A Puffin Bag!

 My lovely friend Benta, as well as giving me that cute papoose pouch, also gave me two beautiful puffin tea towels.

Too good for drying the dishes, I decided.  I wondered about pinning them to the wall just as they were.  I wondered about making two matching wall quilts.  I finally decided to make a shopping bag with them - that way they would get plenty of use, and would make me happy every time that I use it!

This is the 'big' side, and below, the 'little' side.  Plenty of fabric to make the handles, and even a little left over for other projects!  Lots of fun to be had!

I am really pleased with my new bag - thank you, Benta!

Thirty Fifth Anniversary!

Our Coral wedding anniversary - so, even though we don't often exchange anniversary gifts - I made this coral fragment, based on the methods taught by Meredith Woolnough, in her book, Organic Embroidery.  I thoroughly recommend it!  Lots of ideas, tips and tricks.  I'm sure that you will be as mesmerized as me!

I started with my design for a coral - although I did wonder if I'd made a winter tree branching system instead, even with the cross joining 'limbs'.

After transferring it onto water soluble fabric (using a water soluble pencil) I started to stitch it.

It's hard to tell, but I actually used three different colours of thread - perhaps they were too similar to each other, as it's difficult to see them clearly.

After dissolving the fabric and drying the embroidery, it was time to mount it using pins.  This photo is where I try to show the depth behind the embroidery, and the shadow that it casts.

Finally, here it is mounted.  Again, I'm trying to show you the shadows!

This wasn't my first attempt - but is certainly my largest, finishing at about 7" in diameter.  My earlier attempts were of leaves, and were all much smaller than this, and great as samples whilst I learnt the techniques!
 

And was my DH pleased?  Yes, I think that he was!

Sashiko Samples

I've been enjoying an online course through Domestika, provided by Kate Ward, who is well known as a sashiko enthusiast and teacher.  

This picture is a warning to pay proper attention to what she (or any other teacher) tells you about spacing.

My attempts at the lovely rice flower design  - third time lucky!  The first time I forgot to leave any gaps between the stitching lines when I was setting it out.  The second time I mis understood my own notes (!) and left two stitching line between the stitched lines, instead of two spaces (one stitching line), so I didn't have many motifs on the piece.  Third time lucky!  I finally got the spacing right, and got the distribution of motifs right, and they were lined up with the proper diagonal lines working too!

The first pattern that was taught was this simple cross.  Nice and straightforward.

Can you see the grid drawn behind it?  I used new stencils for this project.  It's nice and fast to use them for drawing lines, but the rest of the samples I used the dots stencil, as I preferred it to stitch on, even though it took a tiny bit more time to do so.

I could iron the grid away, but I quite like having it there for reference in my sample.

This is a person and flower stitch (I can't quite remember the proper name for it, but that's close enough!).

Kate recommended that you draw one or two motifs out as you go, so you don't get in a muddle with your stitch pattern - and also that you stitch some of your verticals and then some of your horizontals to make sure you know what you are doing!

Not the neatest sample, but you can see that it's the pattern that I want it to be.

Finally, we moved on to the rice flower pattern - the one that I struggled to get the spacing right on!

This, by the way, is not the right spacing - I should have left a gap between the lines of stitching.

However, the photos are to show me that 1) the stitches are a little shorter that the full length between the dots, and 2) how the motifs are made up with four directions of stitching.

You can see how it's building up here.

But actually, I didn't feel like finishing this sample, as I knew it wasn't right.

This was the one where I actually nailed it!  I'm so pleased!

Of course, at some point I will make some more samples, and perhaps make a sample book with them.  

I was pleased that I finally got the spacing right for these though!  Doesn't it look pretty? And is supposed to be a good strong one for visible mending too, rather than just decoration like I'm doing here.

I might also look for stencils with the grid that is a little tighter than this one. But that's a project for another day!
 

Papoose Pyramid Pouch

Aren't these cute?  Benta made the blue one for me - and was kind enough to give me a template and instructions too, so that I could make my own.

So, all beautifully pyramid shaped when closed....

....when you loosen the cord / thong you can see the body and the hood......

.....and when it's beautifully flattened and fully open, you can see why it is called a papoose pouch!

I can see that they would be lovely for mini presents on a tree - I might just have to make some in Christmas fabrics for that very thing!

 And just as a reminder to myself, this is the shape of the piece before it is sewn together (but in this case, after machine quilting).

Thanks for this pattern and gift, Benta!

I'm Running Late!

I forgot to post these from almost a month ago!

Fun workshop (thank you, Miniature Quilt Group from UK Quilters Guild!) with Gary Mills, where we made these fun long legged birds in the morning....

And these excellent reindeer in the afternoon!

Lucky that DH and I had just pruned an apple tree, so I had plenty of twigs to use for legs and antlers!

Fun projects!  Easy to sew, and using a technique to make 'pockets' for the legs that I hadn't though of using previously.  Thanks, Gary!