St Germain quilt - finished at last

Designed by Laurie Simpson for Minick and Simpson, and published in the 100th issue of the Quiltmania magazine more then 5 years ago; so yes, the realisation, that I had been working on this for 5 years, has now hit me. 

But all done now. It was an enjoyable, be it a very long journey. All needleturn applique, hand stitched, and finished by hand quilting (around each applique piece at least once). And because this is a quilt to be used, rather than a wall hanging, I used a warm wadding, a mixture of cotton and wool; it was lovely to quilt through.

Needless to say that I am very pleased with it. It will now live on my bed.

 It measures approx 

160 x 180 cm, so it wasn't easy to take a picture of it outside ( too long for my washing line),

but luckily the quilt is bright enough for a picture inside, 

even on a dull winter day.

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My recent break in blogging was forced on me by a technical problem - one day last month my computer simply "died". My local computer chap soon found that it was the power supply unit which decided it had enough, but because of the age of the computer, it wasn't easy to find a replacement. But eventually one was located in Germany (!), so here we are, back in action!

Having to cope with just a small pocket size tablet in the meantime wasn't any fun, so I have a great deal of catching up to do. 

The autumn has somehow passed us by; it was cold and very wet; there was a brief break in the weather last month, when we visited Stourhead again, but only now it has been possible to download my camera, so here are some pictures.

I have nothing else to show you at the moment.

For the last couple of weeks both DH and I have been nursing a horrid cold, when all I wanted to do was to stay curled up under one of my lovely warm blankets in the front of the TV. 

Hopefully on the mend now. Why is it that as you get older it takes so much longer to get over any illness? It anything, we should be more resilient by now! 😒

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2019

this and that, and teddy bears too

At last, after a month of rain, we might have some dry days.

We cleared all the roses from the middle bed in the front garden.

They were never really happy there, so we are replacing them with a mixture of perennials.

Freshly dug soil, with some addition of new compost - and now all the cats around think this is their new public convenience! A sprinkling of bin powder on the soil usually helps, but this has been washed away by the rain every night since I planted it out........😠

Hopefully, now the dry weather has been promised, we will be able to start tidying the back garden next week.

We took an advantage of being stuck indoors for so long, and sorted out lots of our books. 

Both DH and I are big book hoarders, and every few years we just have to "take the bull by it horns" and do something about it. Some books went to a local charity shop. But we took most of them, four big bagfuls, to the Barrington Court's  "Book Barn". It's a very large second hand book shop, very well run by National Trust volunteers, with comfy chairs, where you can relax while choosing your next read.

The money raised helps towards the upkeep of the Barrington Court; one of the ladies working there told us that last year they raised nearly £30,000.

While there, we took the advantage of a reasonably dry day and had a walk around the gardens.

Despite the rain, or because of it, and because we haven't had a cold snap yet, there are still lots of flowers around.

The pumpkins are ready,

and at last some autumn colour too, 

in the form of a magnificent, very old birch tree.

 

On Thursday I popped down to the Bath and West Showground.

The Craft4Crafters show is a regular, twice a year affair.

No "big names" exhibiting; a bit more textile stuff than usual, which was nice to see; also a chance to stock up with few things.

I was very "self controlled" and made only very small purchases -

I am sure these nice batik fabrics will come useful.

The creative spirit has somehow left me in the last few weeks.

I am still hand quilting St Germain quilt (a long process), and it is nice to have it on my lap, now it is chilly in the evenings.

A small nod to Christmas - I am working on the next cross stitch picture in the Santa Village series of 12 pictures; this is a long ongoing project.

This one is no 7.

May be another 2 years?.....

The 6 done so far.

So, what is is this about teddy bears?

This morning a new issue of Landscape magazine popped through the letter box; always a pleasure to read and I look forward to go through the whole magazine. But one article got my attention immediately, 

the one about The Teddy Hospital in Lyme Regis in Dorset.

Alice's Bear Shop, Teddy Bear and Doll Hospital was opened by Rikey Austin some 20 years ago and they are more busy then ever. 

There are some lovely stories in this article; about how the Hospital has grown, and about "patients" from near and far; a man who could not part with his teddy, so he had flown in with him from Bulgaria, and stayed in Lyme Regis while his bear was being mended!

This is just one of the patients waiting,

Ted Wilson having a rest before his "operation".

Why was I so exited about reading all this? Because this is where my Mary-Jane came from; I bought her during one of our visits to Lyme Regis (not long after out move to Somerset), when Alice's Shop was mainly just that.

So, meet my "gang"; they all have names (of course). 

Some were rescued from charity shops, some bought new, a couple of them I made myself.

This is George, he is rather special - a present from my son.

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2019

The summer arrived at last, be it too hot!

It is Glastonbury Festival weekend , just down the road from us; usually it is either too hot, or swimming in muddy puddles. It was a scorcher yesterday, but today is a beautiful day, pleasantly warm and sunny.

But of course the heat we were getting last week was nothing comparing to the mainland Europe, they did get it bad!

Because the summer is definitively here (for the next week at least!), my "Summer play cloth" has found its way out of the box and into the garden.

For those new to my blog - I call this project "summer" one, because I work on it only during summer, outside in the garden. It just started like that, and now it has become a symbol of summer, when I can sit outside and stitch, when summer is really here.

This quilt is exactly that - a play cloth. There is no plan as such, I simply stitch on it what I feel like at the time.

The inspiration came a long time ago, after seeing one of Tiggy Rawling's quilts, which she brought to her workshop.

The hand dyed pieces of fabric, which form the background, also came from Tiggy's "store", as do many of the threads. The only plan here is to fill every block; I have included embroideries from women of Afganistan ,

and a couple made by ladies from African Tambani project.

Today I started to stitch another block.

The "fish" idea came from the cover of the latest issue of Quiltmania Moderne magazine, which arrived a couple of days ago.

There are several projects I really like in this issue:

But this is my favourite, and the one which has already gone on to my "do" list, a wall hanging by 

Linda Guy 

(who designed "Calling All Birds" quilt, which I really enjoyed making and which you can see on the left hand side of this blog).

I have also been working on the next block for the Awakening quilt.

 

If the weather forecast is to be believed, we are in for a nice summer week; 

not too hot, just right for "stitching in the garden" !

©pleasureinstitching.blogspot.co.uk 2010-2019