Mellow Yellow

After a weekend in Dorset last week, the first time we've visited the area since we moved to Yorkshire 5 months ago (where did the time go?), we've returned to work and had to catch up with things all week. So it was lovely to receive a quilt in the post, a lovely sunshiny yellow one, isn't it super? DH was working at home on Thursday, so he was able to pick up the package from the Post Office. The quilt was from Lucy, of My Byrd House, who's taken part in the Four Seasons Quilt Swap in which I'd made a quilt that I'd sent to Vanessa earlier in March (here's the link to my post about that quilt)

Inside the package was also this lovely batik fabric. This is called Solo by Timeless Treasures, which can be cut up and arranged to make different patterns. Seems a shame to cut it up!

By coincidence, on a yellow theme, I met up with Quarterjack Quilters, the group I used to belong to in Wimborne. Pat , the chairman of the group, demonstrated making this little bag, from one on Kumiko Sudo's patterns, on a spring theme with green and yellow, isn't it sweet. The little bit of blue shining inside the bag is a foil wrapped mini egg.This last photo shows the resulting postcards that were in progress from my last post. Suddenly realising that the last posting date for these were tomorrow (though no post on Sundays) I had to get them sent today. I did make 4 but only 3 were needed for this swap, so one extra will be kept as a sample.

Making postcards

Haven't made any postcards recently so good to go back to making a few of these little wonders. This swap is for Arts in the Mail Yahoo group with folds and tucks. I like making 3-d bow tie blocks and these are in progress with some small bits of folded fabric for prairie points which will go under the bow ties. As DH is working overtime this afternoon, sewing and singing along to Queen makes for a relaxing afternoon. I'll hand sew the prairie points during the evenings.

My 2nd Blog anniversary

Hard to believe but I have been blogging for 2 years now. My blog anniversary was a couple of days ago. I started when I took up the Take A Stitch Tuesday challenge on Sharon Boggon's blog. I only got about halfway through this challenge but I do have some samples to look back on. Pictures of this are also on a Flickr site but with the blog I could describe more about what I've made. Sometimes it's been difficult to keep it updated but I figure if I could do that at least once a week it helps me doing stuff, whether its quilting, stitching or knitting, so I can record my efforts. I know that some other things like views of Dorset and later Yorkshire have crept in but I like to share some of my photos, hope that the one or two people that read this blog like them too!Hope you like my "Tete a Tete" narcissi which have come out in flower this week. I think I may have said that we have a garden in our rented house but it's just grass and a patio, nothing else. So we're keen to get some things growing in pots to try and overcome the blandness of the garden.

This week my "stuff" has consisted of putting together some disappearing nine patch blocks, which I started in Poole and has moved up with me in strips. I've put those strips together and got 2 sides of the border added on. I bought the fabric for this last February at Villavin Farm and it may look like it might be my UFO to take with me to quilt when I go there again next month.

Also my hope for this year was to get a job and I've been taken up with 2 interviews this week. One was unsuccessful, the other I'm not so sure about either, but all good experience, shows how much I need to improve my interviewing skills. Next week I have two more, the job description of one of them would really suit me very well so must pull out all the stops for that one!

The last photo shows the postcard that I received from Susan Lenz in March last year, which I'd mentioned in my previous post. It has loads of texture with a background of black velvet, chenille yarns couched with metallic thread plus more machine stitching in metallic thread.

Cyber Fiber Exhibition and New Challenge

Yesterday in Columbus, Ohio, Susan Lenz opened her Cyber Fiber exhibition and I am pleased to say that one of my postcards is exhibited there. Here's a link to the post with the picture of this and if you go to her blog here its pictured under the postcards section and mine is number 149. The are some lovely things to see, so do take a look. I realised that I hadn't posted the postcard she sent in return and as it's dark it doesn't photograph well in the artificial light, so I'll take a photo for the next posting.

I've not been idle the past few days as I've taken part in BQL's new challenge for this year which are calendar quilts. The quilts, one a month, are of 12" or A4 paper size journal type quilts and January's quilt is based on Kandinsky's circles in squares. Sixteen squares with 3 circles within circles, the fiddliest bit was tracing the circles, Bondawebbing them and sewing them to secure. Once that was done, putting the square together, quilting and binding were completed very quickly. The fabric that I've used is a colour graded fabric called Aurora which I've had in my stash for ages. One piece goes from blue to green to yellow, another from red to brown to peach, and the last piece purple to blue to green so they produced quite a variation of colour.

