Thursday 27 August 2009

Lets pop to Kendal

Hello, would you like to join us for the ride to Kendal?
The hills you can see are called The Howgills Fells.

I thought you might enjoy the scenery.

We're just popping out to do some shopping.


There's Kendal in the distance.

Now then, I'm not going to bore you with lots of pictures of town centre shops. I thought I'd just show you the most important one we'll be visiting today. It's the blue shop on the left called Reticule
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Can you guess what they sell?

baskets of beautiful buttons

reels of ribbons

boxes of beads

floor to ceiling fabric

fun and festive.
Hmmmmm! Fabric fix!
That's it! That's enough shopping, lets go home.
Looks like we're heading for a spot of rain.

Maybe not.

It's brightening up.

It may take us about an hour in any direction to get to a town but we've never had to sit in traffic!


I hope you enjoyed our little shopping trip.
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Thank you for joining us.
Fi x

Monday 24 August 2009

Hello my lovely ladies. I'm on Holiday at the moment so posting is a bit hit and miss as we're spending time backwards and forwards visiting relatives and trying to spend some time at home too.
I nearly forgot to take a photo of this heavily embroidered cloth. It's folded in half on my ironing board. (see, I do iron occasionally!) Anyway I thought I aught to take a piccy of it in one piece before I ...
Cut it up!
Snip, snip, snip!
And then I stitched it back up to make... can you guess?
Yes of course

You all know what it is

A huge clue

An even bigger clue.

Yep! You were all right.

Only this time it's a 50% BIGGER bunny!
(You wouldn't believe the button beeping that was going on in the library when I asked the lady behind the desk if she could increase my pattern by 30% and 50% on the photocopier for me! teehee! She must have had about ten attempts! Luckily she only charged me for correctly sized one!)
I'm thinking of making some EVEN BIGGER ones, that poor lady will hide behind the counter when she sees me coming again! lol!
And I'll leave you with a picture of some LUVERLY new ribbon. Isn't it just delicious?
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Very British!
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'More tea Vicar!'

Wednesday 12 August 2009

Pretty new fabric

Hello ladies. Look at these scrummy fat quarters.

Aren't they pretty? I can hardly bare to unfold them as they look so lovely.

Well you would think 12 fat quarters in one go would be enough, but look I didn't even make it out of the shop and I'd picked up another couple of lovely fabrics! I'm sure they placed the basket of fabrics directly in my path!

This is my latest 'cake', I was trying out different beads on the top to see which look best. I've found it very difficult to find big red beads that look like cherries to go on the top of the cake. Where ever I go I keep an eye out for bracelets and necklaces and ...well anything that might have big beads on it. I've searched the Internet to buy new beads but they are soooo expensive for the size I need. (about 18mm)

These beads are taken from 2 bracelets and I know they look nothing like red cherries but using a little bit of artistic licence, I think they are quite passable.


As long as it looks at first glance as if you could stick your finger in it, scoop up a big blob of creamy icing and lick it. Then I'm happy!



Wednesday 5 August 2009

Vintage Embroidered Patchwork Cushions.

Hello! I hope you don't mind MORE embroidered patchwork. You've given me such wonderful feedback about it over the last couple of posts.
I hope its not getting boring?
This is the pretty patchwork cushion that I have just posted off to Jane. I do hope she is happy with it when it arrives. This piece of embroidered linen lent itself perfectly to stripes.

Here is the back. I like to use as much of the embroidery as possible, so if I can put some on the back as well as the front, all the better. I must admit it looked rather nice sitting on my guest bed waiting to be posted. I became rather attached to it.

 MORE embroidered patchwork.

I really enjoyed making this cushion. So much so that...

I made another one. Luckily I managed to cut up the linen so that I had almost identical flowers and foliage left over to make the second one.
So now they are both snuggled up together.

Oh and the back! Yes a little bit of embroidery here too.

Till next time, love Fi x

Sunday 2 August 2009

Vintage scrap recycling.

Hello all. So nice of you to pop by. Do you remember my vintage linen scraps that I showed you last time? Well I can show what I did with them now.
I couldn't bare to throw even the tiniest piece away.
so I crazy patchworked them.
I love crazy patchwork especially the Victorian type with all the extra embroidery on the seams.

So this is my version.
Couldn't show you last time as I was still waiting for a delivery of soft, pluffy, feather cushion pads. This one is a neat 12"x12".

OO! Look! another cushion has snook into the picture. That one will soon be on its way to lovely lady called Jane, if you like, I'll show you a close up of that one next time.
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Right I need to go and chase up some embroidery threads that were ordered from a company who said it would take 1-2 days delivery... 10days ago!
love Fi x