A Feast for the Eyes

Welcome 🙂

The last week has been a joy! I’ve been out and about with friends visiting places with textile exhibitions. This post is filled with photos of the inspiration I found.

The first place I visited was The Hub in Sleaford – a gallery I’d heard of but hadn’t visited before. There was an exhibition by a local embroidery group and their work was beautiful.

Here are a small sample of pieces I particularly liked – apologies to the craftspeople who made them because I didn’t have a catalogue so don’t know who made them.

I really like the muted colours in this one and the use of twigs to make it 3 dimensional.

A bee keepers garment covered in bees. (Those spears in the background are all embroidered, not sure they’d be much use if you were under attack but they looked good!)

Love that goldwork bumble bee.

This knot garden was astonishing in its workmanship – there are such talented people out there!

These hoop art pieces are charming, just look at those sheep.

I saw this next piece at the Willoughby gallery.

It’s by Nicky Davies and is called Elements of Petals. I’d love to try this technique – does anyone know how it’s done?

I went to a local show on Sunday and saw this stunning piece by Rachael King which is so delicate.

And finally on Thursday I was at my monthly quilt group and the speaker was Moira Neal who designs greetings cards. She was very entertaining and showed us all the originals of her cards including this one which made me smile.

Behind the scenes I’ve been stitching away for the Blog Hop I’m taking part in next week. I’m having a little give away too so I hope you’ll come back and take part.

Until next time,

Chris x

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Friday Night Sew In for March

Hello and welcome 🙂

This Friday I linked up to Friday Night Sew In over at Wendy’s blog Sugarlane Designs, she usually suggests some naughty chocolatey treat for us to indulge in while we’re stitching away but I was good and resisted, mainly, it has to be said, because I wasn’t organised enough to make anything 🙂

I thought I’d have a final push with my friend’s cross stitch and I’m very pleased to announce that the outlining didn’t take as long as I thought it would resulting in me actually finishing it – whoop, whoop 🙂

So without further ado here it is.

I love the way the sky has turned out, while I was stitching it the pale grey looked the same as the white but now you can see how it defines the clouds – all plump and cotton wool like 🙂

I’m always amazed at the difference outlining makes, the flowers now look like flowers rather than ‘blobs’ of colour!

and the cross seems 3 dimensional now.

I am happy with how it has turned out and I’m even more happy that it’s all done. I’m looking forward to giving it back to my friend for her to get framed.

If you’d like to see what others have been getting up to in the Friday Night Sew In then the list of participants can be found here.

On with the next WIP 😉

Until next time,

Chris x

Cross Update

Welcome 🙂

I try very hard to reply to everyone who comments on my posts, it’s so lovely to get feedback that it’s the least I can do 🙂 however some of you may have either not got a reply or even got more than one from my last post, so if that’s you I humbly apologise. Outlook has been having ‘a moment’ or rather, several ‘moments’. Every time I sent an email it would shut down and then, I think, send the emails anyway. And I would log back on and resend the emails so ….sorry 🙂

Back to sewing.

I thought you might like to have a progress report on the Cross stitch picture I’m finishing off for a friend. The original post about it is here.

The picture has an Easter theme and someone suggested that it would be nice if I could give it back to my friend at Easter which I thought was a lovely idea.

So I’ve been working like crazy to finish it but these things do take time especially as I like to work on multiple projects at any one time. I’m sure a lot of us are like that aren’t we? How many projects are you actively working on right now?

So far the cross stitch has gone from this,

to this,

and now to this,

The actual cross stitch is about a couple of hours away from being done, which will leave the outlining left to do. I always find that that takes much longer than you think it will but it also makes such a difference to the picture – so you can’t skimp on it!

How many weeks is it until Easter (help!!)

 

Snail update! Son 1 has had a trip to Plymouth and found all the snails he needs for his research – just thought you’d like to know 🙂

Until next time,

Chris x

I’m linking this up to Esther’s WOW post which can be found here.

If you’d like to comment and/or ‘like’ this post, and I hope you do! – then just click on the post title and you will be taken to the comment page – look forward to hearing from you.

 

Secrets Revealed

Hello lovely people, welcome 🙂

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas Day, full of good things.

We got up late (for those of you with little ones, one day you will get to lie in – promise!) , went to our church where we sang carols for the last time this year and then went home and ate lots of good food 🙂 interspersed with a walk, a few silly games , lots of unwrapping of pressies and a bit of TV – good times 🙂

Now that all the secret sewing presents have been opened I can start sharing with you what I made in the lead up to Christmas.

Now I did say I wasn’t going to make presents this year but I did succumb and make just a few.

This little Christmas ornament was for my daughter.

A mini stitchery in a 4 inch hoop with a mother of pearl star 🙂

I’m pleased to report that she liked it 🙂

Enjoy your Boxing day.

Until next time,

Chris x

If you’d like to comment and/or ‘like’ this post, and I hope you do! – then just click on the post title and you will be taken to the comment page – look forward to hearing from you.

Ribbon Embroidery

Welcome lovely peeps 🙂

Despite not doing much embroidery I do like it, it’s one of those skills I’d like to develop – just not necessarily today 😉

At the moment I particularly like ribbon embroidery and lucky for me one of my bloggy pals – Lin from St Victor Quilts – is a bit of an expert at it. Go and have a little look at her blog and you’ll see some of her beautiful work.

Lin recommended a beginner’s book to get me started and this week I’ve given it a little go.

Now I know that for the best results you should use silk ribbon but I didn’t want to go to all that expense while I was learning so I used voile ribbon which at 15p a metre is much more affordable and I wont get too cross when I make mistakes!

Here are my humble efforts

Ribbon stitch flowers in purple and blue

Straight stitch and French knot flower in purple – it should be a rose but I’m not quite sure what happened!!

Hmm, now what to make so that I can cover it with pretty flowers – that’s the question 🙂

I’m linking this up to Fiona’s ‘New to me in November’ post on her blog Celtic Thistle Stitches.

Until next time,

Chris x

If you’d like to comment and/or ‘like’ this post, and I hope you do! – then just click on the post title and you will be taken to the comment page – look forward to hearing from you.