Spring came early this year and I wasn’t ready for it. Most surprising were the bluebells arriving two weeks ahead of time and a hydrangea in flower in May rather than in mid to late summer. The Rhododendrons look amazing this year, better than ever:

We have a whole range of colours in bloom from vibrant reds and oranges, to soft creams and luminous whites:

I haven’t shown up here for a while and I have missed writing my posts. Not only do I enjoy chatting to you all but it feels good to see my thoughts on paper. Often they’re not clear until I see them in black and white.

I’ve been busy gardening, trying to transform new areas of the garden, buying a few new plants, replanting things in bigger pots which I neglected to do last year, and having my grown up children to stay for a while. It’s been lovely to catch up and feel close in ways that aren’t possible by email.

I have done SOME sewing,  for a friend’s birthday. I found an embroidery pattern that said just what I wanted it to say . It suited her perfectly, in that she tries to live her life to the full every day.

It’s not my own design but I find that when you sew something different for the first time, someone else’s design is often hugely helpful. It’s a bit like a children tracing letters with their fingers before they write them. I have not made any embroidered messages like this before, but now that I have done it by following in someones else’s footsteps, I feel more confident about creating my own design and I have a clear idea of what I would do differently.

Embroideries like this are not quilted, so there is the issue of them not being fastened to the background fabric in the same way. The embroidery is only on the surface. It doesn’t go all the way through to the back because the reverse of the stitches are not tidy in the way that quilting stitches are. You wouldn’t want them to show. I did use an iron-on fusible interfacing between the front and back fabric but some ‘puffing’ is still visible in the centre area, as you can see in the photo. Anyone know how to avoid that??  I think next time I will try a double sided fusible interfacing and see if that works better.

I made it in the colours of her living room and popped it in a frame. I hope it will remind her to keep doing what she does already. I think that these simple embroidered appliquéd or quilted messages are a great idea for a personal gift and are not too time consuming or difficult to complete.

Now we come to the real reason no sewing has been done. It’s the arrival of two, three-day-old, Runner ducklings, a birthday present from my husband They are such a delight (and a constant distraction).  Here they are, my two little girls, Flossie on the left and Phoebe on the right. I am smitten. They will be fawn and white when they are fully grown.

I did ‘complete’ the Third Plus project I was working in the last couple of posts and ended up calling it ‘All at Sea’. I found that once I washed away the appliqué sheet behind the face, and quilted the design onto a backing, the initial puckering that had worried me seemed to disappear. I say ‘complete’ because I still intend to remove the paper boat, change the stitching on it and sew it back on with waves enveloping the sides. At the moment it sits on top of the sea and I don’t like that. Whether all this is possible at such a late stage, I’m not sure but I’m going to give it a try.

I have ordered some tools for printing some my own designs onto solids as I want to give that a try before dying my own cloth. I hope to do a post on that in due course, if it’s not a complete disaster (or even if it is).

I find myself wanting to move away from the traditional patchwork designs to explore other things but I need to use up quite a bit of my stash of fabrics first.  And I have been wanting to open an Etsy shop for so long, as I really don’t want to hold on to everything I make, especially if some of it can bring some pleasure to someone else, but find it is not only complicated and time consuming (I can cope with that) but expensive. You really need your own website and some set up to allow card payments, you need to pay for listing your items even if they don’t sell, for labels, for inner and outer packaging and so on. I’ve come to realise that I can’t afford to do it right now, though next year is a possibility. On the plus side, I’ll have a whole lot more variety of stock available by then.

In a few weeks my ducklings will need a little less care and attention and it will be too hot to garden. That is the time I will get back into almost full time sewing but for now I will just look at my patterns in waiting and see what grabs me and make a start.

Enjoy the rest of Spring…

Bye for now….