So very hot!

The weather is lovely and it is a shame that I have to be at work this afternoon. It is so hot! Last night it was almost unbearably stuffy and I had difficulty getting to sleep! However not to complain as we don't often get days like this.

The class on colour went really well and a good time was had by all. However due to the pressure of time I didn't get a chance to photograph the range of greens I produced in the morning. I will get round to it eventually. Probably when it's cooler! Here are a couple of pictures of the colour wheel dyeing I did earlier.

Greens!

There are so many different greens. Thousands of them! I was dyeing a colour wheel last weekend for a class on colour I'm giving tonight and I was struck by the sublty of the greens. So much so that I thought I'd do a run of just greens. I did three colour wheels: lemon 8G, magenta and turquoise: buttercup, scarlet and royal: lemon 4G, intense red, navy. So there were a few interesting greens amongst that lot but the differences between them were quite large as I was only doing a twelve colour wheel. This morning I decided to work on the Ives colour wheel of twenty four steps and started off with lemon 8G and bright royal. A lovely lot of greens were the result but even so I reckon that I can make the range of greens even larger and closer in colour by extending the steps in dyeing. And when one thinks that this was just one colour combination the mind boggles at what one could achieve with several colour combinations. And then again one could add in a tad of black and achieve even more colourings. Water colours down to get paler versions! The list is endless. Have I got enough time left to achieve all these thousands of green? I'm typing this at work so I have no pictures but I will take some and add them in later.

And after greens I can graduate to purples and oranges!  Not to forget all the browns and neutrals! Oh what fun! The reason I started with green was because one uses so much green in quilting especially when doing applique work or landscapes. However with all that dyeing will I ever have time enough to sew!

The Day After!

I am delighted with the moves of yesterday. More space, stuff is easier to get at (if I remember where I put it) and everywhere is clean and tidy. Tonight I am going to titivate and finalise the putting of stuff in drawers. Graeme keeps telling me that this is the last time we move this wardrobe (or any other large pieces of furniture) so I must make sure that I've got it all just as I want it!

The next project must be some dyeing of fabric as I noticed when moving things that I have very little multi coloured half metre pieces. So I can feel some sunset and underwater pieces coming on for starters. And with the weather being quite good it might be a good time to get out the wax and cjanting tool and do some batiks.



This was a piece of silk that was batiked very simply and then embroidered and turned into a cushion cover.

 



Another piece in silk waiting to have something done with it. Below is a piece that has had applique, machine embroidery and cut outs added to it. Eventually I'll make it into a small book cover. The trouble is that there is just too much to do!

Close up

The Urge to Move!

At last I have finished one of the pieces of Crazy Patchwork. It is an over-the-arm of a chair work tidy. I started this more years than I care to remember ago! I have enjoyed finishing it. It  was great fun to do and will be our latest pattern offering. I have two more nearly finished so this might not be the final picture.

I have been feeling the urge to have a big clear out and move furniture around! I think this has been brought on by the fact that we have guests at the end of the month. Graeme's brother and family are coming to visit us from Egypt! So as well as giving the house a good and thorough clean, it also has meant making some more space. One of the joys of having guests is that one's house gets a real over- haul! Almost as good as moving!

And that is just what we did this morning. We moved furniture. I had the bright idea in the middle of the night...as one does! We were going to send our enormous Victorian wardrobe up to my son in Fife, as he is desperate for a wardrobe, on condition that he held it in trust for my daughter who I think would disown me if I got rid of it permanently. But I love this wardrobe and I really didn't want to let it go, plus the fact that is most unwieldy. But now I don't have to as he is going to have my double wardrobe instead which knocks down and puts up so easily. And it's solid wood too so he isn't being fobbed off with anything cheap! So now we have the large wardrobe in our bedroom; the spare room has the dressing table(we had two in our room!) and looks much better and Graeme can at last open the doors on his wardrobe as we've moved it to the other side of the bedroom. However this didn't happen just like that. To get the large wardrobe into our room we had to take the banisters off the landing and have the wardrobe suspended over the abyss of the stair well. But we made it without mishap and I left Graeme putting the banisters back while I went off to work. However when I get home tonight I have to sort, hang and otherwise put away the mountain of clothing and stuff that is on our bed or we won't be going to bed tonight! There was a stage when the wardrobe was stuck in the spare room door with me inside the room when I thought I might be marooned there for good! But we got there in the end and I can't wait to have it all organised and sorted. Almost as good as having a new room! Plus I'll be able to get rid of more stuff to the charity shop! Can't be bad! 

