Swap received and visit to Bristol

I can reveal the wallhanging that I made for the Four Seasons Monochrome Swap in its finished state and it's flown its way to the US and Vanessa was delighted to receive it and put it on her blog. It was posted to her just last Saturday and she received it yesterday - I was amazed how quickly it got to her.

I was inspired by Kumiko Sudo's book of Fabled Flowers and was able to use the various shades of greens to create this wallhanging of Lily of the Valley. I knew that Vanessa also liked blues so have fused a blue butterfly to decorate and also used blue green threads to embroider the stems and the shashiko pattern. There's a close up below of the flowers and butterfly and also a few sequins which I've used to represent dew on the leaves. I hand appliqued the quilt which I was able to do in the evenings.

And amazingly for me, I even remembered a label. How many of us finish a quilt project without a label on it - I'll hold my hand up straightaway!

This was also packed and posted last Saturday morning before a weekend visit to daughter Sarah in Bristol. Didn't take my camera so only 2 pics to show for a weekend away, both taken with my mobile. In the back streets near the Bristol Royal Infirmary (where she works) is the Bristol Eye Hospital. I had to take pics of two of the brick panel on the side of the building. This one of animals

and another of a mother and baby. Aren't they wonderful?

I didn't read the description on the panel and only just noticed that there was any writing when uploading. I looked for the Eye Hospital website and there is no mention of this work of art. I'll try and be more observant if I come across the panels again.

There is some more sewing going on and hope to post some more photo's soon.

Spring is on its way

The trouble with working full time is that the weekend goes so darned quick! After shopping, washing and other chores (which do need doing, no getting out of it!). We did have time to go into Wakefield this Saturday and see the food fair. Wakefield is in the area that includes Bradford and Leeds, is known as the Rhubarb Triangle, where traditionally rhubarb was force grown in large sheds heated by cheap coal that used to be mined. Nowadays there are only a few growers and this time of year is the forced rhubarb is in season so this was on sale together with other local food producers like bakers, cheesemakers, butchers and brewers.

Today we have discovered a couple of local large garden centres between Featherstone and Wakefield. It was lovely to see a lot of spring flowers - primroses, daffodils and lots of others and having a meander round. We do have a garden at this house, but it's all grass and being rented there's not a lot we can do about that, so it was good to have a wander to see what we could have in our virtual garden!

Thought that I would share a couple of pictures of some daffodils that I bought in the Simply Food M&S store at Leeds station. For just 99p I bought these daffodils in bud. By Saturday a couple had flowered (above) but by today most of them had flowered (below). Don't they look great.

Just to show that I have done some sewing (as I haven't blogged about any lately) here's a pic of what I've been up to below.

I've worked on a wallhanging about 17" square and this is the progress so far. I've used a pattern from Kumiko Sudo's book of Fabled Flowers to make this Lily of the Valley quilt for a Secret swap in the theme of monocolour quilts. I have progressed this since taking the photo yesterday as I've made more of the flowers and sewn them onto the quilt. This has been hand appliqued throughout so I've been able to do this in the evenings while watching the TV. I hope to have this finished during the course of this week to send out at on Saturday. The deadline is in mid March so I am on course to get this done and sent.

After this I'll be working on March's BQL calendar quilt. It will require a photo so I've sent off for some fabric sheets for inkjet printers, but I've got my fabric all ready to go with that.

Visit to Leeds

Nothing special about going to Leeds as I go to work there! Where I'm working heads away from the city centre and I don't get a lunchbreak to be able to explore the city itself, so today as DH was working overtime I had the opportunity to use my season ticket and go there to wander. Another reason for my visit was to see the Vintage Fashion Fair at the Town Hall which took place today. A fascinating mix of clothes, accessories, jewellry, old knitting and sewing patterns and haberdashery. Some women went there dressed in vintage clothing looking to add to their wardrobes. What was really fascinating was the building itself. Very grand Victorian architecture and the colours on the walls and ceilings it was all I could do not to stare at the ceiling.

This is the outside of the Town Hall. As you can see a lovely clear blue sky.

Below is a pic of the very ornate organ pipesAnd below looking towards the circle at the back of the hall. It was so light with the lighting and the sun shining in there was no need for using flash.

After there was a visit to the Art Gallery just next door to the Town Hall. Outside was this Reclining Woman sculpture by Henry Moore, who was a Yorkshire born sculptor. She wouldn't have looked this relaxed over a week ago with the cold weather and snow!

