Chelsea Flower Show

I've had a draft about the Chelsea Flower Show for a few weeks, but things have been busy since then so I've not had the opportunity to catch up with this. So I thought I would share this now.

Sarah bought me the tickets for the Chelsea Flower Show for my birthday, last November.  This wasn't a surprise as I am an RHS member and had to order the tickets on her behalf. We were also able to go on one of the member days, so it was a little less crowded on the Wednesday we went than on the public days.

We travelled up to London on Tuesday and had a little time to go to the Chelsea Physic Garden, just down the road from the Royal Hospital. This is a little oasis of calm in a big city as the walled garden cuts out a lot of noise and also created a microclimate for the plants. This garden was founded in the 17th century by Hans Sloane (after whom Sloane Square is named) for the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.  We had a tour around the garden, which was arranged in areas for healing, poisonous plants, tropical plants and plants for other uses in one half of the garden.   The other part of the garden had plants arranged in their genus families, a small vegetable garden, useful plants (useful for manufacturing, dyeing, etc) and perfumed garden.

We stayed in a hotel near West Kensington station so it didn't take us too long to get from Sloane Square back to there.

The next day was the Flower Show itself.  It was just a case of following everyone from Sloane Square station to the Royal Hospital.  It was amazing, so much to take in so many things to see although we had seen a couple of the BBC programmes covering the show (not too many, didn't want to spoil what we were going to see).  Not long after going in we came across the poppy garden in front of the Hospital.

This was just amazing, hundreds and thousands of knitted and crochets poppies from around the world,  which was originally to commemorate the Australian soldiers killed in the First World War and had just grown in 3 years with poppies from around the world.

I could include so many photos that I took of the day, but personally my favourite gardens were the Modern Slavery Garden, where the colours of the flowers changed around the garden.  The doors were to represent the hidden slavery that happens today, behind closed doors and looking forward to a day when there are no slaves.

Another was God's Own County - A garden for Yorkshire, which I found later although it didn't win a Gold Medal, it was the People's Choice.  I just loved the stained glass background, which was inspired by one of the windows in York Minster

Or perhaps it was the quilt maker in me that liked this.

In the Grand Pavillion I took a lot of photos of Clematis

Aren't they just gorgeous, the colours are so lush

And we also joined the queue for the Pullman carriage that visually transported you from the garden to tropical ferns on the exit out.

 Time for a selfie!

More things to see

Sarah and I had a really brilliant day although the weather was cold and could not decide whether to rain or not (but it didn't in the end) and got back to Poole late but happy.

Time Ticking Away...

In my last post I mentioned about buying a kantha embroidery clock kit from Angela of Fenland Textile Studio who appeared on Create and Craft.  Just under 3 weeks from ordering I've finished it last week.

Here it is

Ta da! It sits just about well beside the wardrobe in my room, so I now have a clock, no excuses for getting carried away with my sewing!

True to Angela's word everything was included in the kit right down to the sewing needle, except for the battery, so work could start on this straight away.  The design had to be traced onto the white fabric which I did with a water erasable pen, and found a permanent marker to mark the middle of this (I didn't want that to be washed away!).

For those not familiar with kantha stitching it is a form of quilting with a top layer of fabric with two layers of muslim (cheesecloth) underneath.  The fabrics are held together with running stitches through all the layers of fabric and some of the threads used are of different thicknesses, so the hare is of a thicker perle thread than the green squares or grey numerals which defines it more.

After working the design and removing the markings it was then time to mount in the frame and put on the clock mechanism.  I was quite worried about this as the small hole had to get increasingly bigger to accommodate the spindle of the clock coming through the fabric, but with David's help it did get through and the hands mounted.

This was a brilliant kit and a really easy embroidery to do.  There may be some more kantha designs I might do in the future.

Meanwhile I went out today with my Mum to Sammy Miller's Motorcycle Museum in Bashley, New Milton, where there is a craft shop called Nicola's Craft and Gift Shop.  Mum needed to buy some fabric and found everything she was looking for. I resisted temptation as I will be going to the National Quilt Championships at Sandown on Saturday.  However I could not resist this…

Who could? I've made a start on one of these little owls already!

Catching Up.....

I've not fallen off the ends of the earth, I'm still here, but haven't had much time to blog of late, so here's a quick précis of what I've done recently.

I've been here

Chelsea Flower Show. Went 2 weeks ago with my daughter Sarah. Never went before and we had a great time.

I bought this, from Create and Craft, which arrived within days.

That's the box with the photo on the front. The kit contained everything except the battery for the clock    mechanism.  I have just finished the sewing this evening and will have to remove the water erasable marking before I make up the clock. This will be for my sewing room.  I enjoyed the Kantha stitching and may have another go at this.

We had a dinosaur hunt with the grandsons Saturday before last. This was at Itchen Country Park in Southampton.

Saw a wallaby and joey (amongst other animals) at Tilgate Nature Centre in Crawley with the granddaughters last Saturday.

Another couple of blocks for the Splendid Sampler

 

So I am keeping busy.

