Back to blogging

I've just realised that it's 7 months since my last entry here so I'm going to try to blog regularly from now on. Lots has happened during that time including a lot of stitching in various forms - mainly bridesmaids dresses for Jon's wedding in August.

Last week I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace - I decided to go twice, once on my own and again with a friend. When I went on thursday I booked to do 2 workshops in the afternoon, the first one was Silk Shading and the second Goldwork, both with a tutor from the Royal School of Needlework. It's ages since I really did any embroidery but I really enjoyed doing the Silk Shading and have managed to complete the design since getting home. I didn't think I was doing the wings particularly well when I was in the class, however the tutor and those around me seemed to think that it was really good showing a good direction of the stitches - see what you think. (photo tomorrow as its too late to do it tonight). Most of my purchases at the show were linked to dyeing fabric including a book on tray dyeing and a book about Shibori.

I started the Goldwork design in class but haven't had a chance to finish it yet - it has inspired me to get a goldwork design of harebells that I bought at the show a couple of years ago and need to finish.

In the meantime I am in the process of quilting a quilt for Matthew who has just gone off to university a couple of weeks ago. It was supposed to be ready for him to take with him, however, when I got to the quilting stage I was rushing to get it finished and made a mess of it so I pulled it out and started the quilting again. This time I am much happier with it - I quilted much of it in the ditch, I then digitised an african drum outline to use as a quilting motif on some of the plain blocks and am now adding some more straight quilting lines diagonally across some of the blocks. I will try to finish it tomorrow and add the binding.

Snow and fabric dyeing

Well my new year 'resolution' to blog more didn't happen - we are now half way through February and this is only the second entry of the year - note to self - must try harder. This was the scene outside the house on Thursday last week - we had about 4" snow and more on Friday.

On Friday Gerard and Matt built a snowman in the back garden - he didn't last very long I'm sorry to say.


I spent part of Friday 'snow dyeing' - I had seen it mentioned on a couple of blogs, but it wasn't something which I had come across before. Basically you soak the fabric in a water, salt and soda solution, place it on a rack (which I didn't have so I used the utility room sink and a cat litter tray) then drizzle two or three colours of Procion dye solution over them.

Leave it until the snow has melted then wash it out and see the beautiful mottled results.



The two pieces of fabric that I dyed using golden yellow, fuschia and magenta turned out very well as you can see from the pictures, unfortunately the piece I dyed using golden yellow and medium blue only took the yellow and parts of it turned marginally green. I don't know why it didn't take the blue at all so have tried again today - that under the snow at the right of the picture below. I've also included some pieces of silk this time as well (mum's suggestion - thanks mum!). As the snow is now melting as it is raining I don't know that I'll get any more opportunities this winter to play with this techniques. I'll just have to enjoy using the pretty pieces of fabric that have been created.

Happy New Year - I have decided to try to blog more this year even though it is going to be a busy one - more about that in a later post.