Christmas and castles

January 6, 2013September 13, 2013 stitchesoftime5 Comments

Happy 2013 to you all!

I hope that you had a lovely festive season. We did, I arrived back from all my travels today and have just been sorting some pictures to show you.

We had a very nice time at Powis Castle with Ellie – it was a very quiet Christmas Day which was much appreciated, we got up late, opened presents, watched DVDs, went for a walk and played games and ate lots of chocolate!

I took some special Christmas themed pictures in the grounds of holly, mistletoe and deer (not reindeer as these are red deer but they still have impressive antlers) and some of the very interesting lichen on the trees.

It was very good and the castle looked so pretty all decorated with a fairy tale theme for Christmas! If you want to see more pictures of this go and visit Ellie’s blog post about the castle theme.

Our time in Cardiff was lovely if a bit wet! We visited the Doctor Who Experience which proved to me that I am still scared of the Daleks ( and there were no cushions to hide behind!) and Cardiff Castle and the St Fagan’s Museum of Welsh Life which was brilliant.

At St Fagan’s I particularly loved the terrace of miners’ cottages that were displayed to show living conditions between the 1850s and the 1980s, really interesting. Also the recreation of the medieval church paintings were great.

The pictures below show Ellie and my sister Jackie with Betsy, the car that my favourite Doctor, John Pertwee, used and some of the amazing decoration in Cardiff Castle.

It was remodelled in the late 1900s by William Burges for the 3rd Marquis of Bute and is a stunning medieval fantasy castle – I would so love to live there!

Ellie bought me the most amazing Xmas present which she got from an antique shop in Welshpool, these coasters date from 1908 and are very lovely, especially significant as there are so many peacocks at Powis Castle.

I can now show you the pincushion I made for my very good friend Kerry for Christmas. This is a Blackbirds Designs pattern called Wild Lillies which I have adapted and I made it for her as she has been such a good friend to me this year with all the help with my new house and keeping me sane! Thank you, it is much appreciated.

I have just got back from a lovely time in Spain with Mum, it was warm and sunny and she took me to visit a fabulous historic house which I will post about later in the week.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Seasonal Ornaments

November 25, 2012 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

Tis the season to be stitching!

Hope you are all having a lovely Autumn week. I have had a very nice relaxing few days and have spent lots of time this weekend working on my latest batch of ornaments ready for my craft fairs coming up at the end of December.

I have also been on more wonderful walks as the weather has been very good so am feeling very mellow and happy 😉 Here is a pic of the autumn colours at one of my local reservoirs.

It has been wonderful to have a craft room with everything in one place so that I can just get out all my buttons, fabric and ribbons and have spent a lot of time this week just playing around with different combinations of things to develop some new designs.

Here is one of my new ones – the tree motif is from a ribbon I bought some years ago and is printed onto the organza. I cut them out and stitched them onto the gold silk.Each ornie has a different xmas fabric for the backing as well. In real life the tree is much more gold as the pale organza does not show as much.

I have also made another set of the little patchwork hearts that I made last year as those sold very well and are great for using up scraps from other ornament making.

I have lots of other things in production that are more Scandinavian in design, I love the traditional red, green and gold but know a lot of people like the simpler designs so will be working on those this week.

I can also finally show you my Autumn exchanges from this round of the Seasonal Exchange blog.

I got this lovely ornament from Sarah in the USA a week ago, isn’t it beautiful, just my taste with its Elizabethan motif and the most delicate beading all around the edges. The colour goes so well with my new kitchen where my bowl of Autumn exchanges are displayed. Thank you Sarah it is lovely!

I sent off my exchange before I went to China but couldn’t find the pics I took of it till now! I stitched this piece from my Blackbird Designs book ‘A Stitcher’s Journey’ for Jayne also in the USA. It is finished as a pincushion and backed with some purple velvet.

I really enjoyed this stitching and have been doing another Blackbird Designs piece as an xmas gift.

