rubykittyruby

  There's something immensely pleasing about a tin of buttons.  You can pick up a handful and let them slip through your fingers, enjoying the sound they make as they fall.  You can rummage through a mis-mash of shirt buttons, iridescent mother of pearl buttons and garishly coloured cheap plastic ones.  Large buttons salvaged from coats and jackets.  Novelty buttons from children's clothing, maybe from back in the day when babies wore delightfully named matinee jackets.  As a child I could quite happily spend ages threading buttons on to a length of knitting wool in order to make a necklace of sorts.  Why am I telling you this?   Well, I had the urge to make button cards today, so I cut out tags and either stuck a pretty paper on one side of them or I added a printing stamp.   These are three of them, and they'll probably end up added to a journal page or cover.   I also spent a bit more time sewing lines of slightly wonky...

  Hello on what's been a beautiful autumn day.  Bright blue clear sky, a chilly start but warming up in the afternoon.  I've been on a long walk around a local nature reserve, not wanting to stay inside when it's so lovely outdoors.   In the last week or so, I've been finishing this fabric bowl, and have started making another.   But mainly I've been having a bit of a change-around in my house.  I've hauled furniture from one room to another, clutter-cleared cupboards and bagged up things for the charity shop, and generally hoovered and cleaned all those dusty corners.   I'd finally made a decision about turning the dumping ground of the front bedroom into a craft room.  It's taking shape, though it really has taken some effort.   Larger pieces of material are stacked on shelves, grouped into colours.  Lower down is my Sissix machine and die cuts, and at the base of the shelving are beads and jewellery making supplies...

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...

  I love how bizarre this photo looks.  It'll make sense later on, just keep reading.  It's a sunny Thursday morning in West Yorkshire and I'm debating whether to risk a line of pegged out washing or keep the laundry for another day.  Oh, the decisions!  It's better than trying to make up my mind about who to vote for.  General Election day in the U.K. and I'm still dithering over my choice.  I keep telling myself my one little vote won't make any difference to the overall result, so why tie myself in knots trying to decide.  But you can't think that way.  Every vote's important.  I will always vote in an election, whether local or national.  The suffragettes were imprisoned, force fed, beaten up and derided for demanding women's right to vote, so while it may sound pompous it's every modern woman's duty to honour their memory and put her X in a box.  Or spoil her ballot paper or whatever, just turn up and exercise our democrat...

  Well, my Bank Holiday Monday got off to a nice start.  I've made a sale on Etsy.  I'd listed a patchwork quilt top, an English paper pieced one that I'd done ages ago but never got around to adding wadding and backing material.  I offered it for sale as a project someone else might like to complete, and it'd been listed for months, long enough for me to think only yesterday that I ought to take the listing down.  The amount I asked for the patchwork isn't anything much compared to the sheer number of hours paper piecing takes, but that's fine.  I'm more than happy to have it packaged up and ready to be posted to its new home.  Hopefully to be finally made up into a proper quilt and provide someone with warmth and a feeling of accomplishment.   I spent yesterday morning making this very speedy little fabric bowl.  It's a bit rough 'n' ready, but I can pass that off as boho style!!!  I cut a circle out of felt, then cut a strip of f...