Cecilia? Felicia? No, it's Phacelia

Okay, before the crafty talk commences I'll share pictures from the allotment. The iris are in bloom, and looking magnificent. I thought they would as the tubers were baked by last summer's blisteringly hot weather, and apparently a lot of heat is what causes them to flower exuberantly the following year. Also full of purple flowers and attracting the bees is the Phacelia. I'd never heard of it before I bought the seeds, but it's a 'green manure', doing all kinds of good, worthy things to the soil by rooting in it.

Redcurrants? Blackcurrants? Who knows? My labelling skills need working on.

This creeping buttercup is probably a weed, but it's pretty so it's staying put.

Right, that's enough greenery for now. On to my seemingly never-ending fabric postcard challenge. I was cheesed off with Tuesday's insipid effort, but Wednesday's made me happier. I made sure to use a good amount of upcycled fabric. Denim, a fawn coloured fabric from a vintage tea tray cloth, a sliver of a chopped-up mens shirt, orange material from a skirt.

Incidentally, I love these little plastic clips instead of pins. But they do become so brittle after you've used them a while, and consequently they snap in two.

Nearly done. A few stitches more and ...

Wednesday's postcard being judged a success, I cracked on this morning with Thursday's offering. Another stripey number.

The pink background is my dressing gown! I'd woken up at stupid o'clock and couldn't get back to sleep. What else could I do but pick up a needle and thread.

I really like the contrast between the black, orange and white. Plus the spots v. stripes, and the way the strips of black and orange aren't super-sharp and ruler-precise. I'd cut them freehand with scissors, rather than rely on a rotary cutter and ruler.

After finishing today's postcard, I was playing about with some already-made scrappy strips of mainly brown fabric. I hadn't any idea of what to make with 'em, but started joining them together.

I added longer pieces of plain white, and strips of pink & brown.

And this is how it ended up, a small cushion, sat on my slightly shabby aubergine sofa. The cushion is backed with a lively floral pattern. Hope you like it.

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Threads of Freedom and charity shop bargains

It's Saturday afternoon, and I haven't done half the things I'd meant to. Partly because I spent most of this morning messing about with paints, stencils and the gell plate. Never mind, everything on today's 'To Do' list will join tomorrow's 'To Do' list ... it's hardly life or death if I don't haul the hoover around the room or pull up weeds in the front garden. I thought I'd show you what I made on Wednesday. I'd gone to my monthly StitchArt group, and this time we did something a little different. There's a project called 'Threads of Freedom' which is working with various community groups across the city. It's about creating little stitched pieces, some of which will be included in a textile panel to go on display at Leeds art gallery. There was lots of fabric we could choose from to sew with, and I picked this vintage tray cloth with the roses embroidery. My own embroidery's not a patch on those flo...

Another week's flown by ...

Saturday's rolled around again, and it's not been the most eventful of days. Cleaning and hoovering, a walk to the shops to buy groceries, an hour on the allotment, then home to do some odd tasks in the garden. The strawberry plants are sending out runners, so I've been dealing with those, plus deadheading the perennial sunflowers, and cutting back the gone-over flowers on the sage and marjoram. I'm sad to see those blooms gone as the bees loved them. This afternoon I spent a few hours finishing 'Dawnlands' by Philippa Gregory. It's a really good book, a page turner where you care about the characters and want to be reassured everything's going to work out well for them. Plus you become enraged about the corruption of the so-called justice system at the time of the Stuart kings and queens, about transportation of prisoners to the West Indies, and about the vile nature of the sugar trade in the 1600s and the vast profits made from it....

Folding a zine and an alternative use for a bank card

Hello again, and excuse me while I scratch my insect bites. I don't know what it is, but at this time of year I'm invariably itching like crazy because I've been bitten by bugs. It seems to coincide with blackberry-picking season, but whether that's purely coincidental I don't know. Whatever's biting me, I'm obviously a tasty morsel in their world! I might try using a highly scented oil like Tea Tree oil, see if that deters them. Anyway, let's get on to more pleasant matters - I'm having a go at making a zine style booklet. Because I didn't have any paper large enough, I joined together two A3 sheets of sketchpad paper, using torn pieces of book pages for the joining. I thought that'd look less noticeable than packing tape or similar. Having chosen my colour scheme I used acrylic paint and an unwanted plastic bank card to apply the paint. Plus a stencil, sponge and modelling paste. Applying paint with a ATM card wa...

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