Fat Birds Rule.

Meet 'Fat Bird'.
When inspiration strikes you've got to just go with the flow before it evaporates.
So thinking caps were donned and much sketching ensued.

Many prototypes were designed and made and abandoned, then even more head scratching followed.

Fabric was measured, cut, stitched and snipped. Pencils were chewed and tongues stuck out in concentration.Much mess was made as well as chaos organised, I daren't show you the heap of stuff on the floor and the bed.And eventually little 'fat birds' were born and somehow evolved into owlets.

Just large enough fill the cupped palm of your hand and full of wheat should they need to be gently warmed in the microwave to keep those hands cosy.
They've found a lovely perch in Milkchurn Cottage Gift shop where a couple have already flown the nest.
I don't think this is the last we've seen of fat birds or maybe even fat other things yet.

And in a nod to the date today I managed to fit in a bit of 'yarnstorming' here and there in the village.

Wishing you a happy Valentines Day.

fi x

Paper Hearts and Discruntled Hens.

I'm taking a break from hexagons.
I've been having a play around instead. Something we all need to do now and again.

Inspired by Dottie Angel's stitched paper I sewed fabric hearts onto some old printed pages and cut them out.

I particularly like the the ones with a bit of map on the back.

So they are now dangling in my porch which is open to the elements, so it will be interesting to see how long they last before looking a bit sad and past themselves. I think the term will definitely be 'weathered'.

Margery, Fudge, Pepper and Lady Gaga are looking a bit weathered too. They don't like the snow and ice and sat all fluffed up peering into the garden as if to say 'Is it time for supper and bed yet?'
Spring will be along soon girls.

Till next time

fi x

Vintage hexy cushion No3.

Hello lovely ladies. Are you all hexed out yet?

or

can you manage another session of floral 6 sidedness?

and we're talking a lot of hexagons here, in fact were talking more hexagons than I had envisaged due to a mistake made with my cushion pad order!
Yep! I counted 92 little seams stitched, with a bit of lace thrown in for good measure.

It came as a bit of a shock when after stitching all my hexagons together I ripped open the parcel containing my new cushions to find a whopping great big 20"x24" cushion where there should have been a much smaller one.

Well you know what they say, 'If you've got lemons, make lemonade', so I got the fabric and scissors back out and added even more hexagons to make my cushion front large enough. Here it is ready to have a nice cotton backing attached to cover up all those patched raw edges. I can't bare having an untidy backside...if you get my meaning.

All that is left is my ta-daa moment so are you ready...

Ta-daa!

As is often the case, I rather like the backside too!

All 3 of my vintage hexy cushions and the messenger bag are for sale in Karens pretty shop which has just undergone a make over and looks rather delicious. I'll take some pictures at the weekend to show you all.

Promise.

love fi x

Machine Hexed. part 3

Good morning you lovely lot. (Thank you for the Garden Wall appreciation.)

My journey with machine sewing hexagons has continued on a little. At the suggestion of a lovely new friend I've been stitching these together by only using seam allowance as a guide rather than marking with pen lines.

Still fiddly and very time consuming (but nowhere near as time consuming as hand piecing!) and there is a certain amount of guess work when it comes to starting a finishing each little seam but on the whole it's working.
(Pretty chair and roaring fire courtesy of Milkchurn Cottage Shop)

Even though these hexes are quite large, you need more than you think to make a piece of fabric large enough for the front of a cushion cover!
Needless to say the back isn't hexed!
But never the less a rather gorgeous vintage looking squishy cushion.

There's been a little bag making too since I last posted. Inspired by the recent issue of Molly Makes. I made mine differently and to my own pattern though.

Not my usual style of bag but more a messenger shape. I'm particularly loving the old brown leather button that secures the lined front pocket.

Made from seriously scrummy Sanderson fabric and lined with some soft, blue spottiness, a skirt in a previous life. (waste not, want not)

I knotted the extra long strap at one side so that the length can be altered for 'across the body' or 'on the shoulder' wear. Hmmm... I'm not altogether sure about this bag, I think I will have to revisit this style of bag and have another play around with it some time. I feel the need for a little 'tweaking'.

