August Stitching Wrap Up

I did have a rather productive month in August. As I stated after the first week, it makes a huge difference when I actually stay home.

Just to recap, I finished the little Half Square Triangle Baby Quilt.  Thanks to Lou for giving me the encouragement.

Then I finished the little Blue House Sampler mini quilt.

I also achieved my One Monthly Goal and Chookshed Stitchers’ Challenge by completing the Laundry Basket Mystery Quilt top.  I have decided to quilt it with a pantograph, but I want to try a new pantograph on something smaller first.

I was rather productive with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Completing the split nine patches, a crumb block and four orange Hexy Flowers.  The Fish will be caught up next month.

Which brings me to my Scrappy Hexy Flowers.  This was just to be a pick it up whenever type project and maybe do one in the RSC colour each month.  Well, it has progressed, as I cut out heaps of fabrics, then glue basted them and have actually stitched fourteen flowers this month.  That has been helped by taking them to my stitching groups and joining in on quite a few impromptu Zoom sessions hosted by Chookyblue.  They are the perfect project to work on while chatting away.

I have now completed thirty flowers.  I’ve decided on a project to use them in.  It is called “Bigs and Smalls”.  The designer is Anorina Morris and the pattern was published in the May edition of Homespun magazine.  I have quite a way to go, as there are one hundred and eleven one inch hexy flowers and eight two inch hexy flowers.  They are appliquéd onto six inch background squares.  That should keep me out of trouble for quite some time.  There’s no rush.

Although I am leaving my RSC fish till next month I still made my Batik Fish this month.  I made three versions of the pattern, which all look quite different.  I’m continuing to enjoy playing with this project.

The final thing I worked on was making a block for a group quilt that our Wednesday Patchwork Group are making.  The instructions were rather broad. “Make a 12 inch block, any pattern, any colour.”  Eventually, there was some fabric provided to tie the blocks together.  The blue in the centre and the background come from those fabrics.  I will make a second block using another provided fabric.  The hardest part is selecting a pattern.

Looking back at my goals, I didn’t do too badly.  The only one that was missed was working on my knitted jumper.  It will happen, all in good time.

As for my 15 Minutes a Day, this is how I went:

August = 29/31

Year to Date = 221/244

Sucess Rate = 90.57%

At least I am still above the 90% mark……just.

Now to start thinking about September.  It’s always fun to look forward and make plans.

Chookshed Stitchers Challenge and One Monthly Goal Completed

 My goal this month was “Laundry Basket Quilts 2023 Spring Mystery Quilt - Progress”.

This is where I was up to at the beginning of the month.

Finally, after I had finished the little Blue House Sampler hanger I could turn my attention to this quilt.

My plan was to add a narrow border and then a half square triangle border, but first to work out the maths.  Ideally, I would have liked to have added three inch HSTs, but that would mean only a half inch narrow border, so in the end it was a one and a half inch first border and then four inch HST.  

I pulled out this selection of fabrics that I thought would work.

They looked nice all cut out ready to go.

I marked them all out ready to stitch and started pinning them together when I realised I’d had a brain freeze and pinned them right side of the neutral to the wrong side of the coloured fabric! Doh!  Thank goodness I woke up to myself before I had stitched and cut them apart.

After I made them and started to lay them out I thought the overall effect was a bit drab, so removed a few colours and replace them with something a bit more vibrant.  Here is my final selection, ready to stitch together.  Much happier.

So, here she is, all done, in the poor indoor night time light.  I had just enough of the narrow border fabric left over from the pieced centre.

And outside in the daylight.  I’m really pleased with how it looks. All fabrics were from stash.

The next big decision is whether to quilt it now using a pantograph, or wait until I have the confidence to custom quilt it.  At this stage I am leaning towards a pantograph to just get it done and being used.  Mick has commented that it would be a nice springtime quilt on our bed, so let’s see how I go.

Anyway, for now the challenge has been met, as I definitely “progressed” the quilt.

I’m linking up with Stories From the Sewing Room and will link to Deana in a couple of days.

Blue House Sampler Completed

This is a project that I have had a lot of fun with.

It all started with me very quickly tracing off a few stitcheries to take with me to the Isle of Man back in late May and early June.  I made a start while sitting in a church yard beside the race course.  I didn’t get a great deal stitched while over there and then gradually added a few stitches now and then once we returned home.

I finally completed the stitching earlier this month and initially planned to simply add a two inch border of blue fabric, as per the original pattern by Gail Pan.

