Posts tagged ‘Craft’
Image of the day
I love autumn. I love the leaves, the colours, even just the words autumn and autumnal. I think of stomping through great piles of leaves in wellies, wearing mittens and fluffy hats and drinking hot chocolate by a roaring fire. I love autumn so much that our entire wedding had an autumn theme. It’s our anniversary this weekend so I’m remembering a few favourite autumn details from the day.
We’re off to wander around a local arboretum over the weekend, stomping around in lovely autumn clothes and photographing the changing leaves. Can’t wait.
Quilting
My Grandmother made incredible quilts, every single tiny stitch was done by hand. My Mum makes incredible quilts and is currently in love with a kaleidoscope pattern and her longarm quilter. My sister makes incredible quilts which nearly always feature polkadots and the colour green. My Mother-in-law has been working on the same quilt for 12 years and has almost finished.
My quilting isn’t quite so incredible! I love to design quilts, and choose fabrics, but I’ll admit that I prefer to work on shorter projects with more immediate results. I get distracted far too easily when quilting.
I need to focus more than ever now to finish off the vintage style french braid quilt started last March which is still in strips, and the americana buggy barn crazy quilt which isn’t even in blocks yet before allowing myself to start on the navy and white french china inspired quilt in my head.
We had a great day at the Hever Castle quilt show last weekend and I managed to only buy a few fat quarters despite wanting to buy several jelly rolls and books. So annoyed with myself for driving several hundred miles and forgetting my camera, so we’ll have to make do with iPhone pictures.
Unfortunately I now want to make a lovely lighthouse picture quilt, a sampler, the library quilt I saw a few weeks ago, new Christmas decorations, a Christmas table runner and an advent calendar in addition to the projects already started and planned!
In other news, we’ve sold our house again. Fingers crossed everything goes through this time and maybe we’ll be in the new house by Christmas with all my unfinished new Christmas quiting projects!
My what big teeth you have…
My Grandmother used to have a fridge magnet which said “the one who dies with the most fabric wins!” We’re pretty sure she won as her house was filled with fabric, the majority of which my Mum inherited and my sisters and I have added to our fabric stashes from the treasures she had saved.
One fabric my Mum and I both adored was a vintage Little Red Riding Hood print. There’s a reproduction version of it available (see below).
We ended up splitting the fabric and taking half each. The fabric has been in the running to be included in nearly every quilt, babygro, applique project I’ve ever worked on but it’s so precious I don’t want to waste it! I think it would be lovely on a chair like this in the craft studio, with another remnant of it framed in a pretty white frame on the desk.
Chair & tutorial from How about Orange
Make do and mend
This print makes me very happy and will most definitely be featuring in the new craft studio
From farouche, etsy
Teacups
My beautiful best friend got married a few weeks ago. The wedding was absolutely gorgeous, and the rain which has battered England for most of July and August decided to take a break for the day and we were blessed with perfect sunshine. The ceremony was held outside at a local castle and the reception was a classic English afternoon tea party.
The Orangery at Chiddingstone Castle
It’s hard to decide what my favourite moment was (other than seeing two friends so happily married) but definite highlights of the weekend were spending the days before the wedding decorating the marquee with homemade flower arrangements, organza and fabric butterflies, hanging tea lights in jam jars on the trees outside and putting out the place settings.
afternoon tea
The favours were antique teacups sourced from boot fairs, eBay and charity shops, each one was different. The place settings were individually iced biscuits. What could be more gorgeous?
I’m planning to turn our teacups into candles to go in the spare room of the new house. In fact, since looking at all the photos from the day I’ve decided to decorate the entire room around the teacups in a floral vintage theme with a new patchwork quilt design coming together in my head to complement the cups as they sit side-by-side on the windowsill.
vintage teacup favours