Last Saturday we went to a garden centre just outside Barnsley where I bought pot of hyacinth bulbs and another pot of dwarf daffodils in an effort to have a little bit of spring in the house. The house we've rented has a garden, but only a lawn so we can't grow anything, very boring. I can see that we'll be buying pots of plants this year. Here's a pic of the hyacinth in flower, lovely isn't it? The scent is rather nice too.One thing that I was dreading when moving up to the north of England was the cold weather and in particular snow, don't like the white stuff. However from what I've heard it has been colder in the south than the north and my friend Penny has e-mailed me pics of Poole Park where the lakes and the fountain have frozen. I looked at the Bournemouth Echo to find pictures of the frozen south including Sandbanks. Think I've had a lucky escape!

New Year, New Look

Hope you like the look of my blog page. After posting last time I had a play about with the template, header and other bits and at last have the header looking quite good. New Years Day found me playing about with fancy stitches on the machine as the weather was grey and murky. I found an article in Popular Patchwork by Anja Townrow using machine stitches to make a vase of flowers. I wanted to try this out in a journal A4 size and the sample was larger than that so I've drafted out to the smaller size and see how it goes.

These two photos show the recent postcards that I received but hadn't posted earlier. The one about is of Christmas trees from a swap earlier last month on Arts in the Mail. Clockwise from the top are from Rita in Canada, Leah from USA and Angela from Chippenham, UK. The one below was from a Butterfly swap which took place in June on BQL Postcards and came from Margaret. Her card was delayed due to personal circumstances and to receive her delicate looking card was worth the wait.

Today I took the Christmas decorations down, I know I should wait until Twelfth Night, but already had enough of Christmas and want to get back to normal (whatever that is). So farewell to Brett Favre (the Green Bay Packer) and his friends for now as they get packed away until next December.

Look what I've got!

Idly sitting and flicking through the channels on Sky on Sunday I came across the Create and Craft channel, on which a rubber stamp collection from the English Stamp Company was being sold. It was mentioned that one could design a stamp and I immediately thought of postcards. I've always wanted to have a "Postcard" stamp to put on the backs but haven't seen anything suitable anywhere so this was just the job. Ordered on Sunday afternoon, arrived lunchtime today so I'm very impressed with the service and as you can see stamps very well too. I'm looking forward to making a batch of postcards (when the move is over) and being able to use this.

Needlefelt pincushion

I sent off a pincushion for the swap on the Yahoo UK Embellisher Group and this went to Jean in Devon, known as Genie. I was given some blue roving which I needlefelted into one large piece and cut out the shapes. On the long piece that forms the side of the pincushion I needled some organza ribbon as I like the effect of organza being scrunched into felt. After some hand embroidery I added a couple of circles of yellow felt and added a rainbow button.

This design was loosely based on the pretty little pincushions on Big Jen's Flickr site (she also has a blog link from this, though I have to admit this pincushion didn't seem little, but I was quite pleased with it.

I've now taken a pic of my painted postcard from my last posting on it's own. I've now added this to the "try something new"challenge on the Arts in the Mail Yahoo group, for August. This should be winging its way somewhere soon. I think this looks very pretty in spite of not having much embellishment on it. I know now what to do with my stitching samples as it turned out very well.

Playing around

Recently I've been playing around with a few things just to see how they work. The first pic is of rust dyeing. When I was at the Festival of Quilts I met up with a few people from the BQL Yahoo Group. Sandy Snowden's stall was the meeting place where she showed examples of her rust dyeing and gave some instructions. Someone else mentioned that they used salt water to soak the fabric and sprinkled wire wool onto the damp fabric. Hmm.. I have salt in the cupboard and some wire wool too, let's try it. The damp fabric was placed overnight in a plastic bag with the wire wool and was washed out the next day. I'm quite impressed with the little speckly bits on the fabric so I might do this again sometime.

Another thing that I have tried is painting on a quilted piece. Other quilt artists have used this but I've never tried it. I have this piece of "quilt sandwich" on which I did some free machine practice for one of the bags that I've made (2nd pic), so cut to just bigger than post card size (3rd pic).

I've painted with white acrylic paint as a sort of primer, then mixed purple with the white and painted over that. I had some Stewart Gill bronze metallic paint which I dabbed over the whole thing with kitchen towel

The result is in the 4th pic on the top right of the photo (should have taken one on it's own really) when I'd finished paining and sandwiching together for a postcard.

The other postcards in the 4th pic are finished off UFO's that were hanging around. The one on the top left is wavy quilted using variegated threads on fabric paint dyed fabric. On the bottom left are oak leaf prints with a layer of Bondawebbed organza on top with hand stitching. The bottom right is a fabric woven card with Chevron stitches.

