Listography

While looking at the other contributions for this month’s Scavenger Hunt I came across a post about making lists that I liked from Ellen’s Blog. The list is ‘Top 5 decisions you are glad you have made’ so here goes.

1. To have kids – without a doubt my best ever decisions as they are wonderful – we have had such fun together ever since they arrived and still do, they are such fun to be with and we get to go off and have adventures together – like London tomorrow!

2. To move to Huddersfield – I came here to study for my degree and I had various options for where I might end up, I am very glad that this one was the one I chose as I have been very happy here, loved the degree and have loved living here since then.

3. To buy a house in Spain – a big decision but like the Huddersfield one somewhere I really, really love to be and I am so glad to be able to spend more time there with my family.

4. To apply for my current job – it is a very demanding job but I love it , the students and the staff I work with are really great and I get a real buzz out of doing it – and have been doing it for 10 years now.

5. To take life as it comes and look for the joy and the positive aspects of every situation. I didn’t used to be very mellow and tried to have everything planned out but a few years ago circumstances changed and I decided that I was going to try to ‘roll with it’ a bit more and  I am very glad I did. I am far happier now than I used to be and am having a lovely, lovely life!

See you all soon.

Thanks for visiting.

A giveaway

Hello everyone

I hope that you have all had a nice weekend – it has been a very hot and sunny one here in Yorkshire and much garden fettling has taken place including the clearing of weeds from a neglected area at the bottom of the garden, thanks kids for your sterling work today. We have had a lovely BBQ this evening as well!

It has almost been too hot in the conservatory to do any fabric fettling but Ellie and I did a little bit today and I have some pics to show you from earlier in the week.We have been making a whole load of very cute pincushions from her Simple Sewn Gifts book  that she got for her birthday and I have been helping by cutting out the fabric. These are very lovely.

There is one for her with a very cute frog button.

pincushion - Ellie's frog

One for her auntie as she loves cats.

pincushion-cat fabric

One to go with the scissor keep she made as a donation for the ‘Put em Ins’ that we are making for the Quilter’s  Guild Tombola at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August (Put em Ins are anything you can put things in).

pincushion - put em ins

One for me to match ny WIP sofa throw in the lovely medieval fabric.

pincushion - medieval fabric

I am still sewing my little patchwork Xmas hearts which leads me to the giveaway which is the title of my post. It was my birthday this week – the kids were kind enough to buy me this lovely card!

b'day card

Ellie also made me a very pretty bag and is making me a jewellery roll in the same fabric to go with it.

b'day bag

It is also my 204th post right here, right now – I had meant to have a giveaway to celebrate the 200th post which was last week sometime but missed it so thought I would do it now as a birthday and blog celebration.

I am offering an Xmas ornie as I love doing them and it can be any one of your choice – either a stitched one or a patchwork – tree, heart etc anything at all. If you click on the ‘Xmas Ornies’ link in my Category Cloud you will see all the ones I have ever made so pick your favourite one. To enter please leave a comment on this post telling me what you would like to have . I will pick the winner in two weeks on the 17th July.

We are off to London next week for a little holiday – lots of museum visiting and we are going to lurk around the premiere of the last Harry Potter movie on Thurs in the hope of seeing some stars! Hope that you all have a lovely week ahead and thank you for visiting.

Photo Scavenger Hunt – June

Hello everyone – here are my latest pics.

I have mainly themed these round two locations – one is the place where I work as that enabled me to get a lot of the target words covered and the other is our recent trip to Tatton Hall in Cheshire as I was looking for some interesting ways of covering some of the other words.There are also some random ones so I will start with those first.

Farm Animal

My lovely LYS Woolly Minded and Beady Eyed has a new addition , this very cute sheep now resides outside the shop wearing a fetching fancy yarn scarf. He is looking a bit over exposed in this pic as he has nice woolly curls on his back that you can’t really see here.

Sheep

Elephant

Luckily Ellie brought this home just after we got the words for this month – it is a pressie for one of her friends so I snapped it straight away!

elephant

Childhood Memory

childhood memories

This is the first of the pics from Tatton Hall and was part of the displays of vintage toys in the gamekeeper’s cottage. My grandmother was probably the one who taught me to sew as a child as she was very good seamstress and I do remember having a machine when I was young , though not a miniature one like these.

My grandmother used to make most of mine and my sister’s clothes and we were always dressed in matching outfits – I remember one particularly fetching one of tartan kilts and ponchos (luckily I don’t know where the photo evidence for that has gone so you will be spared!) She did used to take me fabric shopping a lot , to the local markets and to a marvellous shop called Gordon Thoday’s which was a huge shop with bolts of material everywhere. Therefore I suspect she is responsible for my fabric addiction – thanks Nana!