And on the sewing machine today...

More hexagons.

Fiddly? Yes.

But obviously not fiddly enough as I've decided to add some lace too!

When will I learn!!!

Oh well...my mother always said I enjoyed a challenge!

love fi x

The Garden Wall. Embellished Felt.

Hello all, it's been quite yukky here in Wensleydale today, snow on the hills, low mist, and wet, wet, wet...So I thought I'd bring you a taste of summer in the shape of my latest felt picture. It started life as a very rough pencil sketch from a little magazine picture. I add a few splodges of colour and scribble a few notes down in the margins.

Next I make my base fabric by wet felting Merino wool. You can see how this is done in my felt tutorial from waaaaay back in 2008! This is always a bit hit and miss as you only have a certain amount of control over the felting process. You can never be totally sure where your fibres will have moved to during all that rubbing and rolling!
As I'm quite a control freak I think it does me good not to have complete control. It makes me have to find ways to work with what I have rather than what I would have liked, which in turn stretches me and makes the whole piece more organic, it has to grow rather than be designed and just made. Once the felt is dry...
the good bit starts...the embroidery! I always have a little panic at the start though, it's that blank piece of paper syndrome; where shall I start, what colour and type of thread shall I use! You wouldn't believe how long I put this bit off sometimes!

Once I have a few patches of embroidery started and I've 'tasted' a few colours, I'm ok.

All these tiny little flowers are made from pure silk which I hand dye myself and then shape and individually stitch into place.

I try not to use too many different embroidery stitches as I don't want the piece to be an 'embroidery' as such. I just need the stitches to add texture and accentuate the shapes and colours already in the felt.

I absolutely love the dry stone wall in this piece, and the little clump of trees in the background, I think they worked really well. I've never done anything 'hard' like the wall before, I've only ever done soft vegetation and flowers so every time I see it I want to dance a little jig while my heart does a little squishy thing in my chest.

So.....

Here it is, complete and in all it's glory!
A true Ta daa! moment.

Till next time

love fi x

1930's style patchwork cushion.

Ooo...you are a lovely bunch, thank you for all the Granny Pilley quilt love and Sally...get your great granny's quilt top out and make it into a quilt anyway you can! I'm sure if your great granny had a sewing machine at the time she would have used it. You need to give it life so that it can be loved and used as it was meant to be. Go on you can do it, we're all behind you.
After my first little experiment with joining hexagons by machine I thought I'd have another go, so I used some lovely 1930's style fabrics that I had left over from a previous project.

As you can probably tell by the photos, it's a little bit fiddly, but still certainly quicker than piecing by hand.

This the front before I pressed it.

There we go, pressed and a border attached basically so I could see the hexys framed. I only had a few squares of the 30's fabric, that's why it's only a small patch of hexys.

Not sure what to do next or even what I was making, I cut little 1 x 2 inch rectangles from the scraps of fabric left from each one of the squares that I'd cut the hexys from. (I hate to waste anything, lol.) And then I stitched them together and attached them around the edge. Once I done this my piece was almost large enough to make the front of a cushion cover, so another little trip to my fabric cupboard and another round of edging and I was ready to quilt my piece.

I chose to quilt the patchwork as I don't like to have all the raw edges of the patches inside my cushion cover, I like to have a backing on it so that all those raw edges are hidden away. So as I was putting a backing fabric on I thought I might as well put a piece of wadding in between. I laid my patchwork on a slightly larger piece of wadding and then laid these both on a larger piece of muslin. It's done this way because your work will shrink up slightly as you quilt it and you don't want to find that you're loosing your backing behind the edges of your front!

Once I'd finished quilting the front I trimmed off the excess muslin and wadding and stitched on a simple envelope back, and Bobs your uncle!

A 1930's style patchwork cushion, lovely in the kitchen or perfectly perfect for a little persons playroom, very soft and snuggly.

Now then...Folksy shop or Etsy shop? Hmmm...Etsy's turn this time I think.

Next time we really must catch up with some felting before I forget about it completely!

love fi x