Lovely life!

August 13, 2011 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello there and I hope that you are all well and happy. We have just got back home from a very lovely day out – my very first trip to the Birmingham Quilt Show which was very good. I went on a coach trip with Ellie and my quilt group and when I have sorted out the pics will post them. I was very restrained and stuck to my shopping list of practical items to finish existing projects plus a very small bit of Xmas fabric (well you have to don’t you – it all needs a good home and I will probably be in China in November when the Harrogate show is on so have to stock up 😉 ).

We have been in Spain all week, lucky us, enjoying very hot weather which meant that little could be done except go to the pool or beach, read and stitch on the terrace. I have nearly completed another little stitched Xmas ornie for me (very appropriate stitching when it is 36 degrees outside!) and have been working on a baby gift as well. We did of course see the family including the recipient of our handmade gifts who I am pleased to say really liked them. Here is Anna-Mae with the cat that Ellen made her and playing with her farm quilt.

She is so gorgeous and was a delight to watch playing with the animals and helping ‘Great Nana’ open her presents from us as well. Nana was 99 a few weeks ago and is looking forward to her 100th birthday celebrations as she just had a little party this time!

We also went out for some very nice meals including a Spanish restaurant near our house which we had not tried before that had a very good ‘menu del dia’, 3 lovely courses including a half bottle of wine for 10 euros – Ellie was very impressed with the wine carafe!

The flight back was brilliant, there were clear skies till halfway across France which meant I had some wonderful views and was able to get some very nice pics for the Scavenger Hunt which I will post at the end of the month. Here is the view as we left Alicante.

And of course it wouldn’t be one of my Spain posts without a cactus pic now would it! This is variety I have not seen before which looked like little cabbages on stalks.

And this is a palm tree waving in the wind as we waited for the bus to the beach.

While we were away my Summer Exchange partner got her stitched piece from me and I had a lovely little pillow from my partner in the US. I have not had any good light yet to take a pic of the pillow but here is the pin and scissor keep I sent to Gaby in Germany.

This is a freebie design from The Workbasket website called Quaker Tree which I have stitched before – again done on sparkly evenweave with Silk Mill thread. The backing fabric I bought from one of the women at quilt group who has a fabric shop and I had the ribbon already in my stash, the ribbon is stitched on to the top of the little pocket that holds the scissors. Charms as before from Stitch Direct.

Well I have a nice quiet week ahead so I am looking forward to some finishing off of stitched items including the large pile of Xmas ornie hearts I have on my coffee table! We are away next weekend and the following one so I am making the most of this time. Hope you are having a nice time wherever you are. Thank you for visiting.

A Quiet Weekend

July 31, 2011 stitchesoftime2 Comments

Well my planned trip to York did not go ahead as I have been struck down by a very nasty ear infection so have spent the last 3 days in the house trying to get better before my sister, her two kids and small dog arrive to stay tomorrow! I shall have to visit the doc for antibiotics I think as it is not getting much better 😦

I have finished the hemming on the farm quilt and made a little bag for the animals so I have been being productive while laid up. Here are the pockets on the front of the quilt with two of the little animals in that will go into the bag. My idea is that my cousin’s daughter who the present is for will be able to match the animals with the pockets. She is two this week and we will be seeing her at the weekend in Spain.

This is the back of the quilt and a close up of the fabric which has lots of farm words on which she can practise!

The bag was made from fabric scraps and will have a drawstring cord.

I did go out to my brother’s house last night as he and his partner Amanda had invited us round for a meal and they very kindly cooked us delicious food and looked after me so I just had to sit in my chair drinking home-made Cassis and wine (I have also put my back out again somehow!)

They have a very lovely garden which they are in the process of remodelling (with outdoor BBQ and pizza oven) and Amanda loves garden ornaments as much as I do so here are some shots of her garden – the cat is a present that I bought her a couple of Christmases ago and it holds tea lights.

You can just see Ben sitting in the background of that last pic. They also have an allotment and grow wonderful veg – look at the size of these courgettes! The one on the right is about 14″ long. Amanda very kindly gave me some more of her homemade chutney and jelly to bring home with me as well.

I don’t know if I will be able to do much this coming week as feel pretty awful at the moment, I have been spending most of the weekend sewing up Xmas hearts, have just sent off an exchange to Germany and am halfway through another stitched gift for a friend’s new baby so do have a lot to occupy myself if needed.

I will not be posting now for a couple of weeks as we are off to Spain for a week on Friday. Take care and I will be in touch when I get back.

Thanks for visiting.

Just in time!