This picture above is the top of my Victorian wardrobe. Below is the inside with drawers stacked full of sewing stuff. The other side is for hanging clothes but is also stuffed full of sewing stuff as you can see in the picture at the bottom. What you can't see are the two very large drawers at the bottom of the wardrobe. It is a huge piece of furniture!

And believe it or not I actually found homes for all that stuff in the workroom. Well to be honest I did give some of it away! There is only so much one can use in a lifetime after all!

Silk

I spent a lot of the weekend having a clear out of cupboards and drawers trying to make space! In my turn out I found lots of pieces of plain white or cream silk which I am going to dye. I love dyed silk as it has such a gleam to it. When it's dyed I am in two minds as to what to do with it. Should I sell it as it is in 1/2 metre lengths or cut it into fat 1/8ths and sell mixed packs. If I do the latter should I sell mixed colours/fabrics or mixed fabrics in a range of one colour because each silk will take the dye differently. Choices, choices! What do I do? Which would be the most useful? Any thoughts on this please let me know. It would be very helpful. 

It was a beautiful evening yesterday with the most amazing sunset. All golds and pinks. Gorgeous! So we went fishing! Not that we caught anything but it was really lovely. Warm and tranquil. I actually had a couple of bites but nothing that I could haul in! They were too wily for that! Graeme caught a wee brownie at the last minute and let it go. One would have had to be starving to eat something so small! So he or she can grow on to become more of a mouthful!  

This evening there is more tidying and sorting to be done. What treasures will I find tonight! I am pleased to say that I found the corded elastic that I had been searching for for weeks and lots of gold cord and ribbon that I had also 'lost'! Everything comes to he who waits...or in my case tidies up!

Home Again!

Sandown was great! Well that is apart from the London traffic. I felt that I was taking my life in my hands everytime I had to drive to or from the hotel! But it was a fantastic three days and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. We made some new friends, met loads of lovely people and saw some superb quilts. So all in all a good experience. So much so that we have booked again for next year!

A couple of pictures of our stand which was tiny! However we managed to cram an awful lot into it! Now we have to replenish stocks and think of some new ideas for patterns and kits. Our next show will be Malvern in October so we will have plenty of time to get organised!

Sandown here we come!

Well we made it! Everything that had to be done has been done and now all we have to do is pack up the car. Easier said than done as we have more stuff than we took to Exeter. It's a bit like doing a jig-saw fitting it all in. I expect we will manage even if I can't take much in the way of clothing! More important is to make sure we have the coffee and biscuits!

The stand is smaller than the one we had at Exeter being only 3 x 2 metres instead of 3 x 3 metres so it will be a bit of a tight squeeze to get everything on display! This was the stand at Exeter!

This time I have made curtains with loops for rods to hang things from plus a banner with our name on it! It should make life a bit easier if we arn't having to pin everything up on the backdrops.

I have been thinking of ways of using heart shapes and also thinking of doing some embroidery with my Bernina embroidery attachment. Thinking is as far as I've got but I want to produce more of these butterflies which I digitised a few years ago. Where does the time go? 

June already!

At last I've got something finished. This is the sample wall hanging for the cut-out adhesive hearts packets. I had great fun doing this and was pleased with the way the two background fabrics meshed together. In fact I was so pleased that I am going to put it onto the website as a pattern for sale.

It is all being a great rush again as we are off to Sandown Quilt show next week. We've lost a week by having to go up to Scotland for the funeral of Graeme's mum. She had been in a home with alzeimher's for several years so it wasn't unexpected. The downside was that the funeral was on my birthday! However we went out for a superb meal at La Mouton Noir in the evening so all was not lost! And we were able to go fishing one day and I caught a good sized rainbow trout! Graeme caught four! We stayed with my son and his partner so we had grateful recipients for the fish!

