The bluebells were out early this year and there seem to be more of them than usual. I love seeing the haze of blue in the wood behind our house and how they have spilled into much of our garden.

June is not far away and it feels too hot to work hard in the garden now and soon the buggy things will be out and about and ready to feast on me, so apart from a couple of hours in the early mornings, I’m taking a break from all-day gardening until September.

I have dragged some old planters chairs that were in our cellar into one of our greenhouses, so that I can sit and enjoy the garden whenever it is very windy or when there are too many biting insects to risk sitting still outside.

Last year I spent so much time trying to generate stock and meet deadlines for a shop and craft stall that the summer disappeared while I was looking out of the window and wishing I could be out enjoying the good weather. I decided that wasn’t going to happen this year, that I would spend every lovely day outside from March until May and then some of every lovely day outside after that. Everything else would have to fit in between. This is what I have done, so there has not been a whole lot of sewing going on since my last post.

Last week I trawled through my fabric stash and unearthed my ‘works in progress’, or more accurately, my ‘works planned’. Hmmm, I seem to have quite a few of those. I found patterns I liked years ago and bought the fabric to make them, which is good in that fabric is much more expensive these days, but not so good in that my tastes have changed and I am itching to do more challenging things now.  I guess I need to get on and get them finished, perhaps alongside something new that is smaller.

There are some new ideas that I have been dreaming about; a project that involves a series of images that use folded and manipulated fabric stitched in place. I have made some drawings and now, although I have no idea if this will work the way I want it to, I can’t wait to try it out.

I also made this drawing, as a free embroidery design for you, if you want to give it a  try.

Last week I had a complete re-organisation of my fabric stash. I found that a sweet shop nearby has stock of Haribo sweets arrive in square plastic boxes and that the owner is happy to let me have the boxes as they are emptied, rather than throw them away. This means I can sort, subdivide and store fabric to my hearts content, and it stays clean and easy to find. I have scrubbed the insides of the boxes but I love that when I lift each lid a sugary, sweetie smell still wafts out.

The only trouble is my study/writing space is turning into a craft room. There is hardly any leg room left under my desk because the space is full of stacked, fabric-filled sweetie boxes and my bookshelves are gradually being taken over.

I also managed to complete a couple of mini projects during April and May. The first mini project was a small embroidery ‘sketch’ for Mental Health Awareness week. It was to flag up the problems caused by depression/anxiety/agoraphobia and how sufferers are often housebound, trapped by their own fears.

The second is a tiny wall hanging for an artist friend, Lisa Hooper, which is a copy of a driftwood sculpture she made, of an owl. Here is her lovely driftwood piece, on the left, and my fabric variation on the right. I just have to pop a label on the back and then it is ready to post out to her, to wish her luck when her studio opens its doors to the public later this month.

This blog  started out as a journey in English Paper Piecing but I see that it is gradually turning into much more as I explore the different aspects of working with fabric that interest me. I am certainly on a journey and learning all the way, and although my love for EPP will always be a part of it, I can’t resist the desire to experiment and maybe surprise myself.

Until next time….