new year, new projects?

After weeks and weeks of very mild and extremely wet weather in our part of the world all is calm now and even sunny; what a difference little sun makes! 

Even my work room is not as gloomy now and I can enjoy being here again,

 although I still find difficult to take a decent picture here.

So - new projects?

Not quite; I have been working on some stuff for a while now. 

"Crojo Retro" blanket (design by The Mercerie ) has taken me a year to get to this point, but I now have all the flowers and leaves, ready to be joined together!

So, long job yet, but I am on the case now.

When I finished Butterfly's Ball quilt I could not wait to get lost in another applique project.

I started to play with some new blocks - 

I am calling this "The Cherry Picker's Garden" (for now anyway).

And some new inspiration -

Santa brought me this lovely book, 

"Welcome to the House of Quilts" by Janine Alers,

published by Quiltmania.

I had already made one quilt featured in the book, "Surrounded by Flowers", in 2021. 

The pattern was previously published in Quiltmania magazine.

The quilt is now hanging on my workroom wall.

There are other projects in the book I am itching to make.

That is not all - another present from Santa is this bag of Scheepjes yarn,

to make "Macaroon Blossom" blanket.

As it is mostly cotton, this will be lovely summer garden project -

I can't wait!

Busy year coming up................

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2024

FNwF and the rest

My Friday ended up a busy day; it also became a baking Friday morning in the end. 

Chocolate and almond cake, from Hairy Bikers' Baking book, one of our favourite cakes.

Also a loaf of bread, which I made in Remoska.

"In what?" I hear you ask.

Our Czech friends will know exactly what I am talking about. 

For the rest - Remoska is a "mini oven", a Czech invention, which has been around for more than 70 years.

It is very simple and clever, just one "on and off" button,

it is the lid which does the cooking and is self regulating.

Later that day I made macaroni cheese in it; 

it also makes a very good risotto. 

I could had made the cake in it earlier, but this recipe makes a rather large cake, my Remoska is the smaller size, but I do make other cakes in it as well.

Good on energy. 

What else can you ask?

My Friday afternoon was spent in my sewing room. Recently I resurrected Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt. 

The next stage is a border around the centre part, made of 3,5 inch log cabin blocks, 

I need 52 of them, so lots to do.

But I did join others in "Friday Night with Friends" in the end!

I have been playing with some applique blocks and in the evening I finished the top block.

I have no idea where this is going, but it is just fun for now.....

Big Thank You to Cheryll for getting us together again!

Also some last colour in the garden.

I hope you all have a wonderful week crafting!

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2022

and it is September...

..........where has the summer gone? August seemed to have flown by; and last it felt like normal summer month, with just one very brief hot spell in the middle, nothing as bad as July.

I am asking myself - what have I done this summer? Precious little - is the answer. This wasn't the summer of  usual "stitching in the garden" weather, mostly too warm to handle any work.

Ours was a summer of reading - many, many books passed through our house, while trying to find the coolest spot in the house. Some books bought, borrowed or simply from our bookshelves re-read.

Too may to list, but some to be definitively recommended. 

We are having some rain at last, although not nearly enough, 

but enough for the garden recover just a little.

   

The other morning it looked like someone covered the garden in a pearly veil.

Since the weather cooled down, I managed to finish all four parts of 

the Sunshine and Showers blanket, which are now waiting to be joined together.

In one way I am sorry this has come to the end, 

because I have really enjoyed the challenge of various stitches.

Also, a big progress on the Blooming Springtime quilt - 

last night I finished the main part, with all those small applique blocks. 

I am very pleased about that, it was starting to haunt me.

 Now for the border, which will also be time consuming - 58 of these to applique.

You know the feeling when you get to this point - I am starting to see the end of this quilt!

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2022

don't you just love birthdays!

They do come every year, and the number is always higher! 

It was my turn last month. 

It was a wonderful sunny day, BBQ time!

I got some new books for my bookshelf, and CD's to listen to when crafting,

but the star present was this special publication of Jane Eyre. I was given my first copy of Jane Eyre

 (in translation) by my parents when I was a teenager (yes, a long time ago!)

I am grateful to Kim for writing about this one on her blog. 

It is beautifully illustrated by Marjolein Bastin , even the textured cover is very tactile.  

There are several books in Marjolein Bastin series, it must be wonderful to have them all on a bookshelf.

There are small surprises hidden through out the book.

And I was given vouchers to spend in Midsomer Quilting shop, 

what else does a girl need?

Besides that, my crafting is on "slow" right now,

just some more small blocks for Blooming Springtime,

and Tobermory squares, which makes 28 so far.

Summer has arrived at last, although we have been having very cold nights,

not much fun for young plants in the garden.

Extra long weekend here in UK to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee ,

the weather could be better - very windy in my part of the world right now, 

but sunny, so that's something to be grateful for.

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2022

baking weekend

I have realized that I haven't posted from my kitchen for a very long time, but be assured, that many loaves of bread, cakes and biscuits have been coming out of my tiny space, it was one of those things which kept me occupied during the lockdowns.

Last few days it has been like being in another lockdown, with various storms rolling over UK, storm Eunice being the latest one, but it seems that another storm is on its way. Luckily we haven't been effected by any damage so far, I am just watching with some concern our still young olive tree being bashed about; the rest of the garden is holding up OK. 

So, I retreated to my kitchen again - thankfully we haven't have any power cuts in our area (yet), so baking was possible.

Something new - I turned to one of my favourite cookery books, by Olia Hercules, recipes mainly from Ukraine (and food not that far away from own upbringing), the country currently very much in the news, sadly not for good reasons.

I have no idea why they are called Berlin, no do I really care; the main thing is that they are very nice, and easy to make. I would actually call them small pastries rather than biscuits. They are not very sweet (no sugar is mixed in the dough), as the circles of dough are dipped lightly in sugar and folded, this process repeated a couple of times again.  

After about half an hour in the oven:

Wet and windy Sunday afternoon here, so it is back to some sewing in the front of TV, 

with a cuppa and Berlin pastry. 😉

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2022

Halfway through February, is it possible? It seems that January somehow passed me by.....not much sewing going on here. It is usually a quiet month, but this year I hibernated more.

Not completely inactive, I managed to get through 900 pages of the latest instalment of the Outlander saga (book 9)!; conveniently published in November, just in time to be included in my list to Santa.

Also, my PC of many, many years, which I had been nursing for a quite a while, completely gave up last month; so a new purchase had to be made. I chose to get another PC, rather than laptop, as when you are 70 something, a large screen is the most important thing!

I am now sitting in front of 24in, beautiful screen, what a joy! 

All the Covid restrictions are about to be relaxed here in England;

it seems that we are no longer following the science, which makes me rather nervous, but what do I know?

But there is a new project in making. 

I had  something completely different in mind the last time I wrote, but I have changed my mind. 

I need something sunny and  bright.

While I was browsing through "Focus on Applique" by Irene Blanck, her "Blooming Springtime" popped up from the page, it is just the right thing, you can feel the sunshine. 

I like Irene's designs very much, this is the second applique quilt I am making from this book.

I like the simple, clear shapes. Lots of applique and some reverse applique too. The whole quilt is divided into small, easy to manage blocks. 

I plan to to use fabrics from my stash only, which desperately needs some reduction.

My first "Blooming Springtime" blocks.

This is my quick catch up, just to let you know that I am still around 😀

Enjoy your weekend!

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2022