I managed to resist going to the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Fair this year due to having bought lots of fabric in Worcester and wanting to use the time to make something from my stash but have treated myself to some online retail therapy and ordered some charms and buttons for ornament making which I will share when the arrive!

Hope that you have had a fun and productive week, 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.

Summer is here!

July 8, 2012July 8, 2012 stitchesoftime3 Comments

Well no not in terms of the weather – though it has been very nice this weekend which is a welcome respite from two days of torrential rain, thankfully we have not been flooded!

I have just had this lovely piece sent to me as a Summer Exchange from Lisa through the Seasonal Exchange blog. It is a JBW design which as Lisa knows is one of my favourite designers and she has used the same sparkly evenweave that I love to stitch my designs on, it is beautiful Lisa thank you.

I have been spending the weekend mainly stitching and watch disaster movies on TV – there is an extreme weather disaster movie weekend on Movies 24 which is very appropriate give all the strange weather we have been having lately. I am currently working on my Summer Exchange plus a baby gift so nothing I can show yet.

I have some additional links to share with you for lovely pics of re-enactment events, Red Zebra Photography were taking pics all last weekend at Harewood and there are some great shots including some of Swords of Mercia walking in the parade amongst the hundreds of pictures.

I met the photographer, Nigel, from Wallace-Iles Photography at the Tatton event – he takes some lovely shots of single re-eanactors and the effects he puts on them make the really artistic.

Next weekend we are off to our biggest re-enactment event of the year, Tewkesbury Medieval Festival – please pray for fine weather for us!

Thanks for visiting and see you all soon.

Spring – wherefore art thou?

May 20, 2012 stitchesoftime2 Comments

Well I hope you have been having better weather than we have – it is apparently only 2 weeks until the official start of Summer but we have seen very little of any nice sun. I am itching to wear something other than a thick coat and gloves and hide from the rain.

However I am very lucky as I am off to Spain in 8 days so I will get some sun there.

Spring things have been happening though – I have been clearing out my garage as part of a bit of a Spring clean and there has been Spring stitching.

As I mentioned last week not much has been going on craft wise due to general busyness but I have done a bit of knitting this week and have done the latest piece for my exchange through the Seasonal Exchange blog . My Spring Exchange piece for the exchange has just arrived with Lei in the USA so I can reveal it.

It is another design from The Workbasket site called Quaker Tree and I have stitched it with Silk Mill threads as usual.

The fabric is some that I have had in my stash for a while, I think it might be Tanya Whelan but I bought it from my friend Lydia’s shop Spun a while ago. I thought it was lovely and bright and I decided to do a new type of finish for me with a little pillow. Lei likes it which is very good.

I have also just got this wonderful pillow from Lisa in the USA as my Spring Exchange ornie, she must know my tastes very well as she has stitched me a lovely design from The Workbasket site, I love their pieces and this is fantastic. It is called ‘April Quaker’ it looks so lovely with my other ornies in the conservatory.

By the way The Silk Mill is having a sale at the moment to celebrate their 10th anniversary with at least 10% off depending on how much you order. I am planning to go and add to my stash as I can’t resist a bargain.

Well I hope that you have a great week and see you all again soon, thanks for visiting.

Italian Textiles

May 12, 2012May 12, 2012 stitchesoftime1 Comment

There were some really beautiful things on our recent trip to Italy so I thought I would do a post just about all the pretty textiles.

First of all some lace and stitched household items in a little shop in the very pretty village of Bellagio.Some of this lace comes from Venice, from the island of Burano.

Then we went to the town of Como which had a wonderful market and there was this stall with so many beautiful Swiss textiles, the Italian Lakes are very near the Swiss border and there was all sorts of beautiful table linen and little curtains for hanging at your chalet window.

I spent ages trying to decide what to buy (Jake got very bored at this point!) but ended up getting this beautiful table runner which I will use at Xmas.

I have a number of stitched red and white Xmas ornies with similar themes such as this one below so I thought the runner would look good on the lounge coffee table.

