It must be summer,

because my blue indigo "play cloth" has made it outside again, and this happens only in summer.

Those of you who have followed my blog for some time, might remember this one. 

For my new followers - this is my summer project, which I "play with" only in summer, outside, in our lovely small garden. For the rest of the year it rests in its project box, right at the bottom of the pile.

What is it all about? It is a quilt with a difference. 

The background is made from indigo dyed fabrics, of various sizes, and the idea is to fill each block with something different - be it embroidery, patchwork, applique.....

I have also included embroideries done by women from Tambani Project and Afghanistan Inspiration Project.

I got the inspiration for the quilt after a workshop with Tiggy Rawling some years ago. Most of the background fabrics came from her also.

This is how it looks so far - there are still many empty spaces to fill.

This afternoon I made some circles,

 and another block is finished.

                                         -------------------------------------------------------------

It looks like the Blogger has yet to sort out the problem with emails.

So if you would like to leave a comment on my blog and want to know what my answer is, please tick the box "notify me" before you post your comment, 

because the comment box is the only way I can answer your comments for the time being. 

Thank you.

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2018

this week

We are having a wonderful sunny day today, but what a week it was until yesterday! Cold, rain, cold; the weather people even mentioned the word "frost" more than once! We even put our heating on last Friday and there is an extra quilt on our bed - plenty of those in our house :-).

It was the kind of weather you just want to turn to "comfort" food. I made some bread, new to me, Portuguese Broa bread.  

Not "stitching in the garden" weather by any stretch of imagination, but I am working on another block on my indigo quilt.

I have now stitched on the four embroideries from Afghanistan Initiative, see my post here .

I will be adding even more international flavour to this quilt.
This week arrived my order of two embroideries from Tambani - South African project, about which I wrote before here .
The embroideries are made by Venda women in north of South Africa; it is a way of not only preserving their folk tales, but also earning an extra income to help their families.
You can read all about Tambani here .

I look forward to adding these two stories to my quilt.

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2015

what is in my new magazines

I have no stitching to show you right now, but
I want to share with you some new magazines I bought recently.







The Inspirations magazine is well known to embroiderers around the world and it never disappoints.
As always, it is full of projects and inspiration.

Just look at this blue beauty!

As I probably said before, Quiltmania and Magic Patch are my favourite patchwork magazines.

Again, Magic Patch has some lovely projects for all abilities.

There is a pretty Binder Cover project by Martine Gilles.

Portrait of Francoise Tatot

and instructions for her cute Leo the Snail.

Isn't he adorable?

You can see more of her lovely creations here .

Quiltmania is packed with pictures of beautiful quilts and instructions for some of them.

But besides that there are a couple of  interesting articles in this issue.

Pascale Goldenberg, a face behind the Afghanistan Inspiration, and the embroidered squares, writes about the project and its effect on women in Afghanistan.

I had written about the project before, you can find it in my LABELS on the left.

I have my own small collection of squares made by Afghan women. Some artist incorporate them into their work.
I have an idea to make them into a wall hanging, after I'll collect some more.

The other article is about the Fine Cell Work, project established by lady Anne Tree in 1997, to help with rehabilitation of prisoners, by training them in skilled, creative needlework.
The classes are run by volunteers, some from the Royal School of Needlework. The work done by prisoners is of very high quality, it is very often commissioned by designers and well known people.
The work the prisoners do is mainly needlepoint, but in some prisons they also make quilts.

This quilt was commissioned especially for the exhibition "Quilts 1700 - 2010" at the Victoria & Albert Museum in Lodon in 2010. I was lucky enough to be able to visit the exhibition and wrote about in my blog (see Quilts 1700-2010 in my Labels on the left).
It was to compliment "The Rajah" quilt, on loan by the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, which was made by women convicts being transported to Australia on board of HMS Rajah in 1841.

All quilts are entirely hand sewn.
The quilt was made by men in Wandsworth Prison and they based the design on the architectual footprint of the prison.

You can read all about the Fine Cell Work and visit their shop here .

--------------------------

It has been a long cold and very dry spell and there is still no sign of life outside.
Here in the country it is now very dusty from the fields.

But as I am writting this post, it started to rain, it might help the garden to wake up at last.

The nature has a lot of catching up to do this spring!

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2013

sunny Thursday - Exeter

We were lucky to pick a nice sunny day to drive down to Devon, to the Creative Stitches & Hobbycraft fair at the Westpoint in Exeter. A mixture of various crafts, I did not find anything new or exiting, and I missed some of the retail "stitching" stands which did not take part this time. Still, worth a trip, mainly for the exhibitions.
Back this year, after UK tour, Afghanistan Inspiration. This is a part of a German-Afghanistan project, which you can read a lot more about here . Some of you might remember me writing about this project 2 years ago, when I first learnt about it at this show.

This part of the project is to help Afghan women to retain their embroidery craft, and at the same time earn some money. They embroider small squares, which they get paid for, and those are then sold in Europe. Many European artists incorporate them in their work, which is a part of a competition "Threads Unite Women".

These are just some of the exhibits by British artists, who were given a theme "vessels" and you can read more about the Afghanistan Inspiration Challenge here .

These are the 3 squares I bought this time.

Then there was a small exhibition of costumes "Jane Austen - Fashion and Films".

Exhibition by WI from their collections.

A pretty Madelaine Millington's stand, you can see more of her stuff here .

and other interesting "side shows"