Splendid Sampler 7

I'm continuing with making blocks as they come up and also catching up with more complicated ones. Since the last posting I hadn't completed the foundation paper pieced blocks, but yesterday completed these three

The first of the blocks Block 15, Family Affair by Janice Ryan of Better Off Thread I'd first tried printing off from my iPad but the print out came out at the wrong scale and smaller than it should have been.  Printing from the computer made this the correct size so much better. After I took the photo (below) I realised that the flowery fabric seemed to make a 'ring' around the shape, quite pretty.

Next was Block 28 - Stitching Fashion by Charise Randell of Charise Creates which has a lovely strapped dress, together with a reel of cotton and a needle.  This seemed very tricky with lots of little pieces for the bodice part of the dress.  I thought I was running out of the background fabric and it wasn't until I finished and clearing my sewing space that more of this fabric turned up so have a couple of pieces of an alternative appear in this block.  I omitted the cotton reel and needle, adding the dress fabric on each side instead.

Quite pleased to have finished the two blocks another foundation pieced block was announced Scrap Happy Hearts by Christa Wilson of Christa Quilts. Being on a roll I got this done later yesterday afternoon and used scraps from previous SS blocks and didn't need to cut into more fabric.  When posting my photo on Facebook, Christa herself liked the variety of colours in this.

Other blocks I've made recently are these ones.

Block 24 - Inspector Side Kick by Michele Foster. This was a pieced block with Flying Geese which I've seen in red and black and using red floral fabric for the corners and middle.

Block 26 - Dreaming of Dresdens by Jane Davidson. This block had little circles with stems in alternate blades of the Dresden fan, but I decided to omit this. I used a butterfly fabric to highlight the centre.

 Block 27 - Sewing Machine by Pat Sloan. A fused applique block to which I added a fussy cut cotton reel and strip of a selvedge fabric that I had in my stash.

Block 19 - Measure twice, cut once.  The block was done a while a go but needed to have to words embroidered one. The yellow fabric matched the measuring tape twill ribbon and the fabric was reversed for the turn in the tape.

Another embroidered block that I've finished was Block 20 - Nature's Walk by Vicki Tucek.  I don't get a lot of time for hand sewing and after a day at work sometimes my eyes aren't always up to the task, so I sewn the outlines of the pattern in back stitch and the veins of the leaves were seen in fly stitch.  I had a couple of fabric butterflies so I utilised those as a finishing touch to this.

Last week I took a photo of the collection of 25 blocks. Although I started with a red and white combination other colours gradually crept in but keeping the red element quite strong  seems to be bonding them together.

So there you are, my current round up of blocks. I've very nearly caught up with them all, just one outstanding, which I don't think is at all bad.

Bags and Pouches

I had a recent request from my granddaughters to make swimming bags and although I hadn't made them before I've made other bags, so other than a waterproof lining it should be easy.  Sophie wanted dinosaurs and Isobel wanted flowers, so flowery fabric was easy, but I could only get a fat quarter of dinosaur fabric at the time, which was not quite big enough.

I picked out a colour that would co-ordinate and cut into 2 thin strips which made the bag a better size.  I saw a tutorial on Vicky Myers Creations blog, which repurposes a shirt as a swim bag.  Having bought a shower curtain to use as the lining I set to work.  Oh does it slip and slide! Of course you only have one chance to sew it in right and you can't use pins, so one lining was wasted but not completely as it could be cut down for cosmetic/toilet bag linings. Another lining was cut but the casing just about fitted the piping cord used for the drawstring.  This is a case when you wished the first bag came out as well as the second which went a lot better.

Next was thinking about finishing the ends of the cords without them unravelling, i'd almost forgotten I had a bottle of Fray Stop and painted that quite liberally onto the cord ends, which seems to work (touch wood!).

It was good to make something that would come in extremely useful.  Hoping the girls may have a badge or two to sew on soon.

Last month I made a pouch of some quilted square from International Quilting Day and I have four more made.  They do look really good.  I used a tutorial on You Tube by the Gourmet Quilter, Susan Clare although all sides of the squares used were unfinished as the blocks were already quilted and I added some more stitching to them.

I've now used all the blocks from that day now and they will go to Project Hope.  Here's a closer view of two of them

And finally, my friend Val very kindly took some blocks with her to make another quilt which was joined together and bordered with a yellow batik fabric.  She showed everyone at Bourne Quilters meeting.  The legs belong to Penny who held up the quilt for me to take a photo.

Although it was a couple of months ago now, it was a reminder of what a good day it was and how much was achieved.

Art in the Garden

I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks, so I'm going back to Wednesday before last when David and I visited Hillier Gardens between Romsey and Winchester on the first of the lovely Spring days this year.   As well as the wonderful gardens to walk around there are some sculptures in the garden. 

We were greeted with this large wicker pine cone, then a little later this lady in the pond

The magnolia walk, although the magnolia blossom was passing over.

And Cherry blossom

More pictures of art we found in the gardens.

And some bluebell woods

It was a lovely time out, followed by a visit for tea in Romsey, where we found this plaque on a wall by the tourist office, opposite Romsey Abbey.

Which described a lovely day.