Blists Hill and Clematis Postcards

Still continuing my catch up from our holiday. After the Festival of Quilts and our return to Yorkshire we visited Blists Hill Victorian Town, which is a living museum.  We went there many years ago, but after the BBC recently showed the series Victorian Pharmacy, which showed the changes in the Victorian era through the pharmacy shop, in 4 programmes, we decided we could do a detour to visit there.

A lot has changed with the orginal building still being there, but with the addition of a newer street with haberdashery, hardware and fish and chip shops, post office and photography studio.  I could not resist taking photos of the haberdashery shop.

I'm having trouble with uploading the photos so here's an explanation.  The top photo is the outside of the shop, the middle shows the sewing machine sign to the left of the shop.  Inside were a couple of displays with sewing machines and other linen displayed around them.  One of the hand machines is used by the ladies in the shop (dressed in costume).

 I managed to find some quilted items too amongst the cottages at the museum (though I can't now remember which cottages they were in!). As you can see the top photo has a bed with hexagon quilt and also a crib with a crochet blanket on it.  the middle photo shows a cot with what looks like a crazy patchwork cover.  The bottom photo shows a chair seat with Suffolk Puffs (Yoyos) on top and on the floor is a rag rug.

Whilst I was there I saw a clematis plant growing against a wall and that was just right for my postcards which had the theme of "Something Purple", so it was just the right inspiration for that theme.  Below are my postcards which have made this last weekend and posted just a couple of days ago to swappers in the BQL Postcard group. I'd used a couple of clematis flower shapes that I drew onto paper then traced to Bondaweb and also cut out leave shapes backed with Bondaweb too.  The fabrics for flowers and leaves were hand dyed some time ago, but that gives a lovely variation in shades of purple and green.

This weekend I'm hoping to go to Great Northern Needlecraft and Quilt Show at Harrogate, so more photos to be taken.  It is a lot smaller show than the Festival of Quilts a couple of weeks back, but last year was quite enjoyable to take things at a slower pace at this show.