Needlebook for Cathy

I offered to stitch for CathyB as a replacement for an exchange she was in 'Trip Around The World' on SBEBB . It was pretty difficult for me to find something very English that I liked and to make a 'small' from. I decided on this Thatched Cottage as we have lots of these here in England and it was also designed by a British designer I like 'Helen Philips'. The design was in a recent edition of one of our cross-stitch magazines but I changed all the stated colours and added the 1/1 sheep as we have a lot of those here too ;-)

For the back I used a Union Jack flag from a Brightneedle design I had, I changed the colours of that too and stitched our initials to personalise the piece. As for the finishing which is completely handsewn this was also down to Brightneedle as I took the instructions from an exclusive class piece they had once done, although theirs is round and a bit tinier than mine...mine has been made more oval to follow the shape of the design I used and is a touch bigger. Saying that it really is tiny still, maybe just the size of the pictures you are seeing at the bottom here, below you can see what it looks like when is is tied fully shut.

Enjoy your Sunday and thanks for visiting :))


Edited 31/7/07
I have been asked about doing a tutorial for the finishing of this little needlebook but would feel very unsure doing so as it is from a Brightneedle exclusive class piece that I bought some time ago and would be covered by copyright. So sorry on this occasion I cannot help.
Thank-you :))

Big surprise...

Wooooo hooooo look at this lovely, lovely total surprise package I have received from my friend Eva in France :)) I had sent her and her DH some tea as they only really like a brand we have here in the UK and this is my special reward. I really can't believe this but it has made my day...BIG style...lol. Eva has had this Thread Keeper especially personalised with a Sajou 'H' in red (of course ;-) coming from a French lady) just for me!! I hardly wanted to open it as the package looked so nice with Eva's stitched gift tag... which I have to say is the BEST gift tag I have ever had the pleasure to be given :-))) Thank-you so much Eva for the gorgeous, gorgeous gift you know I love it very much :-))) You're a super brill friend who is 'the best' and a real pleasure to know .......even though you tease the life out of me ;-)) !!!!!!!!




Have a fantastic weekend... mine is off to a brilliant start with this gift, some new finishing stash and some new chart stash that I recently ordered :-)))

Inspiration...

I get some really lovely emails from ladies who generally are not commenters to my blog for whatever reason but visit it anyway, to say they admire my stitching, the finishes and enjoy my blog!! These always take me by surprise and are wonderful to read and I treasure each one of these special compliments very much :-))) As well as this I also from time to time get emails from ladies to say I have inspired them to stitch again after a long period of time or inspired them to try something a bit different to what they normally do such as using linen or a finish or even inspire them to actually START stitching for the first time ever :-)))

Now , I have a little story to tell and I am so happy about this I have to share it with you...Do you remember I made this Chatelaine a little while ago for an exchange I was in?

My Chatelaine

A lady who was already a stitcher from Australia who has neither a blog or album (yet!!), got in touch with me to see if I would mind her doing a Chatelaine the same for a special friends birthday and to ask me how it was done. I was of course more than happy to oblige and really pleased to have inspired her to do one and set about mailing her a list of steps as to how I did it :-)) Then imagine my surprise and delight when yesterday this same lady, after a few weeks of us being in touch, emailed me the pictures of her finished Chatelaine :-)) It has been made so beautifully and even has the same backing fabric as the one I did, chiffon ribbon like I used was unavailable for this lady so she chose to use a co-ordinating satin ribbon and I think it looks just lovely :-)) So I would like to present to you in this picture below Lyn's Chatelaine and I think you will agree with me what a wonderful job she has made of it :-)))

Chatelaine Stitched And Finished by Lyn in Australia

Thank-you Lyn for sharing your pictures with me and allowing me to put them on my blog and especially for giving me one of those special moments that make stitching so worth while. It is so nice to be part of a community where we all inspire each other in different ways and to say if a certain few ladies had not inspired me with their special pieces in albums and blogs then I might not have even come online to share what little bits I do too :-)))

Enjoy the rest of your week and thanks again for reading my blog!