Cutlery

Again from Tatton – this box was in the Victorian Kitchen.

cutlery

Cheese

And this was in the Victorian Parlour laid for high tea with the china cheese server on the table – in the days when cheese all came in the same shape!

cheese

Night

This is my little friend Paddy on the right of the pic from our medieval group with a fellow fire juggler. This is part of what we do to entertain ourselves of an evening at an event – along with the campfire and ale (or in my case cider!) Paddy is 11 so he is doing really well at it and was able to produce some great fire circles himself.

night

Something with your town’s name

This was an easy one as this is where I work , this sign is on the outside of my office wall!

town name

The view right outside your door

And this is the view outside the door of my office, the section of the campus where I work is all the old converted textile mills and this is the old mill chimney in the car park. You can still smell the lanolin in some of the buildings and the canal runs at the back of them.

view outside door

Architectural Detail

This is my building, the old mills were five or six stories high and made from beautiful Yorkshire stone.

architectural detail

Tree Branches

The canal behind the buildings is lined with trees with seating areas along the canal path and ducks and squirrels which makes it a lovely campus.The building I work in is called Lockside as it is next to the working lock and in the summer lots of canal boats go past.The canal was restored and re-opened about 10 years ago.

tree branches

Something beginning with Z

I studied at the University as an undergraduate and then this building was called Z Block, I had my Geography lectures in here. I really like the detail on the roof and I am pleased with the reflections of clouds in this pic.

something beginning with z

Wheel trim

Another of the set of pics taken at work – lots of cars park on our campus and this one had a very pretty wheel! I think it looks a bit like a quilt pattern.

wheel trim

I do hope you like the pics and look forward to seeing everyone else’s, I will be popping over to Kathy’s blog  to do that later and to get the list for next month. We are off to London next week to do some sightseeing so I am hoping to get some of them then.

Thanks as always for visiting.

Unseasonal Stitching

Hello there

It has been a very busy week for me – work wise, family wise and crafting wise. We have got a lot done this week – am spending most of the next couple of weeks at work finishing off the marking and admin for this year’s group of students and starting the planning for next year so we shall be busy before we go away on holiday.

 Jake has been very busy with his assignments as he finishes college next week – he has been doing some very impressive 3D modelling as part of his Games Design course. We went to Teeside University Open Day this week to look at a Games Design degree for him and this week are going to Newcastle for their Open Day – all very exciting stuff!

Ellie and I have been doing lots of crafting – she has been doing it all week (lucky thing!) but I have only been doing bits evenings and weekends but we have both had a very productive weekend. This is what Ellie finished off this week. The cat is a present for one of the family babies and the bags are for friends of hers, aren’t they lovely – especially the glasses case in the last picture.

The pattern ideas all come from the Cath Kidston Sew book I bought her for her birthday but she has adapted most of them. She is now working on a pile of very cute pincushions from the same book – pics to follow!

Ellen's knitted cat 

Ellen's bag

Glasses case

I have been mainly finishing and making Xmas ornies this week – hence the title of this post though it has not been very summery weather until today when it was scorching hot so it did seem a little strange in my very warm conservatory with all the doors open putting together Christmas fabric.

The first two pics are stitching finishes – one of the latest in my JBW ornie  series with a cute little tree and the other reindeer ornie was a cross stitch mag freebie that Ellie stitched a while ago that I have turned into an ornie.

June Xmas ornies

June Xmas ornies 2

Both of the backing fabrics for the above ornies were purchases from the recent Malvern Quilt Show and are from Makower’s  current Xmas fabric range – I am very pleased with the way that the reindeer ornie matches the backing fabric – as if they had been made for each other!

I have started working on my stock for Xmas craft fairs this year – using the same ideas as I did for all the little patchwork trees last year. This time I am doing some hanging ornies. I have used the same technique of a backing fabric with Bondaweb ironed on and then lots of fabric scraps crazy patchworked on. I have then zig zag stitched all the joins then I cut out the shapes.

I have done a set of hearts this weekend and I think that they look very cute when finished with one of my little brass charms. The pics below show the cut outs with the ‘Merry Christmas’ backing fabric I have used with a couple of finished hearts and a close up of one of the hearts.

Xmas hearts 1

Xmas hearts 2

Well it is late now and I have a busy week ahead so will have to say bye for now – thanks as always for visiting and have a lovely week!

