I've been fabric-shopping....

Last week I visited one of my favourite fabric shops, the Shipley Shuttle. It was love at first sight for this gorgeous cotton - I adore pink and yellow or orange together.

I spent a portion of my weekend making this large tote bag.

I cut out a couple of flowers from the fabric and backed them with interfacing and felt and then stitched around them.

I sewed them to yellow spotted ribbon ( a perfect match for the elephant ears featured on the fabric ) and then I tied the decoration around one of the bag handles.

I had enough fabric left over to make this purse. Not bad for a long and lazy Bank Holiday weekend...

A new quilt takes shape....

Despite having two fairly large-scale patchwork projects already on the go, I decided last month that I would start another quilt. I am a recent convert to the combination of blue and white - I love the crispness and cleanliness of the two colours together. I thought that a little pink in places would be a nice way to warm up the work. The blocks are 7 inches square, and a relief to work with alongside the 1 inch square patchwork which is still ongoing. I am, as usual, stitching this by hand and using the English paper-piecing method. The quilt will probably end up as a lap-quilt to use in my sewing room in the winter months.

The fabrics will be a mix of floral, stripes, plain and some checks.

Here are my first six blocks. They are randomly placed together - I will not decide how they all fit together until all blocks are completed.

Experiments with seedheads.

Since I began to garden a number of years ago, I have been captivated by seedheads. I photograph them outdoors and some I then collect to keep them in vases and jars. I decided to have a go at recreating some seedheads in thread and fabric and here is my first attempt. I'm sure there will be more experiments as I particularly enjoyed this way of working.

Try as I might, I cannot photographically capture the true colours of this piece! I tried outdoors but even that didn't look right, so this will have to suffice.

Close-ups give better results and a more accurate depiction of the subtle colour scheme.

I like the piece in its round embroidery hoop, so I'm going to leave it as it is and hang it upon the wall like this - so, looks like I'll be needing new hoops....

My new love - and it's nothing to do with sewing.

For the past year or so I've been desperate for a bike...and I've finally committed. So, this post is for the friends I have who have been interested enough or kind enough to ask about what type, what colour, what I'll be doing with him etc.
Our journey together has begun - and I love him. All I know is that he's fast and when I ride him I feel like Boadicea - all-powerful, all-conquering. And I'm sure that I have a big daft grin on my face the whole time. It's that good. Oh, and he's called Spartacus. Or Fabian if I'm being gentle with him.

We'll be doing many miles together - and this will take me away from home and my darling cats and my beloved sewing. Gulp. But I'll be out in the fresh air, seeing wonderful things ( I saw a stoat this morning! ), and that is a wonderful way of topping up the happiness quota......

Pin cushions for charity

Over the last couple of nights I have made these pincushions. I cannot take any credit for the original idea - I think they were part of a DMC kit I saw at a show a couple of years ago and the design stuck in my mind. The colour scheme is unusual and a fairly accurate rendition of what I remember the kit to look like. I drew the little cats onto paper first and used as a template.

I am going to make a batch of these - perhaps in various colours - and donate them to Leeds Feline Friends so that they can be sold at their Christmas Fair, an event I always attend.

The chicken and the egg

I finally got around to making a door-stop, a much-needed addition to my sewing room. It was very quick to hand stitch, the only difficulty being what colours to chose. I adore gingham and plumped for the orange version from my stash.
I made use of yet more pieces of left-over wadding to form the chicken shape.

The fabric was then tacked around the wadding and felt details stitched into place along with a beady eye.

Both pieces were stitched together and stuffed with buckwheat - I'm so glad I finally found a use for that!

And totally unrelated, I quickly made these egg-cosies as a small gift. Again, wadding was used to provide structure and insulation.

My kaleidoscope

The June project for the other blog in my life had as its theme Kaleidoscope. Having been enjoying my patchwork projects recently, I decided that I'd set myself the challenge of using this method to come up with something. Hexagons seemed an ideal shape - but I also wanted to divide them in some way to use as much colour as possible.
Dividing each shape into 12 seemed attractive but was quite challenging. The only criteria I set was that each hexagon should be made up of a dark and lighter shade and have a plain centre. I used 7 shapes of approx. 8.5in./21cm across. The overall floral shape was quite a becoming alternative to a traditional circular kaleidoscope view.

Hexagons tacked and ready to have centres stitched in...

...and centres waiting to be matched up with hexagons...

The overall piece is finished. A loose running stitch has been used around the outer edges to neaten them up for the photoshoot!

I particularly wanted the photographic shot of the work to be part of the project - ie. I wanted to try and catch the light so that the folded fabric at the rear of the work would create an effect as well as the colours. So, here goes...

And a close-up taken without the flash achieves this quite well. I love the stained glass effect.

I particularly enjoyed this project - enough to think about adding to it and creating something larger. I had toyed with the idea of enlarging it and creating a quilt....but having seen the effect of light coming through the fabric, I'm now speculating about a window hanging of some kind....