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.

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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

It's Sunday, it's cold and it's raining....

Only a week ago we had a glorious weekend, sunny and hot, the last flush of summer? It looks like it.

We had some sunny days since, but cold in the shade and now it is September.............

The last picnic of the summer with grandchildren this week in the grounds of Barrington Court.
We just managed it, before the rain arrived in the afternoon..... 

There is still lots of colour in our garden, but probably not for much longer...

 

And still enough food for the bees in my herb border.

Even the "summer play cloth" came outside once more.

I looked for some inspiration and in my draw I found "paper and fabric manipulation" samplers 

I made years ago.

So this is the last block of this summer.

I used scraps of old silk saree, stitched them on with large Kantha stitches and decorated with beads, all from my stash.

This is my "summer play cloth" now, there are still many blocks to be filled in.

It will be now packed away until next summer, which hopefully will be better then this year and there will be lots more "stitching outside" weather!

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2017

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

our glorious summer

still continues, it seems well settled in; at least for now. And we are making most of it, DH and I have taken to living outside, as much as we can. The housework is suffering, while we are making the most of our new seating area.

The 2 garden mirrors are a new addition to our cosy corner, showing us a different view of our small garden.

We celebrated Midsummer here, late into the evening, in Scandinavian way - with  new potatoes with dill, sill (pickled herring to you and me), snaps... and strawberries of course.

A short visit to Vintage Textile Fair in Frome on Saturday morning,

yielded just some very small purchases

and a couple of nice Indian Kantha embroideries on sari silk.

Not much stitching going here, hot hands....., but I will show you the parts of my indigo quilt already stitched.

Oh yes, I did make my Summer jam, using a mixture of summer fruits currently in the shops.

Thank you for stopping by, have a good week!

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2014