Stitching Sunday: Order from chaos

In line with the sunshine this morning, promising Spring and its requisite cleaning, I want to start reorganising my embroidery supplies. I picked up a handy tool to make sense of the plastic bag(s) of embroidery floss...

If I wind a few a day, I could have them all sorted and ready to file away in this handy-dandy gift from my mother:

My mother is the most organised, tidiest person I’ve ever known, and the sight of my craft supplies (or craft piles) must make her cringe. She has given me storage gifts for yarn, fabric and threads. I aspire to get it all sorted this year...

The top will hold hoops and fabric, the drawers keep floss, scissors and needles tidy. And its portable, so I can take it to my craft groups...

I also have this lovely vintage sewing box, bought from a friend who refinishes old and tattered furniture

It has the original blue velvet lining in the top, and a small drawer for organising bits and bobbins

Another embroidery tool that keeps me organised is my magnetic needle keeper. I have a few at the moment, they beg to become a collection!

I have shared my love of magnets before, in this post, written in the first two weeks of my blog. These invaluable little pretties are perfect for anyone who can’t ever seem to be able to sit for more than five minutes without someone somewhere in the house calling out for something! Rather than stabbing the fabric repeatedly or just losing the needle in the back of the sofa, I park it on the magnet, sort out whatever minor crisis only I can solve, then pick up the needle and carry on with my work.

My little magnetic frog!

I found these lovely magnets here.

Now that we’re into February, I can report on the &Stitches Finish-Along. No, Sam-I-Am isn’t finished (ha! Don’t be silly!), but hey-ho, I’ve made more progress with him this month than I have all autumn and winter!

The ham is just about complete. I will add more black stitches today, but I wanted to show you the flow of the green stitches, following on from last week’s post.

I used long and short stitch embroidery, curving very gradually as I stitched. Here’s a size reference:

I couldn’t have done this without this super-geeky piece of kit:

This is a magnifier that I wear around my neck, so I have hands free to stitch. It comes complete with a tiny light if I need extra illumination to my thread. I am so rock-n-roll crazy it frightens me.

I wonder if I could tart up this magnifier, make it less, well, old-lady-ish? I mean really, I love embroidery, I love the cute magnets and gorgeous array of floss, so why can’t there be some Cath Kidston-inspired magnifiers and lamps?

Before I leave you to your day, I want to share some lovely discoveries in my garden this morning...

Amidst the rubble...

Despite the winter storms throwing all and sundry onto the back border of my garden (a thousand twiggy branches from my birch tree, piles of leaves, buckets of rain, and the odd bit of plastic bag blown away from a rubbish bin), the first few blooms change are making their tentative appearances.

The mighty-yet-dainty snowdrop, which no doubt would find a way to pop up through a glacier if challenged. I love these flowers, so delicate yet determined to flourish – never to be thwarted by the ongoing grey of January (note to self: take a cue from the humble snowdrop next year post-Christmas!). They pop up just when you need to be reminded that change will come!

Hiding behind the foliage

I was so delighted to see the hellebore blossoms opening this morning. Only last week I thought they had succumbed to the Christmas soaking, but by the end of the week, fat buds were sneaking out from beneath the leaves.

I love how these blossoms perch bashfully on their stems, heads down, revealing the beautiful rosy streaks on the back of the petals.

Eenie, meanie, minie, mo – do I work on my sewing projects now, or go outside and do some chilly gardening? I think I’ll take advantage of this gorgeous golden orb in the sky...

Chrissie x

Retail therapy, crochet stylie...

I don’t know about you, but I have HAD IT with January! Finish already, for cryin’ out loud!

Yesterday I faced yet another morning of:

Waking to darkness;

Grumpy child, reluctant to get out of bed;

All of us running late, rushing out the door to school;

Rain, rain, rain. Chilling me to the bone.

I reached my limit. Absolutely fed up. Something had to be done. I ignored the cluttered kitchen table, the pile of stuff on the stairs that needed to be carted up and sorted...instead I hopped into the car and drove through the dreary rain and giant flood-puddles to a nearby village with a beautiful yarn shop.

I know I’m nursing my crochet-strained arms and shoulders, but I really want to make this shawl. I fancied it when I first saw Annette's design at My Rose Valley, and fell fully head over heels in love when I saw it again, not once, but twice: in beautiful pastels on Sandra’s blog, Cherry Heart, and then again in happy colours at Coco Rose Diaries. I purchased the pattern, printed it out, and took it with me to the yarn shop.

