Hello everyone

Hope you are all enjoying yourselves. We have been catching up with family this weekend and I thought that I would show you pics of the baby gift that I have been working on for a while which I finished yesterday.

This gift is for the newest member of the family who I mentioned a few weeks ago. She is a very special baby being born just about 100 years after my lovely Nana and she has been named Alice Evelyn after her (my Nana was Evelyn Alice).

I got to give her a cuddle this weekend which was lovely as it was the first time we had met her and her parents loved the little pillow I made for her. The design is one I have made before as a gift for a friend’s baby born last year but I liked it so much I had to stitch it again.

It is by my favourite JBW Designs from Sew and Sew – can’t remember where I got the buttons from but I think it was at one of the quilting fairs last year.

The fabric on the pillow is left over from the baby quilt I made last year and came from Doughty’s – I also have it in dark pink and turquoise.

Meeting Alice this weekend really made me think about what her future will be like, what changes she will see in her lifetime. We spent the weekend back in the town where I grew up and there have been so many changes in just the 11 years since I last visited.

Ellie and I had a little wander round trying to find a fabric shop I remember from when I was little that my Nana used to take me to but sadly it had closed years ago.

I definitely think it was my Nana who instilled my love of textiles, she sewed most of my clothes and was forever buying fabric from that shop and the markets in town so I can blame my stash on genetics!

We did find the fish clock though, this was one of the things that the kids loved when we used to go back to my home town. It is in one of the shopping centres and balls drop down from the top of the clock, mice pop out from the clock face and every hour it used to play, ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles’, and bubbles would come out of the fish’s mouth. Ellie was very pleased that it was still there.

In other family news lovely son Jake did very well in his results this week – he got a Merit and two Distinctions in his BTEC in Games Design and we are all very proud of him, he had his university place confirmed a while ago so in a very short time he will be off to have fun doing a degree in Games Design.

However looking on the bright side (though I will miss him of course) I am not losing a son but gaining a craft room! I am planning to turn his old bedroom into a lovely room where my machine will be out permanently, my stash will be neatly displayed on shelves like Hen House and Crazy Mom Quilts and I can indulge in fabric heaven!

I have indulged myself with some new Blackbird Designs patterns from Thread Bear and on the journey this weekend started stitching so will take some pics of the new stuff to post later. Am loving the designs and have finally got to use some more of the Silk Mill stash that I ordered a while ago so am using some of the lovely lilacs!

I am having a quiet night in tonight with a takeaway pizza, an action movie on TV and my stitching – and there will be a little bit of red wine of course. Heaven!

Hope that you have a good week ahead and will post again soon. Thanks for visiting.

I wonder what happened?

August 11, 2012August 11, 2012 stitchesoftime8 Comments

I am building up a collection of antique needlework, some I have got via Ebay, others on my travels (like the Chinese embroidery), partly due to my interest in all forms of historical needlework but also as I feel a need to rescue things sometimes that may have been loved but for many reasons end up discarded.

I have been doing a lot of sorting out and decluttering recently and realised that although I bought this piece a couple of years ago I have never blogged about it.

What made me particularly think about what might have happened in both the creation and the subsequent life of this piece of stitching is that I have been doing lots of reading since teaching ended and I have more time.

I have been reading lots of books by Maureen Lee ,who I mentioned in an earlier post, which are set in wartime Liverpool and I wonder if this was to commemorate something.

I have not tried to take it apart to see if there are any details on the back as it is sealed in the frame. It is needlepoint and all of the canvas is covered in tent stitch in a fine wool. It is a small tray about 14 inches by 8 inches.

I would like to think it was a wedding gift for someone but hope it wasn’t to commemorate something less happy. I would like to imagine it being given to the happy couple who hopefully came through the war and were able to be together like my Nana and Grandad and raise a family.

My lovely Nana died this week after a short illness so I am feeling very sad. Thankfully she was able to come to the UK and see everyone for her 100th birthday which was brilliant.

Whenever I see stitching at museums and in historic houses and pieces like this I so want to know what happened, who made the piece and why, what happened to them after that. There is so much of our little history, our ordinary women’s history lost because it was never recorded which makes me so sad.

My contribution, however small, is to collect and love and cherish and share these things to honour their makers whoever they may be and whatever happened to them.

Thanks for visiting and see you soon.

My daughter’s blog

August 10, 2012August 10, 2012 stitchesoftime2 Comments

As regular readers know my lovely daughter Ellie has just started a year-long internship with the National Trust at Powis Castle in Wales. She was asked by her boss to write a blog of her adventures this year and I have been meaning to post a link to it for a while.

I have just been reading through her recent posts and I know I am biased being her Mum but it is really good, full of loads of details about her work with such beautiful pics of all the objects.

The blog is called A View from my Attic – do please go and visit and leave a comment, as you know when starting a new blog it is lovely to make friends!

To tempt you here are a few pics of her walk to work that she sent me recently – she has inherited my love for photography and these are beautiful pics.Can I just say again how really proud I am of her. She worked so hard at Uni and it is so lovely to read about all the exciting things she is doing.

Ellie’s attic bedroom is one of these windows.

The castle in the background – I can’t wait to go and visit!

This is my favourite picture – what a beautiful gate!

I have had to buy a new camera this week, unfortunately the old one could not be mended and I can’t live without one! Will be testing it out this weekend, not going anywhere sadly but will take some garden pics as the clematis is looking very lovely!

Take care 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.

The needlepoint cats in their new home

Caldicot 2012

Green door what’s that secret you’re keepin’?

The joys of hand quilting

Measuring the bear’s forehead (and other conservation tasks!)

A Wet Saturday

Blackbird Designs

Family History – part 2, the future

I wonder what happened?

My daughter’s blog