2018 Wk 42 Leather and Poppies

Crafty Church ladies worked on poppies for the Horton lads who went to WW1, and the one lass that died locally in a ammunition factory explosion.  All the names have been written on these poppies, one for each, and pinned to these wooden crosses.  Carolyn is working on mounting all the information sheets she has put together, again one for each. 

And I have been patchworking leather!  A customer de-constructed the seat covers from a leather sofa and cut them to size to fit together.  He wants them as a backdrop for his pet photography business

He took photos of the 4 sections so I could plan the best route to joining them

and we started sewing them together with a zigzag stitch

and they are looking good - we are about 2.5 hours in and about 1/3 of the way through

 LOTS more of these left!

2018 Wk 41 Finishes

I have been frantically finishing the quilts on the rail of shame as they will be on show in two week's time at the Richmond and Kew quilters exhibition

Finished but need sleeves:

Also being finished is a quilt both Jackie and I have worked on - it's being finished in Ireland ready for the show . . .  My Small World.  I am SO looking forward to seeing it in real life!

I got this pack of lush fabrics from Lisa's Jim for my birthday - he's a good boy!!!

On Saturday I attended a wet felting class at Chertsey Museum - and made this poppy

And on Sunday my oldest friend (should I rephrase that?  The friend I have known for the longest time) came over with a suitcase of her late dad's shirts.  Linda and I have known each other since school age and I knew her mum and dad very well - a lovely couple.

Anyway, she and mum have cleared out dad's clothes: most have gone to a homeless shelter, some jumpers have gone to the grandchildren and the rest came to my house.  We turned a lovely jumper into a cushion

And are in the process of turning the first 1/4 of the shirts into a patchwork for mum (and will gradually work on the rest for Linda, her sister and her daughter)

It was an honour to be allowed to be involved and lovely to catch up with what the two families have been up to!

2018 Wk 34 - catch up

I've been doing the boring pre-school embroideries, but also some hand sewing, embroidery design and prep for the next few Chertsey Museum classes.

This mandala pattern is one that I designed and stitched using variegated thread - I've since made the satin stitch wider, so we'll see how that comes out.

I finished the edges of the two interchange wall hangings:

And I created this celtic cross embroidery design

It needed several tweeks, but I've now stitched it on the purple stole fabric and the two sides are ready to be stitched together to make the reversible stole

At Crafty Church we have started getting ready for our Remembrance day (100 years) display.  We've decided to go with poppy shapes.  (or rather approximately poppy shapes - I see a red snowman, but I have been assured that when I see loads of them I will see poppies - and to be fair they are very similar to the British Legion poppies!)

Janet is taking the sizzix and the circle dies to cut poppies for all 36 from the village involved in WW1

 I'm teaching Quilt As You Go hexies at Chertsey early September, so I sizzixed these

and made some of these

 
 which will be joined into this sort of shape

And finally, not me, but Jackie made this and I think it's far too gorgeous not to share! Perfect for a baby girl's essentials - a few nappies and a pack of wet wipes: and a pocket for mama's phone too

2018 Wk 20 A finish and a visit

I have finished a Chemo quilt that Niki requested for a colleague at work.  There is a LOT of white at the moment but she is taking it to work with a handful of fabric pens so that people can write in the white squares - I'll hopefully be able to post another pic when it's been  decorated!

We had our monthly (!!!) Days For Girls meeting this weekend.  We were aware that some ladies were being put off by the high quality expectations from the charity, so we added a new project - boomerang bags.  These can be made to roughly the suggested size, can be overlocked OR zigzagged, can be made of the donated fabrics we would otherwise have to reject as they aren't ok for D4G and are the simplest construction imaginable

We got one finished and several more are close to being finished.  We were going to give them away but decided we would sell them to people in the churches which would raise money for the D4G fabrics!

We also found we were spending loads for time each month sorting through and seeing what needs what doing next - so with the help of loads of zip lock bags we now have bags of items all at the same stage and we feel much more organised!

Mum and I went to see the poppies at last.  We missed them at the Tower on London, but two sections of the display are now doing a road trip and one is just a short drive from her at Fort Nelson, Royal Armouries Museum, near Portsmouth

They looked amazing!.

And Brian and I spend all of yesterday at the girls' house.  They had hired a sanding machine and wanted to do all the upstairs floors in the one weekend.  I wish I had filmed them using the machine.  It was an industrial one, and was stronger than them.  They switched it on at one end of the room, they then ran with it, trying to slow it down, and trying to turn it off in time that it would stop before it hit the opposite wall, then they would drag it back and repeat.  Dad showed them how to master the beast, and 12 hours (!) later the whole of upstairs has been sanded - despite all three bedrooms having the usual amount of furniture - much of the time was taken moving it from one room to another, do you remember these puzzles?

It was a bit like doing one of those, but worth it in the end.

Today they are varnishing - today I am staying at home!