July 27, 2011 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

I am pleased to report that I have almost finished the Makower Farm fabric quilt in time to take it to Spain next week. In fact I do have enough time (and hopefully enough fabric) to make a little bag to go with it to keep all the animals in.

I was going to be very pushed for time but as Ellie arrived home late and very tired (but happy and very brown) from her dig yesterday evening we decided to have a quiet day in today so I got it finished. I have not got pics of the completed quilt yet as I need to do the bottom hem but plan to do that tomorrow. This was my progress up until today (as modelled by Jake!)

Six of the labels have a pocket on them (made of an extra label with the same design shown on) and I have bought six little plastic farm animals to put into the pockets as well as a set of bigger animals.

As this was my own design I have spent a lot of time trying to work out what I could do with fabric I had bought and would it have been much easier had I bought more plain and co-ordinates for sashing and borders but I will know for next time. I have just quilted the top and then made a ‘bag’ with the backing and turned it inside out, partly as I thought it would look better and partly as I was running out of time and fabric to do a border. I think it looks great as the outside border has enough pattern on it anyway.

We have been for a few days out since Mum arrived at the weekend. Firstly to Marsden which was lovely and sunny.

Then to Temple Newsam House near Leeds which is a Tudor and Jacobean mansion that was the birthplace of Lord Darnley who married Mary Queen of Scots.

Lots of fab rooms and textiles inside , including some wonderful portraits, lots of embroidery spotting. No inside pics allowed but I did find a copy of this pic of Arabella Stuart on this very informative website.

The jacket she is wearing reminds me very much of the Layton jacket in the Victoria and Albert Museum that I have written about previously. Below is a pic of Margaret Layton wearing the jacket.It makes me wonder about who made them both and how many more similar jackets exist – was it a popular design, did they know each other and did they ever meet (hopefully not both wearing their jackets!). They were both alive at the same time.

There was also a very interesting quilt on one of the beds – no pics allowed so I will have to try to describe it to you and see if anyone has seen anything similar as I have never come across one like it before.

It was made of glazed chintz, Chinese inspired flower / tree of life type designs so late 17th or early 18th century I think. It was patchwork but did not seem to be quilted, no wadding as far as I could tell and the patchwork design was of large squares about 14″ diameter set on point with half triangles at the border. I went to a quilt exhibition at the V and A last year and saw quilts there dating from the 15oos but nothing like this. It looked quite basic, not really stately home style and I was very intrigued so if anyone knows anything about it please let me know.

We have a trip to York to the latest Quilt Museum exhibition and the Minster planned for later in the week which will be lovely. Hopefully I will get chance to post again before I leave for Spain (with my completed quilt – hurrah!).

Thanks very much for visiting, see you again soon.

July in Yorkshire – and a giveaway winner!

July 17, 2011July 17, 2011 stitchesoftime4 Comments

Hello there

You may remember a post a while back – April I think when I commented that it was very warm and sunny – warmer than we usually get in April in Yorkshire or even July in Yorkshire, well this was one of those weekends that proved my point.It has been very, very wet for virtually all the weekend. So no garden fettling but I did manage to get a pic of my lovely new clematis blooms during a bit of sun yesterday.

Poor Ellie has been very rained on during her dig – she is down south at the moment doing an archaeological dig at some standing stones as part of her course. She can cope fine with the rain (it’s just like most of the family holidays we have after all!) but unfortunately her lovely new Zandra Rhodes tepee tent that I bought her for Xmas has on its first trip out proved to be not waterproof at all! They have been very flooded so she has had to retreat to her little tent and we will have to be sending that back to the suppliers with a little note when she returns! Apart from that she is enjoying herself and they are hoping for better weather next week.

We need to wish Becky, her friend and future housemate who is also on the dig with her a belated happy birthday, it was her 21st birthday this week so a very, very happy birthday Becky and I hope that you and Gemma liked the pressies Ellie made you and that you liked the sparkly elephant that starred in last month’s Scavenger Hunt.

Becky and her boyfriend Chris have just come back from staying in our house in Spain and they sent me a very wonderful bouquet of flowers to say thanks and a fab card that she got from Moonpig which had loads of their holiday snaps on it – what a brill idea! Thank you very much Becky and Chris, you are most welcome! Look at these lovely blooms – I don’t know what the little multi-flowered ones are but they are so pretty and I love lilies.

