Handmade

 Handmade - I love that word so much, and I love making things by hand and always have...the tactile feel of fabrics and threads, the pleasure of combining textures and colours, the sewing of stitches and beads and buttons, smoothing down and stitching  ribbons in place...something that has always given me such enjoyment and made me forever grateful that I chose to go to art college and become a designer and maker all those years ago...I would have made things anyhow but I know I'm extremely lucky to be able to call it work too..

 Whilst looking for something in my studio the other day I found these applique projects that I made quite a while ago. I'm about to work on some applique pictures for a commission so it was useful to have these to hand again rather then nestling at the bottom of a big basket with lots of other projects....

 I love the immediacy of hand embroidery, how everyone does it slightly differently, and the special individual pieces are often quirky...hand stitched pieces by children are very sweet and it's a good way for them to begin sewing....I always use fusible web to iron on my shapes and then stitch round them with different coloured embroidery threads, sometimes in blanket stitch, sometimes running stitch....

 If I make a little picture I back it with wadding and cotton fabric and bind it with colourful binding, then add a few quilt stitches or French knots here and there....it's such a free and easy way to work...

 I also found this little unfinished embroidery which I'd forgotten about, probably abandoned when more pressing projects took over, and this week I'm hoping to find time to finish it off and make it into something..

 The red plastic embroidery hoop came free with a magazine ....I don't always use them and never do for cross stitch, but sometimes embroidery is easier with the fabric stretched tight...

Flowers in pots are on my mind at the moment, nurturing the ones in my garden each day...we haven't had nearly as much rain here as everyone else in the country seems to have had...though we did get caught in a huge downpour visiting a garden on Saturday...such heavy rain everything was soaked in a moment. Thank you for popping in here to see me, I love your visits and your sweet comments. Have a happy sunny week and enjoy your handmade moments. Back soon. xxxxx

Sew Nostalgic

Here as promised are some pages from the 1970's Golden Hands crafts magazines. I've learned all kinds of useful sewing and general crafty tips just from browsing through while choosing pictures to show you.

Some of my favourites are the beautiful fashion drawings that I think are still lively and vibrant now - they speak of their era without looking dated.

This spread shows How To Tie Dye - such fun, everyone had a try...so messy and so unpredictable...so likely to cause a disaster and make your mum cross.....

Patchwork was really popular, especially using hexagons - and it was often used as an applique on clothes as well as the traditional grandmother's flower garden flower quilts.

I love some of the patterns for embroidery - like the delicate applique and embroidered flowers here.....

....and the cute little red and white spotted toadstools here. I just might have to stitch some of these...!

But now I'm going out to tidy my autumn garden while the sun is shining. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and the autumn (or spring!) sun is shining on you too. x

Seaside Stitching

While I'm on a seaside theme I thought I'd show you this little coastal inspired picture. As you can tell, it uses several techniques of a stitched and textile nature, including applique, cross stitch, crewel embroidery and patchwork.

The idea for it came from my Spindrift Cottage Sampler, a cross stitch design inspired by a trip to the remote and beautiful Scottish coast. I produced it as a chart years ago, and a lovely lady once wrote to me and told me it was exactly like the place in Scotland where her daughter lived and she was stitching it for her.

I was experimenting here, trying to make sea pinks, shells, boats and buckets from little scraps of fabric with a tiny bit of stitching. I love how a scrap of fabric in a certain colour and with a certain shape can capture the look of an object - there's such a lot of fascinating serendipity in this kind of work.

The words are from the classic poem Sea Fever by John Masefield, written in 1902 - and slightly misquoted by me for design purposes!

I might just keep this as a picture, what do you think? Or maybe I could use it as a panel in a small seaside quilt?