The last photo, which is a bit on the fuzzy side is some mulberry bark which I've glued onto calico then painted with some acrylic paint (that's on the left). After painting the surface of the plastic was quite wet so I took another piece of calico to soak up the wet paint. Not quite sure what to do with these two pieces. I'm sure the paint soaked calico will find its way to becoming a postcard back.

Seems to have been quiet on the blogging front from me. I'm still sorting through loads of stuff (where did it all come from?) so I'll have a little less to take with me when we move.

ON THE MOVE!

This is the chaos that is my sewing bench - which is on one side of one of the bedrooms, the other side has the computer and its paraphernalia. The reason for such a mess is that we are on the move.

DH was made redundant from his job this month after having a month of being "under threat of redundancy" we both knew what the outcome would be.

He has found another job which he'll be starting in October, which is good, however the down
side is we'll have to move....to Sheffield. After over 20 years of being in Poole, it is a very big move for us. But of course we must go where the work is.

The plan is he'll go up there, find somewhere to live and I'll follow later probably at the end of October, beginning of November. We'll rent a house and let our own house out down here in Poole.

So started the weekend with a clear out of one wardrobe, then another and there is soooo much stuff that the bedroom looks the mess that it is, these pics were taken last night but it was so much worse on Sunday afternoon!! It is amazing how much stuff accumulates - and it's not the end!

I hadn't got around to posting the latest postcards that I made at the end of July. Hot on the heels of the July bag I finished off the butterfly postcards that were due to be swapped on the BQL Postcard group. My postcards were made with butterfly fabric background with organza on top. Cut out butterflies were bondawebbed on top with another layer of organza and free machining to hold together. So far have had 3 postcards in return the picture below. I always find it amazing that one theme can produce such different results.

Postcards received and made

Here's some pics of postcards that I've received recently. The one above is from the Arts in the Mail June challenge of Yoyos (or Suffolk Puffs). The cards had the have at least 3 yoyos. Mine is shown in this post which was sent to Chris in Co. Durham. In return she sent me this lovely lady. I took part in a small exchange, also with Arts in the Mail called Fancy Stitches and mine were sent out earlier this month and I've received these from Annette, top left, Jenny, bottom left, and Francoise, on the right. I've just realised that I haven't posted the ones that I have made, but if you go to the Flickr images on the sidebar, they are shown there.

The photo below shows some fabric weaving cards that I have made which I will demonstrate to a local quilt group in September. The top one is decorated with fancy machine stitching and the one below is decorated with hand stitching.
While I was sitting at the computer last night I saw this lovely sky, wasn't it lovely? My mobile phone came in very handy for taking this on night mode. I'm sure I take more pictures with the phone than I make calls with!

Goosey, Goosey

I found a challenge I could not resist - YoYo's or Suffolk Puffs. On the database on Arts In the Mail Yahoo Group the June challenge was to make a postcards with at least 3 Yoyos. I already had a prepared background with green flowers and took the fabrics for the yoyo flowers from my scrap bag. The vase was a rectangle of fabric on pelmet Vilene which was fused onto the background, with the addition of bead leaves and a butterfly charm, these flowers look really pretty.

Then came the Geese. The June bag for the BQL Bag Challenge have 32 flying geese, 30 of which are on the outside and 2 on the pocket inside the bag. On Saturday anticipating the bag instructions I made the geese. These are constructed 4 at a time with goose (large triangle) being a large square and the sky triangles from the 4 smaller squares sewn at each corner. Hard to explain but a quick and less wasteful method of making these blocks.
All 32 were quickly produced in an afternoon, when the decidedly dodgy weather could not make up its mind whether to rain or not. The weather of late is still making the news with many places receiving half the June rainfall in just one day!

Fastenings postcards

Here's the latest set of postcards that I've sent out in the post this week. These were a swap for the BQL Postcard group on the theme of fastenings. I've used poppers, buttons and ribbon for the fronts with paper fastener brads for the reverse (as the pink didn't go with the other colours on the front!).

Above pic are the fronts of the postcards
Next is the flap open (it's held down by the popper) which has a shell picture underneath. Think I must be influenced by the grandchildren's board books.
And finally the reverse with the brad in the corner.

I only needed to have 5 postcards and made 6 so there's one spare which will go in my personal collection of ones that I've made. In the swap I've had 3 in return and when I have the full set I'll put a pic on the blog.

I will be off to Brittany from this weekend for a week and hope I can post some photos on my return. A bientot.

Tulips

Having gone through the Easter weekend and back to normal again, the weekend just whizzed by, how did that happen! We did see members of the family over the holiday weekend and managed to get a trip into Bournemouth, though the weather was awful with high winds, rain (some places had snow!) and cold. I did get a bunch of tulips from Peter and Diane (my brother in law and his partner) in lovely colours and this was the influence in a postcard that I made.

