Chateau Hexagon

Another long term project finished at last, more then a year in making - Chateau Hexagon, which was originally a button BOM by Lynette Anderson .

I quilted this one partly by hand, but mostly by machine.

I am slowly taking over all the available wall space in our house 😀.

This is the "Lynette Anderson" wall, by the side of the stairs.

I think I am "done" with Lynette for now (in the nicest possible way, of course), there are so many other things to make!

Despite the cold, and rain, and hailstones, and the horrid cold I am nursing at the moment, there is spring in our garden.

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk  2017

easy miniature quilts

First March Sunday is only half way through and we have had it all - sun, rain, hailstones....yes, it is a miserable Sunday in England.

The first long awaited blossom of new camellia in our garden is here at last,
all soggy;

and the first primula. 

Like every spring, it is all there, just waiting...........

You might remember that I have a young stitching friend, my granddaughter. 

She is working on her new project, a miniature quilt.

This is an interesting applique method, where you don't actually have to stitch the applique pieces to the background fabric individually (to her great pleasure - impatient youth 😀). 

She just arranged her fabric shapes on a background fabric and secured with a temporary fabric glue (using a glue stick), we "sandwiched" her project as usual (wadding and backing), overlaid the top with a piece of fine tulle (you could use very fine organza), and now she is ready to quilt, which she will be doing on her machine, using just straight lines all over.

 The tulle keeps the shapes secure, as long as you stitch over every shape at least once.

This is a method Julia Gahagan from Home Grown Textiles is using, making her miniature quilts.

You can see her YouTube video here.

                                                         I started hand quilting Chateau Hexagon,



                             and last night I returned to a rather forgotten wool embroidery project.

I hope you are having a better weather where ever you are!

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2017

snowdrops - what you didn't know (nor did I)

Our small town celebrated its first Snowdrop Festival last week. 

Organized by the local Horticultural Society, the preparations started last year; hundreds of snowdrop bulbs were planted by volunteers on the main roundabout on the approach to the town, and they are all showing their beauty now.

By next spring they will be more established and there will be even more of them.

Why? Because there is a little know connection to the town of Shepton Mallet:

The main part of the festival took part through the High Street, which was decorated with snowdrops in various forms and with stalls selling snowdrop plants; there were workshops for children making drawings and paper snowdrops. Many High Street shops took part too, decorating their windows with snowdrop displays.

I forgot to take my camera, so I borrowed some pictures from Creative Somerset blog and the Festival Facebook.

 

Do pop over to the blog  here and here, to see Helen's wonderful picture, mixed media artwork called "Dancing Snowdrops", displayed (picture above) in the window of One Craft Gallery in the High Street.

What else have I been up to this past week?

It has been a bad last few days as far as the weather was concerned, although our part of the world seemed to have the easiest time. Definitively time to hibernate.

Seville oranges, which had been in my fridge since January, needed to be processed, so time for marmalade.

My way of making an orange marmalade is very simple - cook the oranges, chop it all up and boil with sugar. 

Done. 

Now we can look forward to that zingy freshness on the toast, with fresh coffee, sitting outside in our little garden, on a warm summer morning (yes, I am an optimist 😀).

Chateau Hexagon - I finished the gardens some time ago,

  and last night I finished the chateau also.

It is now waiting to be put together.

The Quilters Patch quilt - I made a start -

block no 1, the "Cosmos block".

Today is a really dull and wet day.

Good day to be in the kitchen and do some baking -  

this is one of my favourite biscuit recipes - Ottolenghi's white chocolate and cranberries.

I wish you all a wonderful Sunday!

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2017

heavenly beauties

We had a lovely day down our way yesterday - warm and sunny. It was the kind of day, when you wish it to be an early spring day.

We looked for some small garden jobs to do to keep us outside.

There weren't any; it is far too early, so we just made a very short garden tour and set on the bench in the sunshine with our cuppa.

The garden is slowly waking up; the camellia, which we bought before Christmas, is covered in buds and wants to get going. 

Winter flowering clematis is in full swing, 

 and hellebores in the shady part of the garden are at last opening up.

But this is what I have been waiting for, to see this little beauty, the first hepatica blossom - 

"jewels of spring". 

I found out about them only last May, when I watched a TV broadcast from the Chelsea Flower Show.

John Massey from Ashwood Nurseries had a wonderful stand, covered in these little beauties.
They got a a Gold Medal and The Diamond Jubilee Award for their exhibit.

I ordered 3 plants of hepaticas nobilis that same night. 

We don't have ideal conditions in our tiny garden; hepaticas are mostly woodland plants - they like plenty of light during winter months and plenty of shade in the summer. 

I can't give them that, so I planted them in pots - last summer they were in a shady corner of our patio and in the autumn I moved them into the brightest patch. 

This one is looking little puny at the moment, but it is in flower, with more buds opening up, and the main thing is that all 3 plants survived the first winter and seems quite happy in our garden.
I am very tempted to get some more 😀

As it happens, there is an article about John Massey and his hepaticas in the latest issue of the Landscape magazine.

Back indoors, I finished another Chateau Hexagon block.

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2017

projects revival

I was waiting for Les Fleurs du Mardi backing fabric to arrive; when it did, I realised that I miscalculated the amount of fabric I need, so I had to order some more. 

Where was my brain that day?😕 

But time is never lost, when there are other projects around, and I do have "just few" of them waiting for some attention 😉. 

Since Christmas, besides making Luna and finishing the silk bag (which you can see in one of my previous posts), 

I have been working on a couple of others.

Santa's Village - a cross stitch project by Country Cottage Needleworks  - a series of 12 houses, which I bought originally as BOM (long time ago).

I just finished month 5, and started working on the 6th. 

 Chateau Hexagon by Lynette Anderson - also bought as BOM.

This is Month 6 finished, and I have started stitching Month 7.

I like this kind of hand stitching, so easy to do in the evenings in front of TV, specially in winter.

I have been sorting out some fabrics for Quilters Patch quilt, which I would like to start making, once Les Fleurs du Mardi is finished (which I plan - unusually for me - to machine quilt).

I wish you all a happy stitching week!

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2017