When we arrived back it was to find that the relatively tidy garden had turned into a veritable jungle! Roses everywhere and the herb garden had gone mad. It looked a mess though as the forget-me-nots had all died and shrivelled up and now need pulling up. However they will have seeded everywhere so lots more next year. Once the lawn was mown though it appeared to be much neater.

I have written a day by day list of all that needs to be done as I find by doing this it concentrates the mind beautifully. I have curtains to make for the stand and a banner with Farne Designs appliqued onto it. Trago Mills which is a wonderful store in Falmouth selling cheapy stuff had some great fabric. A slubbed cream cotton which is quite heavy and very wide (108") but only cost just over £5 a metre! Brilliant! I'm now going to trawl the web looking for a rep for Kona Bay fabrics. Will I be lucky?

Samples and Pictures

I have been making a wall hanging as a sample to show off the use of pre-cut circles. Unfortunately not the best of photos but sufficient that the overall design can be seen. I still have to attach silver braid round the circles and do some quilting but I am finding it fun to do and enjoying stitching again. Below is a close up of the hanging circles at the bottom. I used wired ribbon to hang them from and backed them as well so that they were stiff enough to stand up and not flop around. 

Below are a few pictures from the day out at Kennack Sands on Sunday. The waves were quite strong and really very magnificent. The bottom picture is of the estuary of the creek at St Anthony in Meneage which leads into the Helford. It was a lovely sunny day and once out of the wind quite idyllic! 

Tomorrow I have a class in the morning so will have to be organised for it. I'm going to do woven fat quarters with applique and think it will be fun!

Sometimes I wonder if I am talking to myself and wonder what one has to do to illicit comments. It would be nice to know what other people think!

At Last!

Finally I have been able to get the website finished! I have learnt a lot while updating and putting the payment pages on so in many ways it has been a good learning curve. I didn't realise when I started how by putting a shopping cart on and organising card payments what a tangled web I was weaving. But it is all sorted out now and checked and according to my computing guru it is all tickety boo! Well I hope so! So now I can concentrate on doing some actual sewing!

I have been planning some new patterns to sell and making samples for them but this has had to take a back seat to the web building. Now at last I can get going with some real work!

For my birthday Graeme has got tickets to go to a Kaffe Fasset lecture at the Falmouth Pavilion. I'm really looking forward to this, especially as I know I'll run into lots of quilters I know there. Some of Kaffe Fasset's work is just gorgeous and I like his use of colour.

We went to Kennack Sands at the weekend down on the Lizard and it was lovely. The sun shone but the wind was very strong. Lovely when walking on the cliff path with the wind at one's back but quite daunting on the return trip with it in one's face. Was delighted to see a small silver lizard which ran across the path in front of me as well as loads of butterflies. Took lots of pictures but of course I don't have them with me. Later!

Being busy!

I have spent a lot of the last few weeks looking for things I've lost and finding other things that I'd forgotten I'd got! The annoying thing is that I know exactly where the things I've lost are but only if I hadn't moved the rooms around! 

This crazy patchwork block is one that got lost in a Round Robin. I made it about eight years ago just after my grandson Oscar died at the age of nine months. The dark semi circle to represent the death but the colours above to show that one could go on and that one still had all the memories. Unfortunately it just disappeared somewhere in the US! Should anyone find it unexpectedly ...well it belongs to me!

The sketch above is a table runner I want to make. It is just an idea and needs working on but having now found this sketch I will make sure it gets used! And another sketch that I want to expand and use is the one below. I had an idea for using moon shapes with overlays of chiffon or net. Well all I need is time!

I have a dozen fruit blocks like the one of gooseberries below which I had forgotten I'd got! They need to be made into a quilt! I have apples, pears, plums, peaches, oranges, lemons; to name but a few plus twisting strawberry blocks to link them! Again it's all down to time!