I have had a very busy week again including trying to sort out more IT issues (Jacob’s new birthday computer 0 restored wireless network 1) so some success on that front, bizarrely it will connect fine when downstairs but not when in his room, despite the fact that my laptop will – humm! And 2 hours on the phone with technical support could not fix it – it is a good job that I am a woman who knows my ping from my command prompt I tell you! However he is very happy as he has a super new graphics card and all is very pretty and the games work well, and I have regained access to my laptop of an evening (hurrah!).

To offset this I have a bit of fabric fettling in between marking and decorating. Have managed to work out what I am doing with the farm quilt despite a couple of ‘oops I have measured that bit wrong’ setbacks and have now put together all the labels with the spotty sashing – pic below shows 5 of the 12 that make up the quilt top.

Since I took this pic I have added another row of sashing between all the label blocks in a green gingham so it looks very pretty. Am pleased that I have managed to work out the design myself and that I have done all the sashing using joined piecing which I have seen others at quilt group do but had not attempted it before (aren’t you impressed at all these new words I know now, I am, it is like a whole new language!)

I am very much enjoying my adventures in quilting – we have a ‘Sit and Sew’ day next Saturday where as the name suggests we shall spend all day sewing so I hope to have the quilt top done and possibly backed and part quilted as well as it needs to be finished within a few weeks for a birthday gift.

I have also been enjoying finding out more about quilt techniques as I have discovered a brand new resource from a link on a quilty blog. I was reading Tonya’s Lazy Gal Quilting blog and she mentioned the Quilt Show and I have been having great fun watching their videos (from the comfort of my sofa thanks to the newly restored wireless connection!)

I like the way that as well as all of the free stuff when you register you can buy access to the individual shows you like without having to take out a yearly subscription and I think at about £1.50 a show that is very good value as they last an hour and are very informative.I watched a really good one on 1930s quilts the other day and am going to go back later and browse some more.

Last but not least I have picked a winner for the 200th post – using a random number generator which other people have mentioned as good way of picking. I had five comments on the post so numbered them in order and the winner is Number 2 – Lorna (no blog). I am mailing you Lorna to ask you what you would like as your ornie. Thank you to all who commented and I will be having another one in a few months in Nov as that will be my 4th blogaversary!

Well I hope that you have had better weather than we have – my Mum arrives next week for a visit so I am hoping that she will pack some Spanish sun in her case, meanwhile we will look on the bright side – at least I have got out of cutting the front hedge this weekend!

See you next week with hopefully a completed quilt top, thanks for visiting.

Malvern Quilt Show

June 12, 2011 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

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.

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.

It’s not just for me you understand……

May 22, 2011May 22, 2011 stitchesoftime4 Comments

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

May 15, 2011 stitchesoftime2 Comments

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

A Lovely Week!

May 8, 2011 stitchesoftime8 Comments

Hello again

Hope you have been having a very nice week. I have – filled with lots of lovely crafting and fun with other people while doing it. I only started crafting socially (as in joining groups) about 4 years ago when I joined the Embroiderers’ Guild but now the kids have grown up and I have a lot more free time for me it forms a large part of my social life and I love it! It is so nice seeing what other people are working on and getting advice when you get stuck and having a good laugh (and usually some cake!) while you are at it. This week was a very nice one as I went to two knitting groups, did one session at WI and spent all day yesterday at a Quilt Workshop run by Christine from my quilt group.

First of all though my Spring Exchange for the Seasonal Exchange blog has arrived in the USA so I can show you pics of that.When I was given my partner Lisa’s name I went to look on her blog to see what sort of things she liked making and I saw that she had made this as an exchange piece for her to send off and she mentioned that she liked it so much that she would want to make one for herself in the future so I thought this would be perfect and luckily she is pleased with it.

The design is called Friendship Bird Floss Ring and is from the Jan/Feb issue of Gift of Stitching magazine. It is stitched on evenweave with thread from The Silk Mill. It is the first time I have used the little pearl thread rings which I got from Sew and So.

I have seen on a few people’s blog pics of their smaller stitched items photographed outside on bushes so I thought since this is a bird it would be nice for him to be in a tree so here he is in my garden!

Knitting progress with the pink baby cardi is slow but steady – not helped by the fact that I keep forgetting to do eyelet rows while I am decreasing so I have had to take back quite a few rows!

I have also almost finished my latest Xmas ornie and made a start on another this week as a demo piece for my WI meeting. I have recently joined my local branch of the Women’s Institute which meets monthly with a variety of activities on the programme. This month it was a Craft Bee and I was asked if I would like to demo something so I chose blackwork which turned out to be good choice as no-one had heard of if. There were quite a few cross stitchers who came to my table but some people who had never tried crafts before so we had a fun evening. The pics below show my demo table and a couple of the pieces that beginners did. I used patterns from the Blackwork Archives for the beginners as there are some very good simple designs there that you can download.

