30 October 2016

Adding to Stash

This month there's been a couple of events that have lead to fabric purchases. It's silly but I don't need to add to an already large (for me) stash. I know there are people out the who have got larger stashes than me, but I am limited by space. While I am working I might as well spend because when the work stops I might not have the finances!

A couple of weeks ago Sewing Saturday, promoting sewing and fabric shops, which I think is organised by one of the sewing magazines, lead me to go to Christchurch.  There is an online business, called My Sewing Box, had an open day in a small office complex near the station. Run by two ladies they sell a small range of fabrics, yarn and haberdashery from their website. They use social media and I learned of their open day through Facebook. I bought some Christmas fabric from there.
I couldn't resist the owls in the top fabric.

Nearby in Bargates there is another sewing shop, The Little Sewing Company, which has a variety of craft fabrics and haberdashery and they also run sewing lessons.  I may book to do an introduction to dressmaking one in the future to gain more confidence in dressmaking, which I've not done for years.  Here I bought some Makower fabric, Radiance, which I could not resist.

Lovely, wonder what I'll use that far? Maybe I'll just stroke the fabric for now.

Not far from there is a new wool shop, They Crafty Knitter, which was probably needed after the long established one in the town, Honora, closed.  This is a lovely airy shop and their yarns nicely displayed and I bought a couple of balls of multicoloured yarn for my Mum as she wanted to try out the Corner to Corner crochet that was in a recent Crochet Now magazine.

But yesterday was another fabric opportunity. I needed to get some fabrics to add to my Splendid Sampler Collection as some are running out as I've usually bought fat quarters, but that's to the variety in the blocks.  Doughty's were at New Milton yesterday so went their with Mum and she wanted to get some backing fabrics for the Linus quilts that she makes. Perhaps we were fabric-ced out as Mum felt a little disappointed by the choice and I bought a bit too
I went for the green and white/red along with the cream and mustard dotty fabrics to go with the Splendid Sampler fabrics and I may use the grey/white spot too.  I bought the sausage dog and the rust/grey ones to add to stash.

In a couple of weeks I go on a trip to the West Country Quilt Show. See what happens there.  I must seriously go on a stash diet next year!

16 October 2016

Catch Up and Splendid Sampler 13

What has happened to this month?  Over halfway through already and being kept busy I had no idea until today that I hadn't posted anything since the beginning of this month.

A couple of months ago I started subscribing to The Bramble Patch's Box of Delights, similar to the quilt boxes that are offered to quilters in the US.  This is only the second box that they've done and this month contained Tilda fabrics and linen with instructions to make a rabbit cushion.  It was a fairly simple appliqué pattern and the cushion has an envelope backing to it.

It looked really pretty sat on the chair in our lounge.

Ive also been doing some knitting in the evenings, some of it is secret.  I can share this photo though of something I'm knitting for me:

This is a Hitchhiker Shawl, a pattern I've downloaded from Ravelry by German designer Martina Behm.  The yarn is from Kathryn Senior of Crafternoon Treats who hand dyes locally spun yarn and I treated myself to this.  With the variation of colours in this yarn it didn't need a fancy pattern and this pattern fitted the bill nicely.  I found the yarn bowl in the Tiger shop in Bournemouth which contains the ball really well.

I've done quite a few blocks for The Splendid Sampler, which has now at Block 71 today, so well over two thirds through now.  Although there are a few blocks I haven't tackled I may save some of those to the Christmas holidays as I'm only working one day out of the 3 working days between Christmas and New Year.  (Gosh, that's less than 10 weeks away!)  Talking of which I bought some Christmas fabric yesterday in Christchurch.

I digress - back to the Splendid Sampler

Block 63 - Icing on the Cake - designed by Kim Christopherson.  A simple appliqué block, I thought the pink fabric looked like sprinkles on the icing!

Block 64 - Rising Star - designed by Kathy Brown.  No it's not the name of a pub, I think you can just see the little star points in this nine patch block, the bright green really complements the reds.

Block 66 - Happy Thoughts - designed by Vanessa Goertzen.  Made a variation on this block, where each of the outside butterflies were there should have been 2 Flying Geese blocks in each square, but I didn't want to make tiny geese, so I fussy cut butterflies instead. I think that sometimes there's just too much packed into a 6.5" square.  This I've found with block 65 and this will be block to be tackled later.

A bit of a throw back with Block 56.  Appliqued but not stitched down.  This was At Home Anywhere  by Jennifer Keltner.  Had a lot of fun pulling out fabrics to go on this.  I found a shell that I fussy cut for another block but didn't use so it went on the house instead.

Block 67 - Bobbin Chase by Scott Hansen. A simple foundation pieced block and a chance to use some of my Dutch Heritage fabrics as I fussy cut the red for the centre.

Block 68 - Wild Roses (though this block is supposed to have one rose) Designed by Pat Sloan.  An appliquéd block the light grey was a good background for the vibrant reds and orange.

Block 69 - Full Circle - designed by Holly de Groot.  This block went together surprisingly easy, no seam ripper required! Although the finished size came to 6.25" so I had to trim to 6" so i wish I cut the outside of the concave semicircles a bit bigger to trim back to 6.5".  The blue fabric was a good choice as it looks like a whole piece instead of 2 halves.

Block 70 - Bows - designed by Jane Davidson.  This was originally a foundation pieced block and the printer seemed to have printed the pattern slightly small so had to think carefully how to execute this one.  Some people have opted for traditional piecing of the bow tie blocks and I found this was the best way for me too.  The cream fabric was a bit of the stretchy side and I had a few frustrations with that.  I won't be using that for future TSS blocks.



Lastly, Block 71  - First Stitch - designed by Kerry Green.  Again I had problems with printing, the inch measure of the bottom of the pattern page was correct, but I found the block was slightly smaller so I was not going to foundation piece, so working out the measurement of the strips I pieced these blocks, which are meant to represent large cross stitches.  This worked out well as I found this was a simple block to piece so long as the centre point of the strips were marked.

Nine blocks in all since the last TSS posting.  Blimey, I have been busy!

I have just updated my Splendid Sampler page with links to posts about previous blocks, right up to linking this post there.  I also post onto The Splendid Sampler page on Facebook as I've completed the blocks.  If you are on Instagram go to my page @suewilduk where I also post photos of my completed blocks.


05 October 2016

One Little Sheep

Weekend before last was Yarndale at Skipton. I couldn't go (I will one day) but contributed by sending a crochet sheep to Skipton as part of a fundraiser for the local hospice.  Apparently over 700 sheep were received from individuals and groups and from different countries.

I found my sheep amongst several pictures on Pinterest by searching for Yarndale Sheep and spotted mine quite easily. Please excuse the screenshot that I took on my iPad of Lucy's photo. Mine is second from right, second row up. There were some really fantastic sheep, a lot of imagination was put into them.  




Here she is again.

From reading about Yarndale from Lucy at Attic 24's post about the event (do pop over and have a look), I also found there was a list of the contributors from which I took a screenshot here
No 359, that's me. I did look to see if there were any other Sue's in Dorset, but no there isn't so that's definitely my sheep listed.

Good to know she was received safe and sound and hopefully has gone to a new home. Good to have done my bit to help charity funds. 

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