rubykittyruby

  Okay, here's a festive question for you.  Are you happy buying people presents from charity shops?  (And when I say charity shops, I really mean any source of secondhand items, such as jumble sales or Facebook marketplace.)  Also, would you be happy to receive 'pre-loved' gifts?  It's tempting to jump in with an immediate and enthusiastic 'yes!', but I wonder if that's more about virtue signalling than cold, hard truth.  I've been mooching around charity shops today, and bought a crafty minded relative three good-as-new craft books.  In all I paid £3.25, and brand new they would've cost me at least £40.00.  I'm hoping she'll be happy with secondhand - money going to charity not Amazon, recycling is greener than buying new - but you never know whether the recipient might smile and seem happy, but be privately thinking 'cheapskate!'.  I'd be perfectly happy receiving thrifted books in good condition as that's how I buy the maj...

  And here I am again, full of baked sweet potato and veggies.  I thought I'd post this before I start on my pudding.  (Natural yoghurt & blackberries, possibly chopped apple too.  I'm trying to stay away from the really indulgent puds until we get into the full swing of Christmas, to avoid the waistline expanding too much!)  I've been carrying on with my Ulva Ugerup inspired stitching today - more of that in a wee while - but first thing after breakfast I was digging around in the recycling for cardboard.  I found Amazon packaging, which was perfect.  I wanted to make the covers for a fabric book, you see.  It's going to be for the stitchy things I make in the class I go to at the Art Gallery.  I cut the cardboard to the size I wanted, and used thin polyester wadding to add a padded feel to each cover.   Stretched over the wadding, and stitched & double-sided-taped into place, are a piece of scrappy patchwork and my embroid...

This story has roots that go back years.  I've a book called 'Contemporary Quilts', first published back in 1994.  It is, as the title suggests, about modern quilting, and despite it being a slim volume it manages to pack in a lot of inspiring photographs.  The quilts are a mix of abstract and figurative, and two in particular caught my eye.  One - which has nothing to do with this blog post - was by Deirdre Amsden, and if you haven't seen her Colourwash series of quilts then do yourself a favour and google 'em.  The other was a glorious quilt by Ulva Ugerup, from Lund in Sweden.  She'd sewn a stunning wall hanging, 175 x 150cm (that's 70 x 60 inches), with a scrappy background and lots of machine embroidery.  The 'Girls of Glory' wall hanging features 90 'girls' who are remarkable for many reasons.  We've everyone from Mary Wollstonecraft, Sonia Delaunay, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Edith Sitwell, Golda Meir and Aphra Behn.  I've alw...

It's mid-afternoon on a Saturday when storm Darragh is doing its thing.  Thankfully it's not my part of the country where it's at its fiercest, but even so there are very blustery winds and constant rain, and the daylight's already poor enough that I need the overhead light on.  Actually I might put the twinkly fairy lights on too, just to make it extra pretty in here.  The photo above is of my 'doodle cloth' - inspired by Jessie Chorley and her book 'Journal with Thread'.   I've also been working on an embroidered heart.  Not sure yet if I'll turn it into a pin cushion or applique it on to a page of a fabric book.   The tiny seed stitches give a lovely texture, and I've mainly used that and overcast stitching.  I've added buttons upcycled from clothing - which mainly came from charity shops - and added a butterfly which came from a broken piece of jewellery.  There'll be sequins and seed beads to represent colourful glass pin heads, ...

On a chilly Wednesday I trekked over to Leeds art gallery for another once a month session of something stitchy.  This time we were making - well, I'm not sure what you'd call them - but they involved lots of beads and sequins.   About a dozen of us gathered in the Drawing Room, which was looking very festive with its mini Christmas tree and carols playing in the background.  The sessions are always themed around an exhibit or artist at the gallery itself or another local gallery/museum.  This time it was about an artist that'd been exhibiting at the Hepworth gallery in Wakefield.  Igshaan Adams wasn't a name I knew, but he's a South African artist and makes tapestries and textile based structures.  According to Wikipedia, ' Adams creates large-scale tapestries, wall and floor installations made of plastic, fabric, textile and other everyday materials such as washcloths and garden fencing .'  His work is informed by his childhood, family and the c...

  Do you ever make something and think 'uhm, it's okay, but it's missing a certain something'?  Some kind of spark that gives your sewing (or drawing, painting, crochet or whatever craft) life and energy.  That added extra you can't define but know when you see it.  Or rather, when you don't.   I've been making simple Jude Hill style pieces of stitching, some of which I'm more pleased with than others.   The one on the left - the moon with a face - wasn't right, but I knew what to do to stop it annoying me.  The yellow material I'd used was too harsh a yellow, and the facial expression wasn't what I'd been aiming for.  So I appliqued a more mellow yellow over the original piece, a slightly fiddly thing to do but I was much happier with the result.  I haven't re-sewn the face yet, but probably will.   This other piece - in the photo below - hasn't proved so straightforward to put right.  It looked too plain, and frankl...