Harmonious Strip Patchwork

On Saturday I took a workshop organised by the Swindon Branch of the embroiderers guild. The tutor was Heather Martin and the title Harmonious Strip patchwork.

The aim was to start making a wall hanging from strips of cold dyed fabrics in our own choice of colour. As always happens when I go to workshops I didn't get very far!

So no hanging to show yet just a file of orange fabrics.

After the morning session of dying most of my afternoon was spend hand stitching some tucks.
The course requirements stated that the work could be done by hand or machine I was feeling too lazy to pack up my machine but to be honest if I had known that this is what we were going to do I would have taken it.

Still overall it was an enjoyable day, and I have a nice bright wall hanging to construct and keep me cheered while the weather outside remains grey!

Twit Twoo

As predicted I managed to get my mini wall hanging finished last night. Good job it was such a small project otherwise I wouldn't have had any hope of getting it done in time for delivering it at the weekend.
I hope my Aunt likes it. It was a lot of fun to make and I enjoyed the fact that there was a mixture of hand and machine stitching to do. It's definitely what I needed to get my juices flowing again, I can't wait to get started on some new projects and get caught up on some of the swaps that I'm lagging behind in.

It was also a great feeling to finally have something else to add to my list of completed projects for 2008 in my side bar, it's been way too long.

An unexpected gift

Yesterday I got an unexpected gift, the best gift of all, some time. I had planned to work from home for the day but away from the constant ringing of the telephones and all the other general office distractions I got my work done in half the time I thought it would take so took a couple of hours off in the afternoon.

It was a beautiful afternoon, with blue skies, a few fluffy clouds and a nice light breeze. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get the sun lounger out and sat in the garden for a couple of hours stitching. As a result I managed to get all of the blanket stitch added to my owls. In the evening I also added the borders and most of the binding, but by the time I had got to that the light wasn't very good for pictures so I'll wait until the hanging is completely finished before I share.

I think I definitely had too much sun as at one point as I found myself wondering whether it is possible to get a thimble tan. You know just like one of those sunglasses tans that you often see where someone has been wearing their glasses all day and get the white panda rings around the eyes! So I'll be on the look out now for anyone with a white finger tip as I'll know they are a sun worshipping stitcher :)

What a hoot!

Well as hinted at in my last post this week I have started a new project. Not a big one it needs to be quick as it's a birthday present for my Aunt and I've run out of time for making.

But with the help of these fabrics from the stash ....And a beautiful pattern by Maria Saunderson from this magazine ......Here are my beginnings ............Yes you guessed it my Aunt loves owls. Now I really will have to get a move on I only have 3 evenings to get this done. It is small though at only 14" x 14" so hopefully it will come together quickly.

Next step is to blanket stitch around the applique shapes by hand, hopefully I will get this done today. I have plenty of stranded embroidery threads which I inherited from Mum..........so colour matching shouldn't be too much of an issue :)

Even though I'm just following a pattern I have really enjoyed the process of picking and cutting the fabrics, hopefully this will be just the things to get me back to my own projects again.