Mothers Day

Made this card for my Mum for mothers day.

Had to email it to her because I'm full of a

nasty cold and I don't want to share my germs

so we won't be seeing any parents tomorrow.

I shall see my Mum later in the week when I'm

better.

It's a multi-purpose card. Take off the textiles

from the front of the card, remove the double-sided

tape and it becomes a bookmark. She won't know

that until she gets it. Recycle the card.

I might use this as a new header for this blog.

When this is published it looks yuk, sorry!

Workroom

This is the space I work in, taken from the door. It's rather full, so I have to keep it fairly tidy otherwise it's a pain. When I took this photo the sun was very bright and the sky was blue, that's why I have the organza nets to pull across - I can't see otherwise.

I also suffer from 'piles' though you can't see most of them. If I put things away I forget about them, so I have to see things as a reminder.

If I climb on the desk and look out of the window to the left, I have a lovely view over fields and rescue centre for horses.

To call it a studio sounds abit posh for me, it's not big enough for a studio. How big is a studio?

Quilting, rubbish, tulips

Thought I'd better show some texties. This is part of a piece layered and tacked ready for quilting.
I use fabrics from lots of sources. The backing for this piece is part of a calico duvet cover from that well known Swedish store. It's not the best quality calico but its light weight and when washed it's really soft and good to stitch on. It works well for what I want it to do.

I used a sticky backed plastic stencil to quilt around. Unfortunately, when I removed the stencil some sticky was left on the fabric. When I quilted over the area it wouldn't stitch properly. It kept missing stitches. However it doesn't matter as the area will be covered.
This is the rubbish I picked up from the front of my house after the rubbish had been collected. Mostly plastic bags that had been put out full of paper for the 'Paper back' recycling scheme. the men hadn't secured the bags to be left for the residents to re-use.
A picture to make me smile, the tulips from last Sunday. Tulips seem to last a lot longer these days. They've opened up more, the insides are interesting.

Bye!

Nice pics - tulips, frost, new neighbours

Just a quickie!

Pretty pink tulips.

Frosty daffodils.
Frosty metal.
Frosty brambles.
Fianlly, our new neighbours, rescue ponies.
See Ya!

More from Hodsock

More images from Hodsock Priory..........

This last one was taken on the way into Mansfield, going home.

Bye!

Snowdrops

Hello again. It's been a long time since my last post. We've had problems with the wireless router. Hopefully it's all sorted now.
Went to Hodsock Priory to see the snowdrops. We haven't been for a few years but we weren't disappointed. Just a few photos to show you how lovely it was. The pics are bleached out because it was a fantastically bright day.

Snowdrops under the trees in the woods.

Small cyclamen, a real treat. Brilliant colour in February.
This was by the pond, don't know what it is but I love it!
A rather pretty snowdrop.I can't add any more photos blogger won't let me or I haven't figured it out yet! I'll do more later.

I am doing some textiles but I can't show you yet.

Happy New Year; vermicelli; dragon

Happy New Year!

Have been unable to post due to being disconnected from the internet repeatedly. However my other half seems to have solved it.
Anyway, I have actually managed to do some textiles. I'd got some shirt weight dress fabric with a very broad navy blue on white print. I quilted each stripe with white thread then went over it all with blue Markal paint stick. Had to leave it to cure for 48 hours then put a layer of blue polyester organza on top and quilted each stripe again. I'd been reading about variations in vermicelli and decided this would be the quilting but an angular variation. It worked well so I made another piece.

For this piece I used the same fabric but with a narrower stripe. This picture shows the piece before its layer of organza and second layer of quilting.
I have a thing about these layers at the moment, but I must develop it and move on or leave it.
Went to see my Mum and Dad and wanted to take something to eat. I saw this fruit in the supermarket the other day. It's a 'dragon fruit' or pitahaya. It's the fruit of the Central and South American cactus. I was taken with the colour. Isn't it great! It had a sweet taste and a texture similar to a kiwi fruit. It wasn't unpleasant but wasn't particularly remarkable, just amazing to look at. Lots of vitamin C and fibre.
It's been good to read all my favourite blogs again. I felt very isolated when I couldn't read them.
Happy New Year again to everyone.