We visited a few (!) churches during the week and since it was Easter there were some icons on display including this one from a church in Mennagio with some gorgeous goldwork.

We also bought some lovely pasta, polenta and spices from a little deli in the same village – on the walls there were these large-scale kitchen cross stitch motifs which were beautifully framed.

Apologies that the picture is not very good, the light and the glare made it difficult to take nice pics but there were about 10 of these collections in the shop which must have taken such a long time.

On our day trip to Milan I came across a fab shop full of cross stitch and embroidery supplies and bought 3 sets of embroidery transfers, there are lots of different designs here including about 20 alphabets and very good value at only 3 euros per pack.

And from a little gift shop in Como not textiles but this cute display of table napkins which are another little addiction of mine, I was very good and didn’t buy any (have a few in stock already) but aren’t they so cute!

I do hope you are having a lovely weekend. I was supposed to be at a re-enactment event this weekend but have got a poorly back again so instead I am having a very nice relaxing weekend stitching and knitting and watching DVDs. Very blissful and the weather is sunny which is so nice to see after all our torrential rain.

I am currently working on the large cross stitch of the Chinese Emperor but am going to start another Spring ornie for me in the meantime as that is a long haul project and I want a quick finish inbetween.

Thanks for visiting and do have a very good week ahead.

Chinese textiles

March 22, 2012 stitchesoftime7 Comments

As might have been expected I found some lovely things in China! I thought I would put these in a post rather than with the other pics I have been working on for a separate page so that they will appear in the tags at the side.

China is of course famous for silk and while in Guangzhou (which was formerly known as Canton) I went to the old 19th century area for a visit and found this beautiful piece of embroidery on silk in an antique shop there. There were many pieces to choose from but I bought the lion as that is a very traditional Chinese symbol. I love the bright colours and the detailed stitching. There were so many lovely things in the shop (that I could not afford) like caps and gowns and stitched shoes.

I also came across some lovely cross stitch kits – these were being sold by a street vendor on one of the bridges near the hotel I stayed at in Guangzhou and worked out at about £1 per kit so were a real bargain. I have just started stitching the Emperor one to remind me of the dressing up with Mo that I posted about last time.

The first group of people I worked with in the city of Shantou gave me a gift to say thanks at the end of the week which was very kind of them. I was thrilled when they gave me this beautiful set of local lace.There are about 12 of these in the set they gave me. They told me that lace making was brought to the area by missionaries in the 19th century so they thought the present was appropriate as it was a blend of West and East which was so lovely. They didn’t even realise when they chose this gift what a textile addict I am so it was perfect!

I was lucky enough to be taken out on a brilliant day’s tour of cultural sites when I was in Shantou. I spent most of my time in China teaching but had 3 rest days while I was there and the school I was working at took me to a historic house nearby where they had museum displays. This is part of a wedding carriage and is appliqued embroidery on silk.

Puppet theatre has a long tradition in Chinese culture and in the same museum there was a puppet theatre display with beautiful goldwork side panels.

I am still working on the rest of the pics to choose some for my page – I took so many so am spending a lot of time editing them and hope to post that at the weekend.

Thank you for visting and see you all soon.

Normal blogging service will be resumed….

February 28, 2012 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

Well this is it for a few weeks as I will be off tomorrow and will possibly not be able to post for a while as I may not have much internet access in China – am planning to create a ‘My time in China’ page when I get back to upload all my pics to – to add to ‘My Time In Nepal’ page, slowly I will be adding more exotic destinations to this little old blog!

I have been working on Spring Ornie exchange stitching for the last couple of weeks but thought I would share the finish from a while ago. I have been working on some Spring Ornies for me, inspired by the nicer weather we have had recently.

This is another one of the Quaker ones from The Workbasket site, once again stitched on sparkly evenweave and with my favourite Silk Mill thread and some little beads.The backing fabric I have had in my stash for a while.

This is a close up of the stitching, my new camera is so good at these sort of things!

And this is the backing.

Well I hope that you all have a lovely time while I am gone – 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.

Tag: cross stitch