2022 July

Hello lovely people - here are some of the things I've been involved with this month.

My Chertsey Museum class made (or started to make) giant Dorset Buttons: I'm looking forward to see how these turn out

I saw a pinterest idea for "making" a jacket - I bought a huge hoodie on Vinted for £2:50 and cut the seams away, and now I'm adding denim scraps - photo to follow!

In the really hot weather I bought what I planned to be a cool tub - but husband had a Heath Robinson moment (or several of them) and added a solar mat and a pump to recycle the water and heat it

Not quite as cooling as I'd expected - but a great place to spend d a few hours on a hot evening!

I met up with some friends for secondary school (we left school 40 years ago this summer!)  So I made a Ginger wearing our school uniform to thank the organiser of the afternoon

and he's been joined by a Welsh lady as a request from a friend: she's a first draft so version2 should be better

I sent to the hair dressers - actually more accurately, she came to me - I went pink . . .

And I went short!

I spent evenings in the cooling garden cutting up a LOT of denim that I have collected /  been donated: I have some plans!!!

I stitch 6 Forget-me-not hexie flowers for the Facebook swap, and 

and have received most of the incoming flowers

Our Community Coffee Morning has finally been graced with the presence of a Library: venry exciting.  It's only open on a Monday morning . . .

But this is where I found my girls on Saturday morning during our Stitch session - in their happy library den!!!

I had a weekend with girlfriends in York, and had been directed to check out three fabric / button shops: just look at this one!!!  I *may* have spent some money (thanks Tara!!!)

The raspberries and red currents have finished in the garden, and we now have blackberries, so more crumble has been made and eaten!

I've been stitching together some of the denim scraps into blocks

and have been stitching these brown fabrics into a flimsy for mum

Much of the sewing has been ten minutes here, 15 minutes there and ideas are piling up much quicker than I can get things done so the sewing room is a dreadful tip at the moment - I will tidy up sometime in the next 18 days as Jackie will be arriving then and there just might be some sewing happening!!!

Keep cool and keep crafting!

2021 Week 15

 A quick project - inspired by the lovely Plum I decided to make a tray liner!  the red and white match my favourite mug (thank you Jackie) and the biscuit tin!

And husband helped me make a thread storage shelf for the embroidery threads - the 1000m spools fit nicely into a plastic draw in the Ikea Trofast units that make up most of the sewing room

But the 5000m spools are too big to really fit on the spikes, and generally don't behave

Ikea made shelves as an alternative to the drawers and I had a few that were not in use.  With the help of a length of broom handle and various bit of equipment in his shed we bodged this shelf

And it works perfectly !!

The lengthened denim dress has been finished and worn and photographed!

I met with a friend in the garden - I had finally finished the felt OLIVER for her grandson, and the felt animals needs to be positioned so I could hand stitch them on.  It was lovely to catch up and nice to have some hand sewing to do

Lisa sent Jackie and I this pic of her blocked crochet - don't they look fab!!!!  I think my blanket will be much harder to do!

With no crochet of my own to do, I thought I'd have a go at fingerless gloves!  Problem number 1 is that I can't cast on - my crochet is too tight!  So I used a huge hook and created three chains and forced the hook back into them to cast on three stitches . . . then turned the whole lot through 90 degrees and started adding rows of trebles, three at a time, until I had a band that was long enough.  

I then turned it through 90 degrees again and started adding to the side (2,1,1,2,1,1,2,1,1 to make it the right circumference and made it up to ten rows, I then missed 2 stitches and zigzagged back and forth for 7 rows then started with complete rows again.  there was a lot of frogging to make them the right size (left needed to be much tighter than right as I am, ahem, digitally challenged) but they will keep me warm next winter!

In other news, I finally finished this for a customer, just need to add a name

And there is a Ginger ready for St George's day next week

Apart from that the sewing room is an absolute tip, I've eaten too much, and I'm fed up with looking at this computer screen so I'm going to go and sit in the sunshine for a bit!  Hope everything is Ok in your corner of the world

2021 Week 12

So what have i been up to?  Work (of course!) but apart from that . . . I stitched these five Easter panels from Kiwi Designs: rather than making them into a panel I made them separate - they could maybe be used as mugrugs? 

Briana nd Niki have been creative - the old (original 1960s) flat porch roof has gone and been replaced by this one - and because he's just as much a hoarder as I am, he could find the tiles that came off the roof in 1995 or so to make room for velux windows and use them on the new porch roof!!!

A friend became a granddad, so a good excuse to finish an I-spy quilt!

The pre-school children came into church to hear the Easter story and hunt for felt Easter eggs - it was lovely to see this lad in the fleece that I embroidered for the uniform holding and egg that I'd embroidered for their trip to the church

My Crochet blanket is growing: but as the weather improves I'm doing less - it might have to be put away unfinished until next autumn.

I took a sneaky trip top Cliveden House - just walking the grounds but it was a beautiful days and I may have bumped into two friends who were coincidentally there too

I was asked to make a Ginger commemorating ANZAC day (end of April).  This photo

became these Gingers

via  a game of thread chicken!!!!!  (I won, phew!)

Scratchy cat seems to think this blanket might be hers!!!!

2020 Wk 18 - More Ginger Key workers and Heros

The key worker wall hanging was getting a bit crowded - so husband bodged an extended bar for me to hand them from 

I need to make lots more to use up the new space!

So here we have milkmen

Prison officers

Security Officers

Pilots,

And my favourite - Captain Tom