Castles and Kings

Hello

I hope that you are all having a nice week. I have been taking some pictures at our recent re-enactment events and thought I would share them with you today. The last two events have been a little wet in places (lovely British weather!) but we have had a good time despite the rain.

We were at Ashby de La Zouche Castle in Leicestershire at the end of May – the castle ruins are really imposing and I took these shots on the Saturday evening when all the public had gone home, the first ones are of the tower and the latter ones what is left of the chapel, I love the ironwork on these pics. In the middle is Lord Percy’s tent with its pennants flying in the evening breeze.

Ashby Castle 2

Ashby castle 1

Ashby castle 3

Ashby castle 4

Ashby castle 5

We spent last weekend at Tatton Park in Cheshire at an event, the person who plays the king at other events was there. I have previously posted pictures of his goldwork surcoat and heraldry and was able to take some pictures of the goldwork banners outside his tent on the way to the beer tent on Saturday night – isn’t this wonderful work!

King's banner

I have previously posted pics of Lord and Lady Bardolph from our group in all their finery but this weekend they were going on to the field as archers so here they are looking very stylish in their padded jacks and helms!

Lady Bardolph Archer

Lord Bardolph - Archer

Lord Bardolph’s jack is the one he wears under his armour which excuses its rather mucky state and both jacks are fine examples of quilting as a utilitarian craft – all the combatants wear some form of quilted armour on body, legs of head when fighting, either under armour or on its own.

Lastly a pic of what keeps us warm when it is wet and windy in a field , one of my favourite bits of re-enactment,  the fire we sit round at night. I love watching the way the logs burn,  it really is magic!

Ashby fire

I will return at the weekend with crafting pics, both myself and Ellie have been busy so will catch up with you all then.

Thanks for visiting and have a nice week.

Malvern Quilt Show

Hello there

I hope that you are all well. I thought I would share with you some of the pics that we took of the quilty loveliness at the Malvern Quilt Show that Ellie and I visited a couple of weeks ago. We got loads of ideas and were very inspired by the designs used and impressed by the level of skills in both the patchwork and the quilting. So much so that I have bought a foot for my machine to enable me to do free motion quilting and will be attempting that over the summer.

Here is a little selection of the ones we really liked – sorry I have misplaced the show guide so cannot tell you who made them but thanks to all those people whose very hard work made the show so good.

Quilt show 2

Quilt show 1

Quilt show 3

Quilt show 4

Quilt show 5

Quilt show 6

Wonderful aren’t they. I was reading Crazy Mom’s blog  again last night and she has some really lovely circle quilts on the go at the moment that I may attempt some day. I have done a bit more on my Xmas stained glass throw and cushion covers this week but nothing worth taking pics of – just attaching the batting and doing some very basic quilting round the design. Am thinking about hand quilting some Xmas motifs in the borders so will try that out.

Not a great deal has got done today of any note due to very bad weather, the planned garden fettle and bbq has been postponed due to torrential rain all day (in June I ask you, what is happening?) I hope that the weather is good next weekend as we have a big re-enactment event at Tatton Hall in Cheshire. This is our only big event this year, sadly,  so I am hoping for a really good time so please pray for fine weather for us!

Will catch up with you all after that – thank you for visiting.

And relax ………..

I have just come back from a great week in Spain , I went this time with my lovely friend Kerry who very much enjoyed herself and it is now the end of term so after this week no more teaching . Hopefully I am set for a mellow summer – a lot of marking to be done but I am very much looking forward to the next few months. That is the very nice thing about my job that it is quiet during the best times of the year so that I can get my work – life balance better when the evenings are lighter and the weather nice (though we did return to good old Yorkshire rain which looks set in for the rest of the week!)

Very little crafting was done this week though I did manage to finish a square for Knit in Public Day on Saturday. Lydia from Spun yarn shop  here in Huddersfield is having a Knit and Natter on Saturday to sew all of the squares together to make charity blankets – sadly I can’t go as I am teaching but Ellie is going and she has made some squares as well.

Here is mine – the pattern is Moss Stich Diamonds from my Knitters’ Bible book in some left over Sublime yarn.

And these are Ellie’s in garter stitch made from Escape – a lovely variegated wool.

Knitted square 2

I have also finished another Xmas ornie – a little JBW tree  from the Christmas Keepsakes 2 chart from Sew and So that I have backed with pretty red tree fabric, this one I have added seed beads to as well on the tree and all around the edging.

JBW tree ornie 1

JBW tree ornie 2

Ellie was busy while I was away – she has used her birthday pressies to make the gorgeous Cath Kidston bag that came with her Sew  book and to make some other little bags as well for herself and friends. She says that she is having trouble the straight lines with her quilt but she has made a very good job of the bag – I love the button detail on the side.

