Saturday 2 May 2015

April To May


Afternoon chums!! Isn't the above ATC gorgeous? It was made by the lovely Janet as her contribution for the Five Gold Rings from our 12 Days of Christmas swap.
I was very confused when I saw the package as I was trying to remember what I could possibly have ordered to come in such an interesting envelope, but it turns out that Janet is a whizz at making her own envelopes (very environmentally friendly!) using leftover catalogues, apparently this one used to be for Boden.


The stitching on this is impeccably neat- button hole stitches over ordinary washers, aren't they lovely? Apparently Janet had a bit of a debate on whether to add more embellishment but didn't want to hide the beautiful colours in the hand dyed purple  fabric background. I think she was right, it makes the beautiful embroidery stand out as well as the fabric.



Today's post is a bit of a hodge podge of random things that I have photographed this week. Lots of lovely bits that have caught my eye. We had the most amazing rainbow the other day, you could literally see the entire arc! It started in some kind of shed at a nearby farm and ended in one of our neighbour's back gardens. I wonder what they spent their gold on?




And we took the Girl Guides up to one of our organisation owned woods- something I was really looking forwards to as it is a Bluebell wood!



The weather was lovely and the Bluebells were everywhere you looked, absolutely stunning.







The seated area above is where we have our big campfires!




Today I have finally started preparing my hexagon quilt for the final stitches. I made a sandwich out of my backing fabric (a lovely faded blue and white star pattern), a gorgeously soft cotton and bamboo blend batting and of course my hand stitched top.


It has quite literally taken me all day and was back breaking work. Ironing the layers, layering them, re-positioning them, positioning them again, pinning using my new special curved safety pins, unpinning when I realised the fabric had moved and no longer matched up, re-positioning again, pinning once more, and then making huge running stitches starting from the centre of the quilt and working outwards, both horizontally and vertically, then some more unpinning when all of the basting stitches were complete!



So basically all I have to do now is to find my quilters hoop, and starting from the beginning of the quilt, hand stitch around every single hexagon shape, then trim and add some binding and a label to finish!! Not much then!!


I love the fabric for the back, it has taken me quite a long time to decide what I wanted as I didn't want anything that would clash horribly with all of the colours on the front. I had sort of settled on a white on white polka dot but when I saw it again I changed my mind. Luckily, working in a fabric shop I get some great advice and was offered a huge ex-display piece of this gorgeous blue/white star. Because it is ex-display it has a kind of faded vintage look about it which goes so well with all of my faded, vintage looking fabrics on the front!


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