With the above blocks was this odd piece of printed fabric. It is so long ago since I did it that I have forgotten why I did it. Perhaps I was just playing! But now I've found it I'm sure I'll be able to find some use for it! It's good to play occasionally as sometimes really useful things emerge! 



However in spite of the fun of finding hidden treasures I still haven't found the pieces of fabric that I was looking for or the notes and handouts that I need for my next class which means I'll have to start from scratch! I bet they turn up the week after the class!

Everything in the garden is lovely!

I bought this yellow rose about three years ago and it took a long time to get established. For the first year I had to water it daily and it looked as if it wouldn't make it. However last year it had three roses on it! But this year it has gone mad. It is lovely and looks a real picture. I was afraid it was going to be over when I came back from the honeymoon but it is still blooming and has lots of buds coming on! It was meant to be a scented rose but although it has a bit of a smell it isn't what I would call scented! 

The blooms are really large. The buds start off looking orangey but then become a brilliant yellow as they mature.

With the Clematis right next to them they make a pretty picture together. I will have to watch that the Clematis doesn't rampage through the roses!

The for-get-me-nots are still going strong and hopefully will seed themselves for next year. They have provided loads of colour in the garden since February! I have planted a new blackcurrant under the clematis called Big Ben and it is supposed to have enormous berries! The Rosemary is very happy where it is next to the rose and has grown considerably. In front of it there is a Lovage plant. I have to keep chopping this down as it grows out of control. Apparently placing some lovage leaves in ones shoes makes one feet feel and 'smell' better! :-)

This is a close up of the Clematis. 

More from Cotehele

The picture above and the one below are of Cotehele quay. There used to be a thriving trade here but now it is just a tourist attraction.

Views down the river

This is a patchwork bedcover which is worked in very small pieces of silk in a geometric pattern.

A carved doorway which I think is quite inspirational for a piece of patchwork! I can see it with layered appliquéd roses in the centre of each square. 

One of the wonderful beds complete with hangings. The bed cover was of Jacobean design but sadly my pictures were fuzzy! 

A beautiful quilted bedcover. Must have taken hours of work!

Another bedcover done in candlewicking - white on white. Quite lovely and very intricate.

Another of the wonderful four poster beds. Again my close-ups of the hangings were fuzzy!

Fantastic ceiling in the main hall.

One of many patchwork cushions which were dotted around. They were all covered with fine net to help protect them. It was interesting to see the fabrics used. 

A lovely old archway out of the main courtyard.

The first view one has of Cotehele as one enters the main gates. 

Having a wonderful time!

It has been the most wonderful Easter. On Maundy Thursday I got married! It was very quiet and quite superb. My son (with his girlfriend Mel) came down from Scotland to give me away and my 91 year old mother was there plus my very good friend Sue and her husband. And that was it! Nice and quiet! And on the Good Friday we went off on honeymoon to Exmoor for a few days. We stayed in a lovely old hotel which dated from medieval times. Reputedly it had been the headquarters of Oliver Cromwell during the Civil War. The food was amazing and I've put on pounds so it's a strict diet for a while! But I can thoroughly recommend the Luttrell Arms at Dunster. We went for long walks and saw both the gentle side of Exmoor and the bleak moorland side. On the way home we stopped off at Cotehele, the home of the Edgecumbe family. So as pictures are better than a thousand words some more pictures!

 An old bridge by the mill in Dunster. I liked the patterns the reflections made! It was easy to imagine the pack horses bringing the wool to the yarn market in the centre of town.

Below is a typical house in the village. This one was at the gateway into the church yard. 

A pottery kiln behind the hotel. I'm not sure as to how old it is but it is probably medieval. 

Beautiful woodwork in the inner courtyard of the hotel.

Exmoor ponies!

 The yarn market in Dunster. A fabulous building dating from the middle ages when farmers would bring their wool into town to sell.

Dunster Castle which we didn't get to see  but will be an excuse to go back!

Cotehele which was fabulous.

I have more pictures from Cotehele but they will have to wait for another day. Some lovely pieces of old needlework including quilting and patchwork.