This postcard, which is a shadow applique sandwiched layers of organza and some Angelina fibres trapped is going to the US in a swap with Susan Lenz for the Cyber Fiber exhibition. She sent me a gorgeous card with velvet and chenille which is shown here.



I also finished off a hydrangea wallhanging, from Kumiko Sudo's book Fabled Flowers. It's only taken me since last summer to finish this. Because it is mainly hand sewing I've saved this project for when I've needed something to sew at quilt meetings. Having quilted it the last bit was getting the borders on. I pleased with this it has been worth the wait.

First Postcards of 2008

I've been a little tardy with posting on the blog lately please do excuse me but I have been productive and more will come later. I've made postcards for a Scraps and Stitches swap on Arts In the Mail Yahoo Group. I had 3 to make with 2 going to the US and one in the UK. Having made a batch as one whole piece before I decided I would take this approach again.

In my scrapbag I used odd square of fabric and tried to look for pieces with pictures on them. I've used selvedges before and added them in too. I also found some triangles and made them into quarter or half squares.

I thought how the back looks more interesting than the front and took a pic of that before it was covered with Bondaweb, Pelmet Vilene and backing fabric.

The next pic shows the cards separated and with false binding on them. I hadn't tried this before as I normally use a zig zag or close buttonhole stitch to neaten then edges. The technique was easy, though fiddly but left a nice neat edge so I'll use that again sometime.


The 4th pic shows a different card which is a
February challenge card, using a plain fabric and one thread for the same Yahoo group. I cut the fabric 7" x 5" and marked a 5" x 3" rectangle and stitched twice around it in variegated thread. I then made a wave pattern in the smaller rectangle. With fusible tape around the edge of the fabric this was fused onto the back of the Pelmet Vilene before the backing fabric was fused onto that. A wholecloth quilt on a postcard!

It was great to get back into the swing with cards again and there will be another swap this month
for a different Yahoo Group and that'll be fastenings. Will have to get my thoughts together on that one.

Postcards received

Here's some postcards I've received from recent swaps. The first 2 being the Letters swap in the BQLPC groupThe top one from Kate with S's in different formats including braille dots, embroidered and a tag, the bottom one from Caroline with scrabble tiles printed and on the right from Sheila.

The next two are (top) from Wendy using different fonts for her S's and (bottom) from Ruth with Sue on a quilted letter fabric background.
The last two are from the confetti swap with the Arts in the Mail Yahoo Group. There are 4 cards but received two so far. The top one is from Dawn with some lovely rainbow fabric scraps and the bottom from Flicsha with little bits of fabric and sequins.

I enjoy making postcards and even more so receiving them, its great to see them on my doormat after getting home from work.

More Postcards to Go

I made another batch of postcards which are going in the post tomorrow. These are for the theme of "Confetti" for the Arts in the Mail Yahoo Group that I belong to and will be winging their way to Wiltshire, Turkey, US and Australia.

I made one large piece of calico with some Steam a Seam fusible web. I chopped up some trimmings of Kaffe Fassett fabric which I sprinkled onto the fusible. On top of that was some bits of shiny gift tissue (that's the shiny bits you see in the photo, knitting ribbon yarn, Angelina and shiny yarn. I'd covered this with black tulle and ironed the whole lot. After covering with free machining I then cut them into 4 postcard sized pieces and edged with fuzzy yarn. The second photo shows confetti tissue which wrapped a present I received a few months earlier which I glued onto craft Vilene which again was trimmed into 4 pieces and glued to the card backs.

I'm starting to like working all the cards in one whole piece - it is so much quicker than working each individual one. I worked this way for the letters postcards that I made earlier this month. So far that's it for this year for postcard swaps unless there's a swap that I really must make. With my other son's wedding near Christmas and other things going on with the run up to Christmas itself I'm now going to concentrate on the unfinished stuff that's hanging around

Postcards

I've completed 6 postcards on the theme of Letters for the British Quilt List Postcard Group. I decided to take the letters that are found on the selvedges of fabric. Digging out as many fabrics as I could that had names on the selvedge I gradually built up on a 13 inch piece of Vilene. After ironing onto the Vilene I then used varied sizes of zig zag with orangey variegated thread. Then ironed onto Bondawebbed craft Vilene and backing before cutting up into 6 postcard sized pieces.

Using some rub on letters, which I first tried out on a piece of fabric and thought it would work, I used these to highlight the names of the recipients and also the first letter of Postcard. Took a bit more work but the effect was worthwhile. I also used the colour samples on the selvedges by Bondawebbing these between the message and the address portions of the cards. These will be posted tomorrow as they are due before the end of October.