The irises are flowering

Irises are the strangest looking flowers, aren't they? These purple ones on my allotment are flowering, and they're such a beautiful colour.

There aren't many flowers on my plot at the moment. The hyacinths have finished, the tulips are nearly over, but the Love-in-a-mist are about to emerge in their jewel-like shades of pink, purple and blue. Also the vivid orange of Calendula. That should keep the bees happy and well fed.

Back at home, I've been finishing a couple of crafty projects that've hung around for too long. I stretched this fishy embroidery over a square of cardboard, then added a felt backing and a hanging loop. (Funny, but until I took this photo I never realised the doors on the bookcase weren't hanging entirely level. How could I not have noticed?)

I also made the stripey binding for this wall hanging.

It's waiting for me to hang it on the wall, which I will get around to. Honestly, I will!

I had another session playing around the paints and the gell plate, and in particular adding colour to this padded envelope, with the idea of eventually making it into a junk journal cover.

I made some painty papers, including printing on tracing paper which works really well.

The padded envelope ended up red and gold, and a lot brighter than it appears in this photo, which has bleached out a lot of the colour. I don't know the theory of why cameras don't always capture the colour as we see it. Maybe I should google that?

I also slow-stitched a little fabric brooch. It's got the tiniest gold sequins, part of a vintage earring and a scrap of printed cotton with 'Why not?' on it. Again, the colour's not as bold in the picture as on the actual brooch.

It's backed with this lovely tweed. Wish I had more of it.

Oh, one more daft little thing - I finally found a good use for the metal bobbins I've kept from my previous sewing machine. I can't use them in my current machine as they're the wrong size and are metal, not plastic. But I realised I can use them as beads, of a kind. I added one to the tie on this journal. It works pretty well, don't you think?

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Fabric bowls & electrical cables ...

To add to my seemingly never ending list of works-in-progress, I've started making a fabric bowl. Or should I call it a fabric basket? I'm not sure. Anyway, I've made the odd bowl or two before, like this blue & white one that I keep cotton perle in. I decided to use upholstery material, which has both advantages & disadvantages. On the good side, it has a certain stiffness, which helps the bowl stay in shape. On the irritating side, the kind of material I'm using frays like mad, and I'm forever picking up threads off the carpet. The bowl's a simple construction, and I've used a circle of cardboard covered with brown felt for the base. It'll look much better when I've embroidered and stitched into it. I've made a start on that, and appliqued on a rectangle of plum coloured velvet for extra interest. When not stitching, I've been catching up on my reading. I finished C J Sansom's 'Dark Fire'. Real...

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....

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...

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