2024 June

 Welcome my monthly furtle: "Noun. furtle (plural furtles) (chiefly UK) A cursory examination of the contents or details of something."

(Every day is a school day!)

Here comes lots of photos and a few words (do you remember when  you took a photo, waited until you'd taken 24, walked to the chemists, waited a few weeks and then got real photos, in your hand?)

No on that here - a few snaps from my phone to (probably) your phone just like that!

I'm not sure when you last saw my garden?  The unwanted grassy patch has been dug up and replaced with shingle

The plats grew like triffids while we were away

And the raspberries are delicious!

The bit between Brian's grass garden and my bonus garden is still looking a bit sad though

So lets just look at it from the far end, at dusk - so pretty!

I've been crocheting, and the ball was annoying, so Brian came up with a bodge.  I'm trying to make a jumper, so far I have a back and a front, watch this space

I bought a fluffy big jumper in the sale, reckoning I could unpick the peace sign

but bizarrely the peace sign is knitted into the front, despite there being more knitting behind it so in unpicking it I'm left with live stitches.  Drat, another project in the to-be-sorted pile!

However, this was in the "to-be-sorted" pile and has now gone.  It was possibly going to a charity, or to be made into bookends, but has now been swapped (along with some crisp twenties) with a metal worker in the next village . . . 

. . . as he had made this 

Isn't it fabulous!!!!  You understand that I HAD to have it!

2022 Week 5

 A bit of a round up of what I've been doing!!

A tiny hand sewing project for on the train the other day: this will go on a second version of "my Small World" that Jackie is making and that I get to contribute to (only fair as I have the original!!!!

This is the tiny hexies on the original.  I'm hoping she'll let me make the New York Beauty and the Dresden plate too!

At Richmond and Kew Quilters this month we are making clothing out of patchworked pieces.  It's quite an 'in' thing (you wouldn't expect us ladies for a certain age to be on trend but there you go!).  It reminded me that mum made me a patchwork jacket years ago. I never really got on with the rounded neck so cut the binding off with an intention to change it, but it then sat in the stuff-to-be-done pile for (I have to confess), years if not decades!!!

Here is an idea of the before

And now the after

A friend of mine directed the village pantomime: The Pied Piper.  I was asked to make a Ginger of the Pied Piper himself: you can just see him in the centere of this cast photo

And here is my version

I also made a cyclist Ginger for a customer

and a World Cancer Day a few days ago and a Story Telling Day next month

 

Inspired by another member of Richmond and Kew quilters' Magic Starts quilt I started cutting up fabric.  Debbie's version used 10" squares and had light on dark and dark on light - whilst lovely it wasn't quite what I wanted, so Plum helped me find another method and evertually all of these . . .

. . .  will become a quilt of this!

I have finished a granny squares crochet blanket, and have come to realise that I do not like sewing in the ends!!!!

We were asked tpo see if a sewing machine was fixable.  The stitch width is shot but the stitch length works fine, but there was a problem threading it, one of the early guides was broken.  This paperclip now identifies as a thread guide and all is well in the world

Chertsey Museum Fun With Fabric class met yesterday: Susan brought in these for Show and Tell from December's session - what a cute family!!

February's session was a 'wrap necklace'.  This is the start of mine: I'm using embroidery threads (amout a metre gives me about 5cm of colour!  

I also took my fabric wrapped necklace as another sample and brought some magnets so people could choose to make bracelets.  They did well but the necklaces are a long project!

I have received all my January pink (carnation) hexie flowers)

And have posted out all the ones I made for the swap

2020 Wk 15 - a finish

The t-shirt quilt has been finished, delivered (a 2 mile walk - permitted exercise), decontaminated, and received with delight,

I spread it out on the drive before I set off: the front

And the back

I have also been cutting more masks: no huge production plans but they all have homes to go to so I’ll keep making them while they are required

However the sewing machine started making a strange noise so production stopped for a while.

Luckily I have an engineer on hand, so while he did this

I did this

And this !!!!

