rubykittyruby

Usually, if there's something to do other than cleaning & tidying I'll ditch the housework and have fun elsewhere.  But occasionally you have to accept the inevitable and drag the vacuum cleaner around.  My sitting room was looking like a bombsite, overflowing with crafty stuff, while the front bedroom wasn't much better.  That was being used as a dumping ground for the crafty overflow.  I blitzed both rooms, brushing carpets, wiping surfaces, binning what wasn't worth keeping and bagging up unwanted stuff for the charity shop.  I also rearranged my bookshelves.  Bringing together from various places all my craft books and - blimey! - I seem to have acquired rather a lot.  I didn't realise I'd amassed so many.   Well, I shouldn't run out of inspiration any time soon, should I?  Not with all those reference books to hand.  I also shouldn't buy any more books for a while ... I bundled lots of paper scraps into this pink storage tu...

  The sun's shining, it's warm, the central heating's off.  Those are definitely reasons to be cheerful.  My back garden's home to glorious cobalt blue, highly scented hyacinths and lots of cheerful yellow daffodils, and the tulips will soon be in flower too.  Yesterday I tidied all the ceramic planters and gave the cold frame a wash & brush up, ready to be used once more.  The birdfeeders are constantly in demand, and I'm enjoying watching the starlings demolish the fat balls I've put out.  The robin is smart enough to take advantage of their messy eating, and it hop arounds underneath the feeders, pecking at the crumbs they scatter.   I've been carrying on with my Ann Wood stitchbook challenge, finishing a mainly yellow page, complete with green dragonflies and pink silk butterflies.  Now, I'm partway through my next page.  It's day 63 of the 100 day challenge, and I'm amazed I've got this far.  I've also decided to ditch one ...

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...

On Saturday it was back once again to a ridiculously busy Leeds city centre - can't abide it when it's busy! too much noise, too many people - and to the Art Gallery for the second of four classes on making a fabric covered book.  (We'd the option of making a fabric cover and paper signatures inside, but I've opted for a wholly textile book.)  With this second session people had more idea of what their individual journal might look like, and it was great to see how many different interpretations we had.   Some were working on their embroidered covers, but I opted to concentrate on making my pages.  I've four double pages in total, slightly different sizes & mainly made of upcycled upholstery swatches.  I began adding extra smaller pages, like this lovely cream coloured material, and more pockets.  There's only so much you can sew in a two hour session, so I carried on over the weekend.   This material was originally curtain fabric from th...

  I thought I'd talk a little more about my wall hanging that's getting nearer completion.  It's my interpretation of the theme 'Creation', and is made with a calico base, measuring roughly 16 x 17 inches in size.  I've pieced together various fabrics to try and represent sea, land and sky, and embroidered and appliqued fishes and - so far - just a solitary bird.  There will be more!  The material making up the land is my handpainted material, done with a mix of acrylic paint and Inktense.  The line of yellow that runs between land and sea is meant to be sand, as on a beach.  I did think about making some pretend rocks and pebbles here, using either grey material or grey beads, but neither of those looked right when I tried them out.  It's all very much been a process of trial and error, and there are definitely things I'd do differently if I started from scratch all over again.   The trees are made of brown felt which I've lightly padde...

  I'm typing this with the Olympic cycling on in the background, and hoping the Ibuprofen I just took will get rid of a banging headache sometime soon.  I think the weather's got something to do with the headache.  It's muggy, very close, and with luck we'll get a really good storm before long.  Or at least a decent amount of rainfall to help clear the air.  Today's been a muddle of grocery shopping, allotmenting and adding more stitching to this would-be wall hanging.  It's slowly beginning to take shape, and I'm slowly beginning to think it mightn't be too bad.  I reckon once I put a border around the whole thing it'll look less raggedy and I can concentrate on adding lots of detail.   Sunday morning was spent gell printing, but it was one of those infuriating times when print after print turned out a muddy mess.  I only turned out one single print I kind of liked.  So I switched from paper to fabric, and applied paint to calico i...

  When you've a stack of single bed size or lap size patchwork quilts that'd been patchworked but not quilted, all of 'em waiting for you to finish them and put them to use or give as presents, it's immensely satisfying to make these teeny-tiny pieces of patchwork.  Not even a full day's stitching and you've something completed.  Of course, these mini quilts aren't going to keep you warm at night, but they do have a practical purpose.  Kind of.   This one measures roughly around 2 and 1/2 inches wide and 4 inches long.  It has a calico base, then scraps of material sewn on, sewn over, stitched and re-stitched.  I was going for a boro style.   The back's reasonably neat.  What I found was that the more I stitched into the mini quilt, the nicer it became to push the needle in and out of.  The different layers of material become like one, and I liked the way the horizontal running stitch and vertical running stitch went over and u...

  I was watching a YouTube video by Annie Claxton yesterday morning as I ate my bowl of breakfast porridge.  I like a slow-start in the mornings.  No rushing around, just a gentle introduction to the day.  Annie was using up material from a Bazaar scrap pack, and that set me off thinking I'd make a similar fabric wrap from a piece of Indian patchwork I'd got squirrelled away.  So I ignored my extensive 'To Do' list and hastily put this together.   This is the back of the wrap.  It's an upcycled piece, so it's had a previous life and is slightly tatty here and there.  That made me decide to not treat this crafty 'make' as one I needed to agonise about.  I'd put it together speedily and not worry about aiming for perfection.  I lined the pink Indian patchwork with a cotton print, and added fabric twine for a fastening.   This is the inside.  The two pockets are made from Bazaar scraps too, while there are two pages of p...