The quilt workshop I went to was based on a design called Stained Glass Windows. I forgot to get a picture of the original quilt that Christine had made as a demo but it was made from bold plain colours with black sashing to give the effect of stained glass. We had been asked to bring any fabric from our stash and as I have rather a lot of Xmas fabric (ahem!) rather than buying anything new I decided I would use the workshop to make an Xmas version of the sofa throw WIP.

The quilt design seemed quite complex to start off with (especially for me as I am a little spatially challenged!) as you layer seven 10 inch squares of fabric and cut them all at once into seven different sized rectangles, then you lay them out so that each block has one of each of the seven colours.

You can make any size of quilt by cutting extra sets of seven fabrics. I will probably only use 6 of my 7 blocks for the throw – I may cut out pieces for another block to make 8 blocks once I see how big the 6 are (am hoping to get some more quilting done this afternoon in between hedge cutting and other domestic duties!) Here are the three I got finished yesterday, I decided to use green sashing rather than black as I thought it looked more festive.

I am very pleased with them as it is the first time I have done a sashed block and it wasn’t as hard as I thought. I had lots of help from the others and it was very nice to see all the different colour combinations that people chose and how they turned out.

In cake news this week I have been experimenting with my recipe and have made a different flavour – vanilla with a hint of ginger (Jake approves!) – here are the strawberry and chocolate star topped versions I made for quilt workshop.

Lastly I will leave you with some pics of my neighbours’ very cute cat, Henry, who was climbing in the clematis this week and very kindly posed for me. We don’t have any pets any more – all having died of old age – but Henry comes round a lot and is very friendly.

I just love that last pic – so cute!

Well I hope that you have a lovely week ahead – I am going to be super busy as I am out every night, all social and crafting which is lovely. Thanks as always for visiting and for all the lovely comments! I especially welcome all those new people who have visited through the photo scavenger hunt

Little stash, big ideas

May 1, 2011May 1, 2011 stitchesoftime5 Comments

Hello there

I have been having a very lovely week and I do hope you have too. It has been absolutely glorious weather, I have spent lots of time in the garden, doing both boring practical things like cutting the hedge ;-( and nice stuff like having a bbq and enjoying my flowers. My garden has really matured this year , the clematis is about 3 times the size it was last year and everything is looking very lovely so please indulge me while I show you a few pics.

Quite a lot has been going on indoors as well though this has been a relatively quiet week for me (like most of the population here in the UK) with only 3 work days and lots of lovely holiday. I celebrated the Royal Wedding by having a few friends round for cupcakes and Cava during the ceremony and a little buffet lunch afterwards. I thought Kate’s dress was absolutely stunning – just perfect for her. Will not post pics of that as apparently a third of the world’s population watched the wedding so I’m sure you will have seen it! However here are my cupcakes that I made for the do – the first chance I have had to use my cake stand!

On the crafting front I have been working on my pink Sublime baby cardi and my JBW Plum Pudding Xmas ornie – the latter is nearly finished. I also have started a new quilting WIP. I said a while ago that I wanted to organise my quilt fabric stash in a similar way to how I have seen other people sort things on their blogs so bought some plastic storage boxes and was surprised to find that I actually have very little quilt fabric (lots of other types of fabric but that is another story!) This is it basically.

Pretty poor isn’t it compared to some of the big names out there in the quilting world? However I am planning trips to the Malvern Quilt Show at the end of May and the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August so will have a chance to add to the stash. Sorting it all out did give me a chance to mull over a project I have had in mind for a while which is a small throw for the back of one of my sofas in the lounge. It is a brown leather sofa which is quite plain and since I have lots of lovely medieval style fabrics I thought I would make a start on cutting out some squares which I did this afternoon.

This is not the final layout just a bit of a working plan, I am thinking about a large central square of one of the dark red fabrics with gold silk sashing and then strips of all the other squares with red silk sashing in between each square. No time limit for this piece just something to pick up as and when I get time – things are about to get very hectic round here with term starting again and all my re-enactment and other things.

I have finished my Spring Exchange piece for the Seasonal Exchange with a whole 3 days to spare and that has been sent to the USA this week so will post pics of that once it has been received. I got mine from Lisa last week when I got back from holiday so here are the pics of it. Please do go and visit her blog as she has loads of lovely stitching on it.

It is very lovely, the finish is so neat with lots of really even blanket stitch and I love the backing fabric as well. It is hanging on my patio doors with last year’s seasonal exchange Spring ornie making me feel very happy – I do love this season camping, bbqs just being able to be outdoors lots – fabulous!!!