Ellen's CK bag

Ellie CK bag detail

Ellen's toilet bag

Now that I have the batting I am planning to finish off the throws for the sofa soon and am still cracking on with Xmas ornies. Am having a little problem with the pattern for the pink Sublime baby cardi so that is on hold till I can find a correction for the pattern as the instructions for the left front make no sense at all!

I will leave you with a few pics from Spain, the cactuses that I took pics of the last time I went have flowered and here is a lovely door in Oriheula at the cathedral – I could have saved this for the ‘architectural detail’  pic for this month’s scavenger hunt  but have many lovely other Oriheula pics to choose from.

Spain cactus 3

Spain cactus 4

Spain Oriheula door

We went back to the park in Guardamar where we saw some cute little red squirrels and this time I took some bread for them. They were very tame, here is one letting me feed him with pieces from my hand and a close up of him later playing on a tree.

Spain - squirrel 1

Spain squirrel 2

Hope that you have had a lovely week and are gearing up to Summer. Thanks as always for visiting.

Photo Scavenger Hunt – May

Before I leave for Spain next week I though that I would post my pics for this month.A lot of these were taken on the way to or from work, on my visits to see my students – I hope that you enjoy them!

Emergency Vehicle

This along with a couple of police cars was outside Birmingham New Street railway station last week when Ellie and I were travelling back.

ambulance 2

Black and White Portrait

Taken in the window of the place where I had my photos developed, what a cute baby!

b and w portrait

Butterflies

Spotted this fabric at the last Quilt Day that fitted this category very well.

butterflies

Bicycle

Taken outside Accrington railway station one sunny day (I do spend a lot of my life at railway stations!)

bike 2

Blue

This pic was taken that same day – like the contrast between the in and out of focus flowers.

blue

Sign of the Zodiac

I was trying to be  bit creative with this – here is the Bull pub in Nelson, Lancashire.

Bull

Texture

So many pics to choose from for this – I eventually went with one taken last weekend at the Tudor House where Ellen works, Greyfriars in Worcester, this is part of the garden.

texture

Think Vintage

Was not sure what to snap for this then saw this very cute dress in a shop window, I love retro fashions!

think vintage

Interesting Local Building

This is a very significant building to Huddersfield and to me. It is the oldest building on the University campus where I work – dating from the late 1800s. It is called the Ramsden Building and is where I studied as an undergraduate 28 years ago.

Ramsden building

Streetlight

Back to the railway station again for this – a rainy day in Yorkshire ( as opposed to a rainy night in Georgia!).

streetlight

Red  Door

The thing I really like about the Scavenger Hunt is the way it makes you really look at things around you. I was thinking ‘where can I get a pic of a red door’ – well turns out next door neighbour but one has a red front door and here it is!

red front door

Cartoon Character

I am a huge Disney fan – the kids and I have been to Disneyland 5 times (4 trips to Euro Disney and 1 trip to Florida and loved every visit) – this is one of my souvenir soaps with the original cartoon character – the mouse that started it all – Mickey (who I have met on several occasions!)

cartoon

Hope that you have had a good week – if you want to look at all of the other Scavenger pics then go to Kathy’s blog.

See you all when I return!

Thanks for visiting.

It’s not just for me you understand……

By that I mean  the large amount of fabric I am about to show you which was purchased at the Malvern Quilt Festival is destined to be used for lots of different gifts and sales items for my Xmas craft fairs so I do not in any way consider that I spent too much money, bought too much fabric or overindulged at all 🙂 I actually think I was very restrained as there was so much more I could have bought had I gone wild and just bought fabric with gay abandon rather than for the specific purposes I had on my list. In fact there was virtually no impulse buying at all apart from some very good bargains.

I am planning to make quilts as presents for the youngest family members this summer, play/cuddle quilts are what I had in mind made with two really lovely ranges from Makower. Firstly the very cute farm animals prints.

Makower farm fabric

Then the Makower pirate range – and I found some fab pirate and sea creature buttons to go on the quilt as well!

pirate fabric

pirate buttons

Both of these fabric sets were on my shopping list and we had already been round all the traders once without seeing them as I was looking for bolts of the fabric when we went round again and found them at the very helpful Cookes Quilting Supplies stall. I have looked on their website before but wanted to actually see the fabric and they were very good at searching out missing coordinating fabrics for me.

I also got some really nice new Xmas patterns for making ornies – look at all these lovelies – all from Goose Chase Quilting who I had not come across before.

