SHEEP DAY

Didnt we have a lovely day yesterday atspalding sheep day. There was shearing and spinning and weaving and wool dyeing[that was us] and feltmaking,, oh and knitting and shopping!The weather was glorious and all of expedition quiltart were present plus some of our blogging friends so much chinwagging all day.

sheep days

Angela did some really beautiful wool dyeing throughout the day and I was lucky enough to get one of Trudis lovely sheep postcards,we all had a really pleasant relaxed sunny day

dress pattern

on the way home I stopped at the little sewing shop in spalding to buy a skirt pattern and some fabric, because I am disgusted at the price of skirts in the shops, so I will have a go at making my own,how hard can it be.

spud fields

On the way home I stopped to get a picture of the potato fields, the spuds are just peeping through,I also went to post my latest little postcards to textiletraveler and patchandi ,as they were going a long way I had them weighed, 60p -fine, but the stamps were commemorative and enormous! I had great trouble trying to fit them onto that little corner, I had to fold the edges over and hope for the best....

thankyou patchandi

I had a lovely surprise today--a parcel from Australia,Patchandi has sent me a lovely covered book as a present as she chose me as one of her receivers in her recent gift it forward. Now I will have to make 3 quilty gifts and gift them forward to some lucky people, but I wont ask for volunteers yet as I have a lot on as usual, and anyway, I am sulking this week as the house I wanted to move to,that has been for sale for 3 years , that is the reason I haven't been sewing much ,as we have been tidying our house up to sell it to buy the other one ........has bloody sold! boo hoo! if one more person tells it just wasn't meant to be I swear I will scream aaagh!I had mentally planned where my furniture was going, and more importantly, planned where the sewing machine would be in my new sewing room so thank you patchandi, you have cheered me up ,you and a large bar of galaxy!

dyeing wool

As you have probably read, fenland textiles aka angela and I have been playing again,this time with wool and wool dyes. and its gorgeous but messy. Angela touched some freshly dyed wet wool and instantly turned into an avatar with blue hands - very attractive. We also dyed some wool wadding and got a lovely mottled soft colour from both pieces, one was a pinky lavender and one was a soft pale mossy green this was very surprising as we had painted it yellow and orange with blue edges but the dyes combined in the microwave we were having a play ready for this saturday which is sheep day at the unique cottage farm studios at spalding, where there will be felt making and weaving and spinning and dyeing and of course--SHEEP also tea and cake[ I hope].

dead chuffed

well, I am feeling dead chuffed this week.I have been up to academy quilters at Grantham.What a cheerfull and enthusiastic group they are! There were three large quilts on show and tell and several small bags, and several members had finished their kantha work,we had a very entertaining time with Frankie showing us all how to make postcards.

postcards

Apparently the trick is to make the edges NEAT !This is especially helpfull to me ,as tonight,over at expeditionquiltart, I am launching a ;follow me challenge;; which will hopefully result in 24 postcards that I can send to people. notice the two on the right are not neat, I had problems with the machine and you cant go over postcards again--to much perforation, I eventually spent 1and a half hours stripping it down and cleaning it and its sewing nicely now..phew!

postcards.

I seem to be doing a lot of little things at the moment, which is bad as I have a big thing sitting on my worktop for the F.O.Q. waiting to be done....hmmm

Missing the short people

I am currently suffering from withdrawal symptoms from both my children and my sewing life--due to extreme tarting up of house and helping mr shedman do all those little jobs we haven't got around to in the last six years. There has been painting inside,painting outside,pruning,weeding,mowing,rot ovating, barrowing and grass seeding with only short intermissions to read silly boo dilly. So today I took a day off...HURRAH !. The nine year old short person wasn't away camping with the scouts and very politely asked if she might make her own quilt. So ,using the funny little new home machine that I have just bought for the kids,we set to. First she practised machining in a straight line using lined paper.

Then she startedjoining her pieces,

these were large squares with one simple cut- no matching, she got the hang of it really quickly and bish bash bosh,job done. She had made her first quit top.

We interupt this broadcast to say THANKYOU to that nice mr shedman, who has just come in and given me a box of Ferrero Rocher yum yum .....

little six year old also wanted to join in so we gave her a fat quarter of pink fabric anda glue stick and a pile of scraps and small scissors and she happily practised her cutting skills all afternoon.

DOLLY QUILT

The 9 year old very kindly sewed down the scraps, and I added a back and wadding, and bish bash bosh, a quilt for baby annabelle!