It was lovely to see the sun again today!
It is very chilly here now, as we in England are starting to get some proper winter weather.
Saturday morning we had the forecast heavy snow, it even settled for a while, but then the snow turned to rain and was gone by mid-morning! By early evening the ground was frozen solid and the next morning DH had to run out and pour hottish water in all the bird baths to thaw them out. At lunch time we had sunshine, but it was definitely REALLY RAW COLD!
Anyway, my point was "the sunny morning made me take some photographs to show on my blog".
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I am again today joining Sue of Super Mom - No Cape for her Vintage Embroidery Monday and Stitchery Link Party.This week I have three projects I am trying to work on:
Patchwork:
I have recentky started this little patchwork project!
I "inherited" a package of patchwork squares, the sides of which are 1.5", and I am often thinking up ways of using them. This is a little hand stitching project. I haven't used my sewing machine yet, but it will have a frill around the top, which I will machine stitch in place. There will be some hand quilting - yet to be stitched.
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| The little purse in the backgound has been lurking at the bottom of my blog for a while and I thought it should have an outing as a finished item! |
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| 2nd side of both |
Could be, this will take a few weeks yet to stitch .......
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A Christmas project:
I have been intending to make this red fabric (seen below) into a small Christmas bag, in order to carry a food tray. However I want to do some simple embroidery on it before bag construction commences. I have now layered and basted the fabric ready for embroidering. I just need to find or draw two small patterns to stitch. "Watch this space" as they say!
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A project for Christmas
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Crewel Work:
On a visit to our local library at the weekend I was fortunate to find "The Stitching Book", by Search Press, which has articles on sewing methods written by eight different ladies, one of them being Kay Dennis with Stumpwork - which is something else I'd like to be able to do!
Not surprisingly my main reason for borrowing this book was because it has a good section on Crewel work. I was so excited to find the book - it was the only one on Crewel embroidery I could find in the library that day.
One really useful tip I learnt was that the best way to keep track of the many differing shades of wool is to thread them through an embroidery ring, making them easy to distinguish from each other.
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| Organising the shades of wool. |
Since last you saw my Crewel flower I have outlined the lower petals with three rows of stem stitch and added French knots - unfortunately the knots on the RH petal have to be frogged - they were the wrong shade of green! Stitched before I discovered this wonderful "new to me" method of keeping track of the colours.
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| Latest stitching |
I have recently found out that my flower pattern is from a book by Shelagh Amor. I googled Shelagh and found a review of her book, "Crewel Embroidery: A Practical Guide", on Mary Corbett's blog. Mary's review persuaded me this is a book I need to have! If you read Mary's review you will see that Shelagh's book includes instruction on how to design your own pattern and this sounded just what I wanted - as I don't like using someone else's ideas/designs! I have ordered the book from Amazon and it is now winging its way, from the USA, to me! (I feel I need to point out I have no affiliation with Amazon, Mary Corbett or Shelagh Amor).
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Might I suggest, if you haven't yet discovered Super Mom - No Cape's Vintage Embroidery Monday and Stitchery Link Party, you really should pop over to see what everyone has been stitching. And Sue has another Christmas Vintage Embroidery Pattern to share this week!
Thank you all for visiting today, and for your lovely comments on my previous post, which are always much appreciated!
I love reading what you have to say, and being able to visit your blogs too to see what is going on in your world at the moment.
Hope to see you next week!
Hugs!
Barbara xx
10 comments:
What fun things to read about (and see!) on your blog today! As a little thought - I imagine your library has the ability to order in books from other libraries in the area and maybe you can manage to find some crewel books that way. I do that all the time with our library if there's a book I want to see before I consider buying it.
You've certainly been busy! Your flower still looks good even with wrong coloured knots (not that I could tell!)
Hello Barbara! It certainly has turned cold.... we haven't had any snow here but the frosts have been very heavy. Love all your projects. The little purse is just delightful and I am looking forward to seeing the progress on your thread catcher and the Christmas project! Your crewel embroidery is looking lovely too! Have a lovely week! Keep warm! Christine x
Hi Barbara. I just love that little coin purse. Your crewel work is lovely. I HATE it when I grab the wrong shade of floss. Like everyone, I hate the frog stitch. I'll have to come up with a new name for it because I love frogs, lol.
Thank you Mary Anne.
Yes, you are right! I have ordered books before from our library, but generally fiction. When I visited the library this time I didn't know any particular titles to ask for, but since then I read Mary's review, found her list of other titles too - will see how I go with Shelagh's book when it arrives.
I hope your computer is behaving now!
Barbara xx
Thank you Chris! They were too dark! I know, nobody will know but me! But we are having an exhibition next year and if I put my stitching in I wouldn't be happy if I knew it wasn't right.
Hope you are having a great week.
Barbara xx
Hello Christine, The snow, frost and ice have left us! It's just cold and damp today! I'm still trying to decide the best way to quilt the thread catcher, but have managed some progress on my crewel work.
Hope you are keeping warm and having a great week! Barbara xx
Hi Carol! Thank you for your lovely comments. Know what you mean about "frogging it" we love frogs too! It's a strange name to use, isn't it! Talking of frogs, we are still finding newts in the garden - you'd think they would be hibernating - I'm not sure if they do, or not!
Barbara xx
Lovely purse and pretty crewel work. wish our library held such books, Wonder what your Xmas project is,, we will have to watch that space....
Thank you, Sheryl, for commenting, and a very big "Thank You" also for "following".
Barbara xx
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