However, for some reason I can’t remember, I decided that it would be a bit boring and started to wonder what else I could do with the stitchery.  Maybe a bag, or what about a more detailed mini quilt to hang in my sewing room?  That’s when I made a huge mess on the dining table, pulling out vintage trims, laces, various fabrics and had a general play.

At the end of that day I had this vague idea.

The size would be determined by the vintage coat hanger I wished to use as the hanger.  This has been waiting for the right project for many years.

Over the next few days I gradually added bits and pieces, just making it up as I went along. 

Let’s have a bit of a look to see what I used. Firstly, I added the fabric borders.  The floral fabric on the left is one I have had for many years, probably since the 90s, and I just use little bits every now and then.  Initially, I was going keep everything blue, except for the front door, but once I added this fabric it seemed to set the colour scheme for the project.  The stripe at the top is a scrap from my Blue Quilt.  It is actually joined from two pieces and I didn’t do the best stripe match, but decided to leave it.   The large blue piece of fabric is from and end of bolt I purchased for next to nothing at Spotlight shortly after I started quilting, so in the early 2000s.  It has been included in many of my projects over the years and has been so very versatile.

The linen that the sampler is worked on is an offcut from the Vintage Linens Quilt that I made a few years ago.  It even had a hand stitched hem at the bottom, which I left in place.  The pale green huckaback with the white crochet lace edging is the offcut from a hand towel, also used in that quilt.  The final offcut from the vintage linens quilt is the narrow crochet lace across the bottom of the sampler.  It only had about an eighth of an inch beyond the crochet, so I carefully hand stitched it to the linen hem and then did a stitch in the ditch by machine to secure it to the huckaback.  The ric rac is blue and white, which is rather unusual and was found in my stash of bits and pieces.

Decisions, decisions.  At this point I did add the two lace flowers to hide the ends of the narrow lace,  There were just the two flowers and a bit of a stem joining them, so they were perfect.  You can also see that I had added some decorative blanket stitch to the right of the flowers.

I had two pieces of this sweet lace edging and wanted to use one.  I thought it would go OK here, but that tape at the top didn’t look too good.

Maybe cover it with some little hexies?  Nah, it still doesn’t really cover it.

Then I remembered some trims made with a very fine silk ribbon.  There was a green one that may work.  It didn’t, the colour was too grassy green, but there was a very narrow trim with pink flowers.  That did work.  

I kept fiddling and decided that this would be my final layout. 

I thought I would attache the little fabric scraps at the top with decorative stitching, but it didn’t look very good at all, so was removed.  Simple running stitch was all that was required.

Once I had all the trims attached, other than the buttons, it was time to think about quilting it.  I knew I didn’t want a binding, as I wanted to have the lace edging on the bottom.  What to use for a backing?  I have a few vintage damask serviettes, so I selected one of those, opting for the one with the least distinct pattern and the thinnest fabric, as I was going to hand quilt it.  For the batting, I joined a couple of little off cuts.  Here it is, stitched on three sides, ready to trim and turn right side out.

Now it’s starting to take shape.  Thread basted and ready to turn under the bottom hem and then do the quilting and add the buttons.

This really has been a project of using whatever bits and pieces I had to hand, even down to some sewing cotton that has been hanging around for years to thread baste and using scraps of crochet cotton to do the quilting.  The blue was used around the stitchery and the cream for everything else.  The cream one came to me from one of my stitching friends when she was sorting out her mother’s craft supplies.  It’s nice to use it.

Not quite “Ta Da”, but nearly there.  That top right hand corner neeeded something, both to fill the space and to anchor it more for hanging.  But what?  Some boro quilting,  more buttons?  I needed to think on it for a day or so.  I thought about adding a small quote, but everything I came across was too long or I wasn’t fussed.  I didn’t want “Home sweet home” or “Home is where the heart is”.  

In the end I just stitched “Home” and a couple of hearts, taking elements from the sampler and added a border.  It is probably a bit larger than I would have liked, but I wasn’t going to redo it.  If I come up with something better, it won’t take much to remove it.  I also found a little pink bejewelled heart charm, so added that as well.

So, here it is.  Ta Da!

And the back.

Let’s have a little closer look at some of it.  You can kind of see the sweet little floral trim I added to the lace. The tiny hexies were made a year or so ago from scraps from my Splendid Sampler 2 quilt and have just been loose in a little baggie.  I still have a few more and plenty of more scraps.  The hexy flower was made at the same time.  The buttons are just ones I found in my button stash.  The two little blue buttons were just the right colour, so had to be included.

