Sunday, 4 November 2012

Help needed!

I have a little problem relating to the fabrics that I have so badly photographed here.  Z, the honorary member of our Patchwork Group, came back from Turkey with a range of fabrics, including these.  As a result, the group is now faced with a challenge.  By Easter next year, we have to create a piece 6 inches by 24 inches (approx. 15 cm by 60cm for metric people) using our selection of fabrics.  Personally I wasn't keen on any of them, so ended up with these florals.  I have thought long and hard, and the only thing that I can think of is to stitching a climbing rose incorporating the colours in the fabrics and then get Mum to combine my stitching with the fabrics to create the right size piece.  The problem is that I cannot find a suitable chart of a climbing rose.  There are issues about width, complexity (I have limited time to do this in) etc, etc.  So can anyone out there suggest something that I could use or adapt?  All suggestions gratefully received.

Right, moving on - I have both a finish finish and a new start to show you.  Here are my Delft pieces made up into cards to sell for Marie Curie.  It isn't a brilliant photo because I forgot to leave them unbagged so that I could take a photo without glare.  I think that they look just fine and am hoping that someone will take a fancy to them at our stall later on this month.

The festive season fast approaches and therefore so does the need to start work on this year's ornaments for the girls.  This start will eventually be a snowman with a red scarf standing next to a blue A for my littlest niece.  This is taken from an alphabet in the current copy of Cross Stitch Collection (issue 216).  Eldest niece will have a green and red Christmas elf standing next to a bright orange H.

On to Train of Dreams.  Just a little progress here due to this morning's expensive excursion, about which I will say more in the Stash section of this post.  One more complete block and a couple of nearly completed blocks, courtesy of last night's late night waiting for the fireworks to calm down.

Carnation got its regulation three blocks but also quite a bit in the next block, which should speed things up this coming week.  It's very satisfying watching this lovely painting emerging under my needle.

Now - the Stash Update.  As some of you may know, HAED's Halloween Sale expanded from 35% to 50% off.  I had a couple of items in my wishlist and thought why not?  So I did.  As a result, my chart stash now includes Golden Wood by Ruth Sanderson, which always reminds me of the fairytale of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, and Birthstone Sapphire by Rachel Anderson.

This morning Mum and Z and I went to a fabric warehouse in Leicester.  I don't really go for the fabric but they do stock some DMC threads and other stitching bits and pieces.  Today I spent £137.13 - aren't 0% purchase credit cards so useful some times?  On this occasion, they had far more DMC threads than usual at 40p a skein (85p each in Hobbycraft).  I just went along the rows taking one of each colour that they had in stock - 300 skeins later, I was not massively popular with the people on the checkout - it took three of them to count up how many I had.  The remaining £17.13 was aida, waste canvas, thimble, needle threaders etc.  But as I pointed out, I don't smoke, very rarely drink, don't go clubbing, and so on and so forth - and all those threads will keep me going for quite a while!  Carpe diem, as they say!

2 comments:

  1. That sounds like my kind of shopping trip!

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  2. Great stash gathering. Buying the floss is really a fantastic idea, that way when you want to start a new project you have more of a chance of having all you need! My rationalization anyhow. I wish I could come to your Church bazaar, I love those delft cards. Beautiful!

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