Saturday, March 29, 2008


Little pink heart finished.

I am not in a good mood today and probably won't be for the rest of the weekend as I have a stinking toothache and I am a wimp. I had a crown put on a 10 days ago at a horrendous price and now, guess what? It is aching and I am a very unhappy camper. Its going to be a long weekend.
Finished this little heart up today.

Monday, March 24, 2008


Our weekend

This is what my niece looks like normally, she is gorgeous as you can see; this is her
playing with the camera and sneaking pictures of Cameron relaxing with his feet up and reading. Also sneaking a shot of me in a most unflattering pose but I have to admit doing what I do most of the time.!!! You guessed it on the computer, probably reading your blog. You can see my cup, gotta have my cuppa, oh you can also see a tin of what we should have been doing, painting the bathroom. Although we did actually get some work done over the long weekend, belief it or not. We managed to get a lot of the garden tidied up in preparation for winter. DH got the driveways etc sprayed of weeds. Cameron did the lawns. We got wood stacked, DH made up an other plane and I did manage to get a little heart stitched , in amongst cooking reading and relaxing
Hope you are all having a good Easter, it is back to work tomorrow for us.



Saturday, March 22, 2008

Latest gadget.

We had a day in town during the week and I spotted this circle cutter and small rotary cutter. See bottom picture. I had just recently bought Quilting Arts DVD of the television show and this was shown on one of the episodes. This picture is showing some of the yoyo's I made last night. The next two pictures, although not very clear are of some of the pincushions I made with the yoyo's I have already given one to a friend and forget to take a picture of it.
The bottom picture is the gadget itself.

Purple hearts

This was originally a purple block that I made up but once done it just wasn't right. The centre piece turned out really small and the gold/purple fabric turned out to be huge. rather than stick it away I made the decision to cut it up!! What freedom, these will actually suit me better as I wanted a couple of small projects to work on. I just might get to do some sewing after all this weekend as we have decided not to paint the bathroom after all. At least not this weekend while we have the young ones here. It is just to inconvenient.
Anyways, these hearts will be mostly stitching and not too much embellishing

Friday, March 21, 2008

No stitching for me at the moment so I thought you might like to see what my DH does. He builds and flies radio controlled models. He used to have his private pilots license way back when we were young. Now he really loves to do this. Well, he has done this since he was a little boy, when his Daddy taught him as he was making his planes. Of course there was a big break while we had our children.
He had a whoopsie with one of his planes two weeks ago, the tail fell off while he was flying. Not a good look, you can imagine the result ?. Got to be expected of course.
I have my niece Dawn and middle son Cameron yeah! coming for the Easter weekend and probably my Uncle from Australia. Oh! and we have just stacked the wood for the winter and that might be the end of me for the weekend, as I am !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Still got the garden to do yet and its not enough lunchtime.
Hope you all get to stitch or do the things that you want to get done.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Hospital block finished.

I think this is finished??? The oya's still need the final placing and attaching as does the mop butterfly. The butterfly will have to be glued as it does not sit right with just a stitch or two in the little attaching place.
I bought the swarovski butterflies and little yellow flowers which are under the lace flower especially for this block. I absolutely love anything swarovski and they look so much nicer in person. I dyed all the ribbon and used the edged dyed ribbon that I blogged about just recently. I really like the edged dyes stuff, it give such a realistic effect. My photographic abilities leave much to be desired I can't seem to get the colours right. They look washed out and really do look nicer in person.
Barbara (on my side bar) has blogged about all the blocks so far. She also has some lovely pictures so that you can see the flow of the blocks and how the colours and theme really work together.

I have been tidying stuff!!!! bah humbug, do you make a mess when you are working? I am terrible and have stuff everywhere. I have also just recently bought a couple of cupboards which mean I have finally the space to put things away in an orderly manner. I reorganised everything a year or so back putting all ribbons and threads together by colours. It seemed like a great idea at the time but it nearly drove me mad. So, now I am putting it all back mostly the way it used to be. Not by colour but by type, like all my pearls cottons together, dmc together and silk threads together. I have also been doing my beads and bought new containers for them. I also organised them by colour and again never knew what was there. So they are now also back to be organised by type, seeds together, bugles together etc etc ad nauseum. Ah!!! I am nearly there and much happier, at least until the next reorganisation.
A group of local ladies are starting an art group this afternoon. As I live in the middle of nowhere there are not any classes as such. The organiser is an art school (UK trained) graduate, hopefully she is going to help us as I am useless at drawing but I figure it has to help the design skills or lack of thereof. I was hoping to get finished my reorganising by the, so I had beter get back to it.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008


Finshed, finito, complete, over.

It is finished, what a neat feeling and a few days to spare. I am normally the sort that sees all the things wrong with my own work. For once, I am really happy with this and I am sure my friend will like it.
The first picture is the inside so that it can be slipped over a new journal when necessary. It is a muted green dupion silk, not that you can tell from the photo. The back of course and the front. I have lots of little special things on this block that are meaningful to my friend. Her initial on the top right corner. The hope and anchor charm as we are studying Hebrews at the moment and we both love Hebrews 6. The butterflies to symbolise transformation, little hearts, a pink tear and a few other things.
Can you see the lovely little pink and purple swarovski butterflies. They are delightful in real life and I wish they showed up in photoes.
Mustn't forget the cup to symbolise our endless cups of coffee.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

I am having trouble trying to post. As you can see I have been tutuing with my blog, well that is not strictly true, my Darling DH has been tutuing the blog. Now I am having problems trying to post.
The photos in the previous post are my nearly finished journal cover. The left hand side which will be the back of the cover I have left plain as that will get the most wear.
Now I will try and see if I get can this post on the blog.


Saturday, March 01, 2008

I am developing a taste for edged dyed ribbon so I had to have another go. This is so much fun and easy to do using fantastixs made by Tsukineko. I got mine from Ribbonsmyth, but no doubt there are other places you can get them. They only take up a small amount of dye at a time which makes it easy for running the stik down the edge of the ribbon.
There is a mixture of plain undyed ribbon used for the base and also some commercially dyed ribbon.
It adds a lovely dimension to your stitching but I think I already mentioned that.


Little more progress.

The top photo is actually the front of a small handbag that was a present from my friend. I love the flowers and leaves and wanted to try it on the journal cover as it is for the same friend.
You can see my representation on the block. It was so easy to do. At the left of the sequin flowers is where the spine of the journal will be that's why it doesn't look quite right.
As usual though the colours are not true at all, they are in reality a lovely light perewinkle/lavender/ purply colour. Nothing I can do about it though, think that may be beyond me.
I think I will take some photoes later today for a little tutorial if anyone is interested.
Talking of tutorial, pop on over to Barbara's blog, the address is in my sidebar as she has blogged some tutorial on different ribbon roses and my favourite seam treatment of all time which I hasten to add have snaffled and used on all my blocks of recent times. They are made with the little drop beads aka grapes. You can see them on this block but do go and see Barbara's she is the Queen of these and the Empress of Ribbon roses, just check her sidebar. You will drool over the roses there.