Stitching by hand

It has been a really interesting week. Work has continued on the shed, but I managed to attend the meetings of two textile groups. The first of these was Pinfold. The meeting had a workshop from Pauline Mills who showed us how to make "Penny rugs". You can see a really good online description here. Needless to say, I will not be making a proper "penny rug", it just isn't my style. Instead these will turn into the decoration of a fabric "vase" to hold my long rulers and old knitting needles. These currently reside in an overcrowded flowerpot with the longest of my paintbrushes. Hopefully things might get tidier and easier to find........ maybe not.

I just need to think about how to weight the bottom of the "vase" to stop it toppling over.

The fifth pile shown on the extreme right in the first photo was shown without it's flower backing. This is the colour which will be finally stitched in place at some time over the next few days. There are green pieces to be cut out as "stems" before being stitched onto the backing fabric which will be some upholstery fabric found in my stash. The "pennies" are cut out of felted wool. The fabric here was supplied by a friend of mine who brought along a large collection of felted and dyed blankets. Thanks so much Meryl!

Pauline, our tutor was very generous and gave us each three cardboard templates for the shapes. So useful and meant we could get straight on with the stitching. I've used variegated Anchor threads from my collection of embroidery threads. Three strands were used for the buttonhole with the full six strands used for the decoration. (Stamens and french knots). A lovely workshop with plenty of opportunity for chat as we worked. Just what was needed.

I handed over the "Come fly with me" book which I showed last time and picked up this next book. The topic this time is "Round and round". A really intriguing title. I'm letting my imagination go free for the moment as I try to decide what I could possibly make......

During the week, I started to make a few cards with scraps of samples from a rather too large collection. These three need a little more work. As does the one below. This really needs a fair amount of stitching before it can be called a card.

I also received two more patterns in the post. I love this style of cargo pants, but have never found a pair of ready-mades that actually fit me. I really couldn't resist this rather interesting dress and tunic pattern too. I have some suitable fabric in my stash for the dress, but haven't yet decided which fabric would be best for these trousers. I really ought to make toiles of each first......

Finally, on Friday, I met up with another group of friends and Debbie introduced the idea of "boro". I must admit I rather like the idea of handstitching various fabrics together. My version is really not a true "boro", but is inspired by the idea of stitching fabrics together to repair/make another fabric. Mine are strips of raw edged fabrics of various types from my collection of "interesting fabrics", along with dyed cotton bias binding and cotton tape. The pieces are all stitched onto each other and backed by a piece of calico (muslin). This will probably turn into the background for something at some stage. For the moment it is a very pleasant stitching project for the evenings.