Meet Rose... ;-)

As named by my DD Amy...she is my new purchase of the day along with these gorgeous cotton ribbons. I have looked for one of these decorative mannequins for ages, have seen lots and at last this one is spot on for me. Rose is about 19 inches high and really looks quite dainty, she is much nicer IRL as you cannot see the 3D effect much here just the back through the front. I plan to make some little fob ornies to hang from her to display in the bedroom :-))

Hope you are having a great start to the week or your holidays :-)))

Thanks for visiting

End of term

I was busy yesterday making these two gift bags for my childrens teachers, they are a mix of machine sewing and alot of handstitching. The one you can see below is made with one-off hand-dyed linen from Kates Kloths, lined with Laura Ashley silk. It has a cotton lace trimmed silk cuff chosen by my little DS, handmade and carved/etched flower abalone shell buttons to attach the strap. Also handmade by me with DS's help, a corsage pin that has a velvet flower, beads, silk ribbon, chiffon ribbon and lace trim. I like corsages/fancy bits and drool over the bags in Monsoon Accessorize.




The next bag is made from Lene Bjerre very muted fabric in a soft beige with grey flowers. I added the stripe ribbon which is made from silk and linen to the centre panel. This bag is also lined with silk with a cuff trimmed with lace that my DD chose for the embelishment, it is actually a cotton lace and is not shiny at all! The handle on this bag was attached from the inside and is made from linen and silk ribbon. These silk/linen ribbons are gorgeous, I got them in York a couple of days ago but they are actually French.




Last picture is to show the corsage decoration I made for the bag. This picture was a rushed one this morning but does show a much better colour representation. For this decoration I used very thin black gingham ribbon and silk ribbon for the tails, I ruched a bit of cotton lace added a handmade fancy button then a little silver dangly charm saying 'Love' that my DD had chosen for this.




My photos really do not do these justice at all as the colours are much, much better IRL as I did not have time to mess about photographing and getting a good capture of the colours ;-) I was up until nearly 2am last night finishing them off so they would be ready for this morning :-)) Each bag contains a little treat and I very much hope they are going to be loved as they took a surprising amount of time to do really and I fancied keeping them ;-)) These are the first non cross-stitch bags I have made and felt quite pleased with what I came up with in the end from a few ideas in my head.

Once again thanks for visiting and I hope you all have a great weekend, today is one of my favourite days of the year, (Summer holidays starting .....yipeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ;-))

Scissor Fob Exchange from Cari

Today I have received this wonderful fob from Cari for the exchange that was held on FGBB along with this pretty card you can see above. I was lucky enough to be sent these lovely Gingher scissors as a gift with the fob, they are my first Gingher scissors :)) I got some extra little gifts as well and am really delighted with it all, Cari's stitching and finishing is perfectly lovely!




If you take a close look at the tassel... you can see it is actually made up of silk ribbon, chenille type thread and the thread that was used for the fob. The cording is plaited, not twisted, the whole thing has alot of attention to detail and you can really tell that Cari has put alot of effort and thought into doing this for me :-))) I am over the moon !!




As you can see from the picture above the back has been personalised with our names and the year, just lovely isn't it :-))) Thank you very much again Cari :-))

I have been having a good time since my last posting...that night we had friends round and it was a very late night their DD and DS stayed for a sleepover to. The next morning (Sunday) it was such a nice day with some now very rare good weather so we decided to take advantage and have a day out. We drove to Ullswater in The Lakes about and hour and a half from us, starting a Pooley Bridge we got on one of the Steamers. The one we were on was called 'The Lady Wakefield' it had just recently been re-commissioned and is a beautiful boat, smells lovely too with all the new wood in it.

On The Lady Wakefield

We got off at Howtown to do a walk not that I am a regular Hill Walker but my DH is and he has wanted us to go with him for ages. Knowing we had Hamish and our two little ones with us I knew it was not going to be too strenuous or high... unlike some of the Munros I have done with him like The Tarmachan Ridge in Scotland and The Cullins on The Isle of Skye!!

