A Big Fat Fail

I will not get my June Chookshed Challenge met this month.  Insert sad face…..

My goal was to make the Sew Together Bag from pretty Tilda fabrics.  I knew it was a fiddly make, but was ready for the challenge.

To refresh, these are the fabrics I intend to use.  The pale one isn’t Tilda, but works beautifully with the other two.  It will be the inside of the three internal zipper pockets.  The large floral will be the outer and the ditzy daisy the internal section between the pockets.

Now, to select a binding….  This is where I hit a road block.  I just wasn’t feeling it.

Option Number One

The pink works well with the prints, but is a bit too pink for the overall look, in my humble opinion.

Option Number Two 

Once again, the colour co-ordinates well with the large print, but it then looks too brown.  I know, fussy aren’t I.

I kept coming back to the patchwork basket I made with fabrics from this range.  The blue binding worked so well.  

There was no blue similar to this anywhere in town, so I bit the bullet and ordered some online.  While I was at it, I also bought some more pretty fabric.

Resistance was impossible.  This is from the latest Tilda range called “Wallflower”.  When do you ever see a print named “Janice”?  It comes in four colours, blue, red, green and caramel.  The colours being the colour of the leaves.  I thought about buying them all, but that was being a bit silly, so settled on the blue.

I’m much happier with the blue binding.  Isn’t it amazing how the different coloured binding brings out the colours in the large print and gives it a totally different look.  The blue seems much calmer and you really only see the binding fabric next to the large print on the bag.  I think that “Janice” may be one of the internal section colours now, as it fits in so very well, and breaks it up a bit.

Having said all that, I am not going to make a start this month, as I have simply run out of time.  Like a couple of the other challenge projects, I do still hope to have it made by the end of the year.

You see, we are going to be travelling again.  Hopefully, we will get further this time around.

I do have some other projects to work on while away.  As always, it will be interesting to see how much, if any, I get done.

A Play Date

A good friend came over today for a play date of crafting.

Not a lot of crafting took place, but a lot of talking, oh and quite a bit of eating.  You know how it is.

What I did achieve was some garment embellishment for my friend.  She had bought some cute overalls to wear while tending her farmers market stalls, but they were too short and just looked a silly length.  Would we be able to do something?

I’m sure we could.  Let’s see what is in the stash that would be suitable.

Ta da!  The sunflower fabric was one of the first patchwork fabrics I bought, well over twenty years ago.  I had used some back then, but still had plenty and it isn’t something that I naturally gravitate towards.  It was, however, perfect for this project.  They will look rather fun when she has her stalls.

While I was playing with sunflowers, my friend did achieve a small amount of her crochet rug.

After the garment tweaking, I did a little of my slow stitching, and I had also done a little at my stitching morning on Friday.  This is where I am up to.  I said it would be slow progress, and it is. I am having a bit of fun with it.  No stress or perfectionism involved.

The overall piece.

Some details of the texture.  There will be some more stitching in the hexy, I just have to decide what it will be.  The little leaves are just tracing the fabric design.

The doiley section will be stitched down later.  As you can see, there is quite a bit more to do, but I think I am at the stage where I can pin on more fabric, as I have freed up quite a few of my appliqué pins.

By the way, Mick’s rug got its christening on the weekend while watching the footy.  The weather was absolutely freezing, so he was happy to have it.

Meanwhile, no start has been made on the Sew Together Bag for this month’s Chookshed Challenge.  I met a bit of a road block, but that has now been navigated, so a start should be made soon.

Finding a Squirrel Down a Rabbit Hole - A New Start

Once you finish a project you can start a new one.  That’s how it works, isn’t it?  That should be the Sew Together Bag shouldn’t it?

No, that is not how it works.

I seem to have been seeing lots of slow stitching coming up when scrolling and felt the urge to start something,  I even have a little tub with offcuts from doileys from previous projects that I want to play with.

The Sew Together Bag needs some light wadding, so I pulled out the tub.  There just happened to be a piece that was sort of the size to make a pouch, so I squared it up.  Next to get out my doiley offcuts and a box labelled “Small Scraps” as well as my usual scrap tubs and have a play.

Oh, what a glorious mess I made.  The plan was to have a faded look, but my scraps ended up making it somewhat pretty.  More so than I had originally thought , but it will still be nice……I hope.  I’m not a fan of raw edges, as in a lot of slow stitching, so lots of turning under.  It’s not Kawandi, or Boro, or Kantha, rather making it up as I go along.  My tiny appliqué pins, that I have had for years and never used, came into their own.  It has ended up bigger than I thought I would make, but I just worked with the size of the batting piece.  It will be about the size of an iPad pouch, so quite a large panel to work on.

Once I ran out of pins it was time to find some threads to stitch it all down.  Time to get out the box labelled “Crochet and Pearl Thread”.  Yep, there seems to be boxes of just about everything lurking in the deep dark depths around here……and…..shock horror……most have recently been labelled.  You never know when you may need something.  Thank goodness they don’t go off.

Time to start stitching.  There isn’t a lot of thread on these spools, so we will try to use them up first……more to add to the jar.

A little progress was made on Sunday, while chatting to Lou about her exciting fabric haul.  Just as well slow stitching isn’t required to be perfect, as mine is a bit how’s your uncle.  Having said that, I quite like the texture.  After the first couple of rows of stitching I used the Hera marker to keep my stitching lines somewhat straight.  It will be fun to decide how to stitch the different areas and then to do some embellishing,  There is also still quite a bit of batting to cover with fabric.  This won’t be a quick process, just something to pick up now and again.  Then, it is called “Slow Stitching”.

Ta Da! A Finish

I really wanted to get the crochet rug completed, so that Mick could actually use it while watching the footy on the tele.

Having the motorcycle races to watch really gave me the opportunity to push it along. See the previous post.  

I had kind of planned to add nine rows of half treble moss stitch in a few different greys that I had in my stash, grading from mid to light to dark to light to mid.  Well, in the end I felt that the dark grey framed it nicely and called it quits at that.

Ta da.  It’s far from perfect, but was a fun make for a utilitarian rug.  I really love the texture of the corner to corner crochet, giving a nice, thick, snuggly feel.  There may be another in the making at some stage in the future.

Cracker Night

This weekend is the King’s Birthday long weekend, which traditionally means bonfire and cracker night.  That also means the big community event down at Portland, about 50kms away.

The weather here has been cold and quite breezy, so we ummed and aaahed about going, but in the end, despite that, we rugged up and headed off for their big night.

The event is held at the old Cement Works, which always looks rather dramatic in the evening light.  We arrived just on dusk, and our first stop was coffee and a sausage sandwich.

Once fed, we made our way to the bonfire.  What a beauty it was, with humongous logs.  Look how the embers are blowing in the cold breeze.  We were glad of the warmth of the fire.

It was nice just sitting watching the flames.  We had to have a photo, wearing our Isle of Man TT beanies, as tonight is the final race of the event.  Like every race and practise for the entire fortnight, it has been delayed.  Let’s hope it goes ahead.  We are kind of glad that this was not the year that we were over there.

The main feature of the night is the fireworks display.  Howards Fireworks are one of the main companies in the country and their factory is not far from Portland, so they put on a good show.

When we were walking back from the bonfire to the building it really did look dramatic, and rather Pink Floydish.

We had a quick walk around the night markets, but no purchases were made.  We just love the old industrial building.

And, as we left, one more shot of that stunning chimney stack, this time in the dark.

I even manage to get a shot of the painted silos in the low light.  A car went past, at the right time, giving some light.

It is all very family friendly and we were home a bit after eight o’clock.  We are so pleased we decided to go down.