Finally Elmsley Rose asked me in comment a while ago what my header pic was – it is part of a crewel work picture I bought from E-Bay about 4 years ago, unfortunately no info came with it about date or maker but I did promise that I would take a pic of the full thing so here it is. It is not a brilliant pic as it is framed with glass so there are some reflections but I really like this piece – it hangs in my hallway.

Well I will love you and leave you and hope that you have a very good week ahead. I am looking forward to a quilting workshop next Saturday and as much crafting as I can squeeze into my tight schedule!

Bye for now and thank you for visiting.

Made with love – and surprisingly straight machine stitching!

April 10, 2011April 10, 2011 stitchesoftime3 Comments

Hello there everyone

I have just been sitting outside in my garden basking in the late evening sunshine drinking a glass of bubbly (only the cheap cava type!) and celebrating life. It has been the most glorious weekend here – hope you have had nice weather where you are.We have had a really unexpectedly hot weekend – it is never usually this hot in April in Yorkshire, to be fair it is often not this hot in Yorkshire in July.

I have spent most of the last few days finishing off my charity quilt that I posted about earlier this month. This has been a WIP for many months but I got a lot done on the last Quilt Group sewing day and wanted to get it finished to take to the Quilt Group meeting tomorrow. I am very pleased with the way it has turned out – the machine stitching is not perfect but better than I have managed previously.

Hospice quilt 1 — The quilt front with hand quilted hearts

Hospice quilt 3 — The quilt back made with fleece and a bunny applique

Hospice quilt 4 — Detail of the bunny face with embroidery

The quilt was machine pieced and then mainly machine quilted – I quilted ‘in the ditch’ round all the blocks which was good for developing my machining skills and shadow quilted around the dark turquoise border. The original design had the bunny on the front but the consensus at the quilt sewing day was that the front was very nice on its own so I just added some hand quilted hearts and backed it with fleece and the bunny applique.

In the style of one of the bloggers I very much admire, Hen House , I have taken pics of the finished item in the garden, lovely son Jake has been absolute star today and spent two hours mowing the lawn (not that you can see it in these pics) but it has been a great help. I have been on light duties only as my back has not been good so I have been deadheading!

I have posted lots of pics of my garden before but have been trying to take some more arty shots so this is one I took today which I really like, the garden is looking very splendid now which makes such a difference after the horrible wet and messy months.

Garden - April — Can never remember if this is a Skimmia or a Viburnum - anyway I have two and they are very pretty!

This quilt is going to a local children’s hospice which is opening soon so it has been a strange piece to make. I have enjoyed making it but I have been thinking a lot about who will use it and the things that they and their parents will be going through. It is a cot quilt so that make is very hard to think about especially as I have so many friends who have young babies or are expecting babies. But life is often not easy and all we can really do is support people who are experiencing difficult times, be it friends who you can help face to face or others who you can give a little gift made with love.

On the subject of made with love I thought that I would show you a few recent baking goodies – one of the reasons that my son is so nice and helps out with the garden is that he gets a regular supply of cake. These are adapted from a very nice recipe from Sainsbury’s magazine and are chocolate orange cupcakes – yum yum.

WI cake — Version 2 - with white chocolate stars

In other crafting news the pink Sublime baby cardi is coming on well – the eyelets have been a bit of a challenge and my knitting friend Barbara suggested stitch markers which I have been trying for the first time but have been getting a bit tangled with – they seem to slow me down a lot! The Spring exchange piece is almost complete. I am off to Spain on this week so am planning lots of lovely sitting on the terrace in the sun reading and crafting – I have four Benni Harper quilt mystery novels to take with me so am in for a lovely time!

If you read last week’s post about Mothers’ day you may remember I was writing about how much I admired all those Mums who have young kids who craft and this week at knitting group I met another person who does just that. She knits, she quilts and she blogs – it was very lovely to meet Justine and I have really enjoyed looking at all her posts and links to fab fabric sites that I have not come across before. I have saved them in my favourites and may have to indulge very soon! Please do go and visit her blog Sew Justine Sew as it is lovely!

Hope that you have a nice week ahead and see you all in a couple of weeks – thank you 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: quilting

Lovely life!

A Quiet Weekend

Just in time!

July in Yorkshire – and a giveaway winner!

Malvern Quilt Show

It’s not just for me you understand……

Never too early for Xmas crafting!

A Lovely Week!

Little stash, big ideas

Made with love – and surprisingly straight machine stitching!