Xmas fabric 3Xmas fabric 2

Xmas fabric 4

Along with some very cute Xmas buttons – there are little cookie cutters and gingerbread men in these packs! All these and previous pirate buttons are from Out of Africa suppliers.

Xmas buttons

Ellie also bought some lovely things – some flannel to make a lap quilt and jelly roll to make a duvet cover so she is going to have a busy summer sewing!

As well as the planned stuff there were a couple of impulse bargains –

These cute dinosaur labels £1 for 10 which I thought would make a lovely charity quilt for the hospice so I bought 3 packs.

dinosaur fabric

And a lovely Robert Kaufman fat quarter – I think this is called Holiday Flourish with some more of the fabric I have just used up in my throw.

Xmas fabric 1

I finished the border on the throw last weekend and made the spare panel and another set I cut out into  cushions covers, you can see them in the pictures below – now I have the batting I can put these together and I have also bought a darning foot for my machine so I will be trying out some free motion quilting on these!

Stained glass quilt with border

stained glass cushions

I took lots of pics of the wonderful quilts at the show so will have to sort out some of my favourite to post here later. I thought I would just leave you with a few shots of Malvern railway station – again like Hebden Bridge last week a lovely old station with some fantastic ironwork.

Malvern Station 1

Malvern Station 2

Malvern Station 3

Malvern Station 4

I will try to post again mid-week as we will be away all next weekend – we have a Bank Holiday re-enactment show at Ashby de La Zouche Castle  in Leicestershire so if you are in the area on Sunday or Monday do come along,  it would be lovely to see you.

I hope you all have a lovely week ahead and thanks as always for visiting.

Never too early for Xmas crafting!

Hope everyone has had a nice week. I have been getting on well with my Xmas ornie targets for this year – I am aiming to make one new ornie for me a month as well as the usual present ornies and stock for at least one Xmas craft fair. So I will be starting that stock as soon as term finishes at the end of May and I have a bit more time.

So far for me I have finished three JBW stockings (plus a blue one to hang on the conservatory door) and this week completed the JBW Xmas pudding ornie and another one which is taken from a bigger design using blackwork of ivy leaves from one of my old New Stitches magazines. I have made the ivy leaf ornie before for my Project Nepal fundraising but want to re-make a lot of past ornies just for me and this was my demo piece at last week’s WI craft bee. They are both backed with some nice holly fabric from my stash and the pudding one has a great stocking ribbon that I got at the Harrogate show last year.

Xmas ivy ornie

                        Xmas ivy ornie 2

Xmas pud ornie

Xmas pud ornie 2

Xmas pud ornie ribbon

I am now working on a JBW tree ornie for me. I have put together all of the blocks for my stained glass window Xmas fabric throw with the sashing and this afternoon will do the border which is pieced from all the Xmas fabric used and the backing. Hopefully that will be finished this afternoon as I have been very good and got up early to do the housework and spring clean the cellar!

stained glass window quilt top

I am very pleased with the way that it has turned out – I did have a bit of a challenge with the outer sashing as I discovered that the bottom row of blocks were quite a bit smaller than the top row (my inaccurate cutting!) so I had to stretch that row to make it fit but it turned out ok. With the left over block I am going to make a cushion in the same style and have cut out single pieces for a matching cushion. I have also got lots of odd rectangles from cutting the border so thought I would make a small runner for the coffee table so that my room can be very co-ordinated this Xmas.

We had a bit of a show and tell of all the different blocks on Monday at Quilt Group. This is a pic of Davina’s blocks that I took at the workshop which just shows how different the choice of fabric and sashing colour can make the quilt look.

May - Davina's quilt blocks

If you go and visit Davina’s blog  you can see the pic she took of the original stained glass pattern with solids and black sashing.

I have had a very nice week, very busy at work but I have had a few trips out to visit my students which is always lovely. On Monday I went ‘over the border’ to Nelson in Lancashire. It was a  lovely train journey through very beautiful countryside, this is a very historic area  full of beautiful hills and moors and lots of industrial heritage – mainly dating from the Victorian era when all the mills were built.  Here are a few pics to share with you – the first two are taken at  Hebden Bridge station, then there is a view of the hills from the train and the flower was near the college I was visiting.

Hebden station

Hebden clock

Hebden view

Hebden flower

I hope you have all a nice week ahead. I am very much looking forward to next week as I am going down to visit Ellie in Worcester and we are going to the Malvern Quilt Show ! There may well be some additions to the stash (it would be a shame if there weren’t!) and then I am helping Ellie bring all her stuff back up as she is coming here for the summer this year which is lovely as we can do lots of crafting together.

Thanks for visiting.