I spent a lovely half hour playing with the selection of colours whilst nibbling a pain au raisin from the bakery next door. I had balls of yarn laid out in rows on the carpet as I searched for the perfect colour combination. Like a kid in a candy shop I was, sampling this sweet colour, swapping for that bolder shade...

peek-a-boo!

In the end, I came home with this:

I’m sure those of you who have been around long enough to see some other WIPs will not be surprised by this. I thought I was being rather clever, not buying a complete range of pink yarns (I am a very pink person). But when I got home, I noticed that some of the yarns are variations of the colours I chose for the Blossoming Bag...

...and they’re not all that different from my hexie blanket choices...

And the taupe which will be the main colour of the shawl is pretty identical to my living room

Well, at least I am coordinated! (But I may ask for some advice with my next impromptu WIP, get out of this comfort zone...but it is such a *pretty* zone!)

So another WIP. The purple scarf is very nearly done, the hexie blanket has a new batch of purple blooms this week, and I spent Bunny’s harp lesson crocheting the first few rows of the scarf! This is beautiful yarn to work with, soft and smooth and indulgent.

I ended the day with a rehearsal with the chamber choir, a few hours of beautiful music and singing. Talk about turning around a bad day!

January, you can kiss my...hand and take your leave! I have moved on!

Chrissie x  

PS Share what you’re crocheting to battle the January blahs! Link up below...

Stitching Sunday on a Monday...and a Ta-dah!

Hello and apologies for not posting my usual Stitching Sundays post yesterday – I spent the weekend looking after Little Flower, who came down with a sudden sick bug early Saturday morning. Ugh. The world stops when a sick bug comes along - we weren’t sure if we were all carrying the virus, so we cancelled all plans and spent most of the time in the sofa nest.

Happily, she’s feeling much better today and eating normally, so I was able to put the finishing touches on my latest project:

Ta-dah! This must be one of my quickest WIPs ever, I was so anxious to get it finished! I’ve wanted to recover this bench for a while, and I had the Tilda charm pack in my stash (purchased with no project in mind, just my crazy need to own these beautiful fabric squares!). A match made in heaven.

Once a month on a Wednesday morning I toodle over to Jooles’ lovely home for a quilting morning, and last week I brought my charm pack along. We drank tea, nibbled on warm, wonderful homemade scones (complete with clotted cream and jam, she does spoil me so!), and arranged and rearranged the squares on her kitchen table. What better way to spend a Wednesday morning?  

This was the final arrangement, although I could have kept repositioning one square after another all day long. Do you ever find that with patchwork?

While Little Flower and Bunny were playing a board game Saturday afternoon, I sewed the squares together – which took me under an hour! I’m getting better at this sewing lark... This morning I tooled up and used my new staple gun to secure the fabric to the bench. Then I attached the pretty ice-blue trim with fabric glue. 

Time will tell if that’s enough to keep it all together! The bench is happily in its place beneath my growing wall of embroidery hoops

*sigh* pretty.

Now on to the embroidery part of Stitching Sunday on Monday:

I’ve started the green on the eggs and ham. I decided to fill stitch in a sort of curved direction for the ham - you can see the texture it produces on the left, as the shape of the ham curves.

I use guide stitches whenever I’m filling a space – those are the little stitches spaced farther apart on the left side of the ham. These will keep my fill stitches flowing in the intended direction without going astray and leaning too much in one direction (a common problem if you just use fill from one far side to another). I’ll take more photos as I’m filling to further illustrate this...

And the sewing machine cover is coming along, albeit more slowly than I intended – the distractions of Tilda patchwork and a poorly child!

I finished the ‘Stitch’ and sewed on the measuring tape ribbon; now I’m working on the running stitch and little buttons. I actually find doing a running stitch in a straight line quite challenging, I have to measure and add guide dots along the way!

Little Flower’s resting and watching a show, but now we’re going to bake some cookies. She's requesting chocolate chip...she's obviously feeling better! Wishing you all a happy week, and a big welcome to my newest followers from the Grow Your Blog party!

Chrissie x

P.S. Do link up if you have something stitchy to share!