View up Lake Ullswater to Pooley Bridge

View down Lake Ullswater to Glenridding

View across the lake our Green and Pleasant Land

Hamish on top of the hill

We all had great fun on Hallin Fell this hill is known as a Marilyn, Wainwright, it only took about 25 mins to get back down it (or run like Batman with your jacket up in the air if you are under a certain age ;-). The weather was good to us with no rain but the sun did keep going in and out as you can see from the pictures. Hamish had his first swim at the edge of the lake on this trip too, don't think he went much on it after he got completely wet! All pictures are clickable except from the boat.


Enjoy the rest of your week with happy stitching and thank-you for your visit :-))

Take care!

Pretty things........

I thought I had better pop in to say a happy 'Hello' to you all before you forget who I am ;-) I have not been on-line an awful lot lately as I have been out buying, (then returning then re-buying as I am so fussy (my MIL will be laughing at this when she reads it) ;-) all the nice things to finish my recently decorated rooms and getting everything back to feeling like home :) This has included Plain Curtains, Modern Curtains, Silk Curtains, Linen Curtains, Flowery Curtains, Long Curtains, Short Curtains you name it they have been tried out in my room!! I finally settled on some as per usual from Laura Ashley as they seem to really suit my old house and are a Linen Union (so it does not crease) with really muted roses on them. You can see them below how they look in my bay window which is actually huge (track is 21ft long)but somehow does not look it on this picture maybe because I was stood on a chair to try to fit it on the camera screen!! I won't go into the cushion, picture, mirror saga too ;-)) I have also done lots of sorting out yet again in my cupboards and drawers all over the house. Funnily enough 'Mount Ironmore' is still waiting with an even larger summit...lol. We had a busy weekend the other week for my Dads Birthday when all of our family got together and it was really good fun and the meal was super yummy!! I seem to have been so rushed off my feet with 'real life' have tired myself out and fancied a bit of a break from the computer...you must know how it gets with trying to cram everything in and still have time for your family?




I have done 'some', well a little... stitching but cannot show you as yet...one is for a suprise to somebody and it is getting posted on Monday, I had hoped for sooner than that but time has not allowed before now. The other thing is I have finished the stitching on something I started whilst in Wales, yes, all that time ago...lol, I told you I had not much time ;-) Anyway I want to finish it completely into the smalls before showing you, much nicer that way don't you think? I have finished another little thing but I can't show that either just yet ;-) I am also ever so slowly working on something for an exchange I am doing and have all my ideas in place for the finishing. I hope that turns out as planned once I come to do it as it should hopefully be nice :-)))

I didn't want to post without sharing something nice for you to feast your eyes on ;-)) so I am showing you these pretty things I have just recently got from my lovely Mum - Veronica. Those who read mine and my sisters blog might remember recently our Mum made Su a lovely Redwork Cat Pinkeep? Well good 'ol Mum has to treat us the same so if one of us gets something the other one does too in a short space of time :-)) Here you can see below the gorgeous Redwork Pinkeep for me. This is my tiniest one yet, I have pictured it with a childs thimble so you can guess-timate the size. The design is from Casamia and it is stitched 1/1 on 32ct Antique White Linen with Anchor 1206 thread. I absolutely love it :-)))))))))))))





My next picture is this lovely little Boot Pincushion that has been made from black felt. My Mum has stitched the sides together with a wine colour thread using Blanket Stitch, it was very difficult to photograph and not get a shadow with it being black. As you can see it has pretty ribbons, braid and beads onit. My SIL has got one too but made of cream felt and Su will be getting hers shortly. I do love this very much as well :-))))))))))) If you look at the Neighbourhood RR blog (link in my sidebar) in the next day or two I am going to do the update of Veronica's stitching on Su's piece. It has been finished for a weeks now, completely fiished apart from any other bits Su wants to add, it looks really, really good so... a bit of excitement to watch out for ;-)))




I too have had a go at the picture letters, I did my name and think like how it looked :) So until my next time have fun and happy stitching and creating and those who are going on holiday have a great time. Maybe our rain will stop and we will get some sunshine!!

See you all again soon and once again thank you so much to all of you who visit and take the time to leave me a comment, it makes my day :-)))))