I had lunch in the Tiled Gallery coffee shop before going to see the exhibits in this Victorian building with a modern extenstion. There's more info about the gallery here. Janet has put some more pictures of the Tiled Gallery on her blog after her visit to the Gallery earlier this week (and she's taken better photo's of the cafe than me!).

Above is the wall with it's montage of tiles and below is one of the arched ceilings with hexagon tiles. There is a patch where some have been damaged, but otherwise a very impressive ceiling.Pictures above and below are of the stained glass windows in the library in the old part of the galleryAfter being at the gallery I had a chance to see some shops, went to Borders (I love that bookshop) and came away from that with a quilting magazine, Fabrications, to read on the train home. They have quite a few craft books, but I resisted the temptation.

Got a job and visit to Royal Amouries

I've now got a little less time for sewing as I have a job! This is temporary and could lead to a permanent job, which I will have to think about. It's in Leeds city centre, so I have to leave the car at home and DH gives me a lift to the local station and I join all the other commuters at the ridiculously early hour of 7.30 am! He does a day's work and still has time to collect me from the station in the evening so it's a long day. But I should be grateful - it is work - I was hoping for a better work/life balance may be that will come later.

This Saturday, after much mucking about in the afternoon we went to the Royal Armouries in Leeds. DH has been wanting to visit here for a while. It is big and really want a whole day here, but this is what we've managed to see while here.

This wonderful staircase which has swords, pistols, daggers and armour on the inside of the staircase. The pic above shows up to the skylight at the top.

This pic is taken from the fourth floor looking out to one of the porthole windows. There are more on the outside of the staircase.

In the oriental collection was this Indian elephant with its amour. There are little flower and elephant patterns in the squares of the armour.

And this pic shows the front.

This pic shows a replica of a Chinese soldier with his horse.

The Royal Armouries are in a development called Clarence Dock which has a canal basin off the Calder and Aire Canal which runs through Leeds and there were windows in the museum to get views across the city. As I said it does need quite a bit of time to see all of the museum so a chance to go again. We'd also been to Pizza Express there, so I was taken for a meal for Valentines Day, though it was hardly romantic!

I hope that tomorrow I'll have a chance to stitch so I may have something of a sewing nature to show then.

Ouch!

After the weekend in Richmond, I got in the car awkwardly and have got a bad back, ouch! My lower back is very sore and am getting a pain in the hip and down my right leg to the knee. Have had it checked out and am now taking ibuprofen and told to keep moving. Awkward to sit for very long, bit of a pain. I was looking forward to a weekend away in Devon this weekend, but have had to call it off as I can't drive for very long.

Meanwhile the story in the news yesterday was this...

Lots of snow. There were snow showers during the day yesterday and this was the view from the back bedroom window. 30cm of snow was expected yesterday night but it didn't materialise here.

Somewhere under there is my car! Today was a lot better; the sun came out and it's starting to thaw. The temperatures will drop tonight so will be very icy. Don't like the sound of that.

So yesterday I spent in hibernation. Stayed in and done some creative stuff. Above is my attempt at mixed media. This is my version of an item in Stitch magazine by Angie Hughes, but I had to improvise as I didn't have some of the items listed. The pink part is some scrim Bondawebbed onto a PVA'd calico base with strips of daisies on it. The blue bit is scrunched up tissue Bondawebbed onto the same base, with some slubby yarn zig-zagged on top. After painting some embossing powder was sprinkled on while the paint was slightly damp and I used a heat gun on that.

Also made was the BQL Calendar quilt challenge for February, with flip and sew strips. I used a variety of blue strips from my scrap bag, plus what remained of some blue bamboo print fabric that I had. I noticed that a couple of the fabrics used had frogs on, so they had to be included. So I named this little quilt "Frogs for February".

This is the back of the quilt on which I've used some of my hand-dyed fabric. I hadn't found a use for this and wouldn't use on the front of the quilt but is made ideal backing. Being virtuous and using up what fabric I've got, did it make any difference to my stash? None whatsoever!

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.

Been Out and About

Last Sunday I went to Nostell Priory, at National Trust property on the way to Wakefield. There was a craft show and secondhand book sale. The house was also open with the volunteers dressed in costume to celebrate Christmas. Children were given a challenge to collect stars for the magic wands that they found in the rooms. This pic above was the house. It was a cold but sunny day so a good day for a walk so long as one was well wrapped up.

