rubykittyruby

I keep thinking it's Wednesday, but no, it's only Tuesday, and it's also astonishingly mild too.  I was out in the garden without a coat on!  Makes a change from shivering in layers of thermals and woolies during the recent freezing cold weather.  A bit of blue sky and warmish weather really does lift the spirits.  I've noticed the days are getting ever-so-slightly longer too.  There's the not-too-distant promise of light evenings and spring flowers.  Speaking of flowers, the perfume from these blue hyacinths is gorgeous.  Nicer than any scented candle.   In other 'news', I've been making progress with this scrappy patchwork.  It's had its binding attached, and is waiting to be quilted.   I know using my sewing machine for those quilt lines would be speedier, but I like the softer look hand stitching gives.   The binding's as scrappy as the patchwork squares.  I've jumbled up colours and patterns, so there's ever...

It's the weekend already, and the central heating's kicked in because of a cold, frosty but bright morning.  I've succumbed - yet again - to buying a book online.  It's 'Embroidered Purses' by Linda Tudor, the library book I featured on my blog the other day.  Decided I needed my own copy and - ooops! - I seem to have purchased it.  How on earth did that happen?  Oh well, it was a bargain price from the ever-reliable World of Books.   On the subject of books, I recently finished 'The Casual Vacancy' by J.K. Rowling, a terrific read, I really enjoyed it.  Last night I got to the end of this Philippa Gregory, 'The Taming of the Queen'.  The queen in question is Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII's many wives and thankfully a woman who survived the terror of being married to him.  I'd read Elizabeth Fremantle's 'Firebrand', another novel about Katherine Parr, but I think 'The Taming of the Queen' is the first book tha...

  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....

  Wednesday was time for another Stitch Art class at Leeds art gallery.  This month's session was based around the current exhibition of photographs by Peter Mitchell, entitled 'Nothing Last Forever'.  A lot of the photographs are of Leeds in previous decades, documenting old buildings, shop fronts, decaying structures.  Once I started looking at the pictures I realised some were familiar to me, having seen them on 'X' (formerly Twitter).  That account's called British Culture Archive @britcultarchive, and features other photographers too.   This photo of a terraced house with its neighbour having been demolished makes me think of those abstract works of art by Piet Mondrian, and the Mondrian collection by Yves St Laurent.  It's the blocks of colour on the walls of the demolished house, the way they're divided into sections by the unpainted brickwork.   The quirky framing of this particular photo is a clue about what we concentrated on y...

Hello from the mess that is supposedly my front room (a.k.a. sitting room, lounge, parlour, whatever you want to call it).  I've been sorting through piles of fabric and trying to bring order to it.  Fat chance of that!  Nevermind.  I thought I'd start this blog post off with a failure.  Something I tried but which didn't really work out.   I've been playing around with making simple doll shapes lately, and yesterday morning had the idea of making a doll patchwork block.  A background of 6 inches x 8 inches and a doll shape appliqued on.  I'd recently bought a packet of Bondaweb and wanted to try that out, not having used it before.   I deliberately chose clashing colours and patterns, going for a scrappy look and lots of contrast.  Four of the five blocks I made turned out okay, but the fifth pink block had the doll shape appliqued on all wonky, so I put that aside.   I added the blank faces, ready to be embroidered ...

  Sometimes you have to give up on one idea and head down a different route.  I've been making blocks on & off for ages, with the aim of making what's known in the quilting world as a 'Terry quilt'.  If you've not come across her on Facebook or YouTube, Terry Rowland's an amazingly accomplished needlewoman who produces stunning patchwork quilts using a colourwash method.  Colourwash quilts are where one colour blends into another across a whole rainbow of shades, and they're extremely beautiful.  If you want to see what I mean, here's a link to one of her videos .   Anyhow, I'd been making blocks and had them stacked up in a box, and every so often I'd take a wedge of them out and trying arranging them in a pleasing fashion.  Couldn't do it.  Just couldn't get the colours to flow.  Okay, I thought.  I simply need to make more blocks in different colourways and patterns.  But I realised the other day that no matter how many ...