2019 Wk 32 - mostly Kantha stitching

I have been finishing some projects ready for the village fair at the end of the month but have also been happily losing myself is stitching smaller portable projects just for fun.  The EPP sewing machine has started to be quilted with kantha stitches.  Defined as ".Kantha stitching is ...used to make simple quilts, commonly known as Nakshi Kantha. Women in Bengal typically use old saris and cloth and layer them with kantha stitching to make a light blanket, throw, or bedspread, especially for children." I think of it as stitches you don't need to think about: long or short, a bit wobbly, not quite parallel, not evenly separated. . .  who cares!

I am using the same dark colours for the stitches as are in the blocks, so it is fairly subtle

but you can see how far I've got looking at the back.

I also have worked on this piece: the Chertsey Museum ladies were making hanging pods this month, and I got the urge to Kantha mine to the nth degree!  This is the back

This is the front (we are calling the yellow a design feature not a I-didn't-have-enough-black-fabric-error!)

And this is the finished pod. 
Love LOVE LOVE it!!!

The ladies didn't get theirs finished so I am looking forward to seeing them at Show & Tell next month

I have finished the EPP-without-the-paper hexies, and have quilted the front much more than I would have done had it been any bigger!  I'm planning on  a few bigger EPPWP hexies for the other side so I guess I'll have to quilt that too then I can put it all together

I did make and finish this one though.  It's a lovely laminated fabric I got from Sewing Sanctuary at FOQ - she has designed the fabric, and had it laminated: it's lovely and soft.

2019 Wk 28 - EPP Sewing Machine (and bird seed cakes!)

 Since I last blogged I have pieced this!

I was 'on duty' with M-i-L on Friday: hairdresser's appointment, visit to the Town Hall and a few other places on our list so I brought a new hand sewing project with me.  Clearly having the rainbow hexie flowers to finish piecing (just half a dozen flowers left) and the Plus Blocks (to *start* piecing) isn't enough EPP to have on the go at one time . . . , and Sharon gave me this FP so it would have been rude not to!  The colours, while muted, are brighter that I can photograph them.  No idea why!

Having done a couple of FPs in the last months, I wasn't feeling the love, so I decided to cut all the pieces out and EPP it instead.

On Saturday I had a break from the sewing machine as we had a family party: 20 or so of us at S-i-L's.  Three munchkins (well two plus Niki!) thoroughly enjoyed testing a paper-plate-weaving project me for

I then carried on with the EPP on Sunday.  There was a problem converting from FP to EPP: each thickness of fabric (as it wraps from front to back) adds maybe a mm to the width of the card template, so when a piece with lots of fabric pieces tries to match up with a piece with hardly any pieces the first is longer than the second.  Mostly the pieces can be eased / persuaded / bullied into fitting, but there was one place where it just couldn't - so I unpicked and trimmed 1cm off one template and it all fitted brilliantly!  I had already adapted a few pieces as they would have been two small.  I re-drew one and merged another two and abandoned another but I'm rather pleased with how it turned out

The lines here are shadows: I'm not yet sure how to quilt it.  Maybe just running stitch in muted pearle in the sewing machine and white for the background or maybe a mix of machine stitch and hand stitching?  Any suggestions?

Monday saw us spending much of the day back with this game old bird!

This is my gorgeous M-i-L who still lives alone without much help at 91.  The appointments of Friday, and the family party on Saturday took it out of her so she had a day in bed on Sunday.  However it also turned out that she hadn't eaten, had hardly drunk anything, had developed a hernia, had been sick . . . but hadn't wanted to bother anyone.  We finally got the Dr out to her who was very concerned about the hernia & sickness combination and packed her off to hospital.  They operated this morning and we are waiting to hear what they found.

My other making has involved bird seed.  Along with the plate weaving and a few other crafts, I am teaching bird seed cakes in a few weeks time.  Pinterest has loads of recipes but sadly they do not seem to work as well as the posters suggest!

Here are my samples: I used lots of different bonding agents: gelatin (to bloggers instructions 1:100), jelly (orange flavoured!), suet, gelatin (to my instructions - 1:10), flour and water, egg whites - and hope that (a) one of them sets enough to work and (b) I can remember what I did on that one as I didn't think to write anything down!!!

Finally - just looking at this puts me into a very happy place!  It's a quilt that Jackie is currently finishing and I just love the calm colours and the beautiful blocks!  Well done Jackie!