Scrappy patchwork on a cold but beautifully sunny day

It's been a glorious autumn day. Chilly to wake up to, then the sun came out & shone brightly, so it was off to the allotment where the earth's softened up after recent rainfall. I was able to weed and tidy, trying to make the plot look respectable before the cold weather sets in and we slide inevitably into winter. At home I fitted in some sewing. The patchwork bug's bitten me again, after having a break and spending time lately with gell printing. I've been gathering up lots of tiny scraps and joining them together, going for a haphazard look. Nothing matchy-matchy or colour coordinated. There's something very satisfying about finding a use for the smallest strips or triangles of cotton, little pieces that might otherwise be destined to end up as cushion filling.

Speaking of gell printing, I've been using prints to turn into seed packets for flower seeds gathered from my garden. Hollyhocks, scabious, catananche. No calendula as hardly any of those flowered this year despite having masses of them last summer.

I'm thinking of taking a stack of these filled seed packets to my local library and asking if it's okay to leave them on a side table with a note saying 'help yourself'. Anything to encourage people to grow flowers and provide more desperately needed food sources for our under-threat pollinators.

I've been sewing more tags to go into the fabric book I'm making at my Saturday class, the second of which is being held tomorrow afternoon. This pair are decorated with motifs from a piece of shiny braid, and I thought they fitted in with my 'Winter Jewels' theme. I've also dug out a few of the boho style beads I made a while back, and can maybe add those to my fabric book, perhaps as part of the closure.

As you can see, I'm not exactly going for an understated minimalist look! Hope your week's going well, and thanks for stopping by my blog.

P.S. Just finished Richard Osman's latest Thursday Murder Club novel, 'The last one to die'. Brilliant storytelling. Highly recommended if you're a fan of the 'cosy crime' genre, and so refreshing to have older characters featured positively in novels.

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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...

Sari scraps, PVA, a couple of books and a necklace

I'm typing this as snow's falling, and has been steadily all day. It's not settling to any great extent, though I bet by tomorrow morning the paths will be slippery with ice. Which always makes me paranoid about falling over and at the very least looking undignified, but at worst breaking a bone or twisting an ankle. Oh well, it's ideal weather to stay inside and craft, isn't it? I finally got around to listing packs of sari scraps on Etsy this morning. I only made up six bundles as I've no clue whether they'll sell or if I've set a reasonable enough price point. Time will tell. This is a link to the listing, if you're interested. This vaguely pink fabric isn't from one of my Etsy packs. It's from a bit of experimenting I was doing yesterday. I'd seen a post on Instagram showing how a DIY version of batik could be done without using hot wax. The Instagrammer used PVA instead, and I wanted to try this out....

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....

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