This was the statue in the rose garden.
Outside the gift shop there were some metal doormats for sale. I could not resist taking a picture of this.
On Wednesday I took myself in the other direction, towards Doncaster. On the outskirts of the town is Cusworth House, which is run by the local council. The house was sold to then by the last remaining member of the family that owned this back in the 1980's. There has been a lot of work done to the building. Inside there is an exhibition of Quintin Blakes pictures from the Roald Dahl books. Not sure if pictures could be taken I didn't take any, but took a pic of the house, above.
And of the stables, which houses the coffee shop with a lovely collection of tea pots. Being mid week and again very cold the place seemed deserted.

Whilst in Doncaster I went to The Range. I saw this pink fluffy Christmas tree, together with other pink things around it - whatever next! But I could not resist taking a photo.We've also put our Christmas tree up. A fibre optic one in black (though we hadn't realised it was black until after we bought it a few years back). The bottom branches are little weak now and drooping a bit. So it may be it's last Christmas - ahhh.

November Bag and Other Bits

This is my bag for November, a Messenger bag. This was made of half square triangles pieced for the flap and as alternate blocks for the body of the bag. The strap reached to the bottom sides of the bag to form a gusset. I took the photo during the evening so although it looks blue/purple it is definitely a blue and used this with two other fabrics for the blocks. Turned out quite well though I wouldn't be in a hurry to make this again. I've now got to see what December's bag is, which will be the last one for this year. I'm pleased that I've seen this challenge through with this I've always had something finished at the end of each month. Others that have fallen by the wayside have been adding onto something in progress so never finished off.

Friday was my birthday, but not a good day, less said the better. Having moved I haven't anyone to share it with, so feeling a little down about that. However on Saturday DH and I went out on Saturday to the African Fabric Safari in Meltham, near Holmfirth. Nice small show, bought some fabric, bought a Christmas present, saw a demonstration of free machine quilting and a nice journey through the Yorkshire dales to get there, too.

Sunday saw us going to the Wakefield Model Railway exhibition
which is quite a large exhibition in the area. DH doesn't have a railway at present (it's still packed in several boxes in the garage). Wherever we've lived there has always been a model railway usually in a loft or garage, but this time when it's rebuilt it will have to be portable. It is amazing just how many children and adults are fascinated by the trains and how much detail goes into the detail of these layouts.

That's our weekend done, tomorrow will be Christmas shopping. It has to be done, so it's off to Meadowhall in Sheffield tomorrow.

Pontefract Castle

I visited Pontefract this afternoon and took time out to see the castle (hadn't been that way before). As it was about 3o'clock the sun was quite low in the sky so some pics are dark as the sun was behind the ruins.

The first pic is of the main tower (or what remains of it) as I went into the site

This one above is the Constable TowerAnd this is the view to the town and the church through the window.
There was a lovely pink sky looking out of the back bedroom window as the sun had set. Couldn't resist taking this, bit wonky isn't it, tried to get as much of the lovely pink as I could

Yesterday at Harrogate

Yesterday I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Harrogate. The first hall had a giant piece of knitting hanging over the doors leading into the next hall with the question "Have you seen my knitting?"
As a lot of the textile artists did not want photography though it was encouraged with the Committed to Cloth exhibit I then didn't know if I should put this on the blog. So here are pics of an exhibit called the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, organised by the Crafts Council and was still being added to by people sitting and crocheting at the exhibit.

I bought a few bits and pieces though of course it is tempting to spend more. I bought several magazines and looking though this lot it does seem an eclectic mix. Stitch (embroidery), Lets Knit, Cloth, Paper, Scissors (mixed media) and Quilting Arts Gifts. The books were Transfer to Transform (a bit arty) and Easy Does it for Friends (a bit cutesy). I'd also got some roving, an embellishing pack in pinks and mauves, a cross stitch pattern, purple sock wool and threads from Oliver Twists. The only bit of fabric was some calico because I was running short of that!

I'd also had a chance to meet up with Chris and Lesley from Durham in the morning and later in the afternoon, so if you are reading this it was lovely to meet up with you both and hope that you had an enjoyable day.

A really great day out and having wandered from the station through the town I'd like to visit Harrogate again sometime.