In addition to what I have already shown in the bottom section, the floral braid came from Mum’s stash.  She has some lovely laces and trims.  The buckle was in my bits and bobs.  I seem to collect old buckles.  The “JM” is French laundry tape.  A lady in France used to blog and she was selling it, so I treated myself.  

So, there you have it.  My little stitchery, traced off with no plan, just something to stitch, has ended up having a life of its own and giving me a lot of fun along the way. Added to that, it has even ended up being a sustainable sewing project.  

Fortunately, there was still one spot where I could hang it in my sewing room.  It suits the room rather well.

The Second Week of August

Here I am, being organised and doing a second weekly post in the month.  Wonders will never cease.  LOL

On the stitching front there isn’t a great deal to show, but I have been having fun.

As I didn’t have anything ready to pick up quickly for my stitching morning last Friday, I just grabbed a heap of colourful scraps and took them along to cut hexies out.  I ended up with this nice little pile.  That should keep me out of trouble for a little while.

I took them along to my patchwork morning on Wednesday and started glue basting.  Isn’t my little tin pretty.  I have another one identical to this and a couple more similar, which are great for six inch blocks and other small projects.

I didn’t get very far, but I’ll explain why shortly.  They will be good to work on for future stitching mornings, as there is no brainwork required.  For the first time, I have tried glue basting with the Kmart glue sticks.  Surprisingly, they are acid free and at the price of $1 for four, it is somewhat more economical than $16 for four glue pen refills.  They seem to be just fine, so for prepping so many hexies, they will be my preferred method.

At home I continued to play with my little blue sampler.  Just a teaser here, but I am happy to report that I finished it today.  It will have its own post.

I have printed off the pattern for August’s fish, but have done nothing more.  Now that the sampler is completed, the batik fish and the Laundry Basket Mystery Quilt can be worked on.

Yes, I managed my 15 minutes of stitching each day.

In other happenings, I played ladies on Saturday, attending a high tea.  It was a lovely time spent with friends and the food was rather delightful.

A couple of the tables were decorated with hellebores, one of my favourite flowers.  I love the double white and purple version in the bottom photo.  I only have fairly common colours.  All of mine have come from church fetes and open garden stalls.  None are from nurseries. I am delighted to learn that I am being gifted a seedling for the yellow version in the top photo. 

The weather was actually fairly warm for this time of year on Sunday, so we got out in the garden to give out baby bay tree some TLC.  It has been in this copper for quite some years, and its leaves have started to go yellow lately. (The copper has been plastic lined.)  A lack of water at times may have contributed.  It was decided to take it out of the pot and plant it directly in the ground.  It is a miniature variety, so shouldn’t grow huge like the normal bays do.

It was quite an exercise to remove it from the pot.

Yep, it was rather root bound.

Now it is looking rather short compared to what it was.  We will give the herb garden a good tidy up once the weather warms up a bit more.

The weather was rather bleak on Tuesday, so we took the opportunity to head east over the mountains.  We do like how the mountains look all moody in the mist.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a photo as we were driving along, but the mist in the valleys was really picturesque.

It is always nice to see the wattle in bloom at this time of year.

First stop was the town of Windsor to have some lunch.  Then it was a bit further in to go to the bowls shop to buy Mick some shoes and other bits and pieces.  Now that he has been playing for a while and definitely enjoys it, it was time to get fully kitted out.

Coming home we had a nice sunset.

By the time we arrived home a big bank of clouds was building up, which led to rain for most of the night and next morning.

Back to why I didn’t get many hexies glue basted on Wednesday.  Our patchwork group meets in the local church hall and I had to pop over to the church.

Holy Trinity Church will be celebrating its bicentenary next year.  It was the first parish and first church west of the blue mountains, so rather significant.  The Kelso parish was established in 1825, with the church building dating back to 1835.  I am a part of the committee to arrange the celebrations next year.

The 3rd Earl of Bathurst, on behalf of the king, was the one who signed off on the appointment of the first rector.  This week the 9th Earl of Bathurst is in town, so he and the mayor came to visit.  He is pictured on the left, with Carol, the church historian, David, the current rector and Jess Jennings, the mayor.  Lord Bathurst was very personable and enjoyed an informal morning tea with some of the parishoners before he went on his way for other engagements.

And that about sums up our week.  It was rather full, which was fun.