Tree Fall

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy

Over the Easter weekend Jim, Bella, my Mom and I all drove to Birmingham (a few hours away) to visit my Nana. We don't get down there to see her very often and I wish that we did. She's not a typical grandmother. She's not all soft and sweet, full of hugs and kisses. She doesn't wear old people clothes and smell of lavender and she doesn't sit around doing cross stitch or knitting clothes for her great grandchildren. When I was growing up she was actually pretty remote. She never really got the generation gap between us and I think she just thought I was cheeky (she was right). And for the longest time I really didn't have much to do with her. Until a few years ago when my grandfather died and I looked at my Nana and realised that one day she would go too and I wouldn't even know who she was.
Since then we've got to know eachother a lot better and although we're still don't know eachother as well as I think we would both like, we do at least know how much we love eachother. And that's quite a big deal with my Nana, because she's not so hot on sharing her emotions.
However, the one thing she does share is just how much she loves Bella. She just adores her and Bella adores her right back. And that makes me very, very happy.
So we went for the day and had a lovely time. Especially me. And here's were I have a confession to make. Because as much as I love my Nana and wanted to see her and want Bella to get to see her as much as possible I also knew that a well known, well stocked (for this country - we seriously, seriously suck!) quilt shop just happened to be around the corner from where Nana lives!
And just to illustrate how truely dreadful the UK is when it comes to quilt shops, let me tell you that we have probably no more than 30 quilt shops in the whole of the UK. The. Whole. Of. The.UK!!!
So when you're going somewhere that has a quilt shop, it's a big deal. And when that quilt shop stocks more than 20 (20!!!) bolts of fabric in total (as my local quilt shop does! Aargghhh) and infact stocks almost all of Kaffe Fasset's fabrics  it's pretty damn exciting.
In fact it was a little too exciting. I ended up being a little overwhelmed at the choice. Oh and a little depressed at how much more expensive fabric is over here - even for fabrics that are produced by this country, like Kaffes. It is actually still much, much cheaper to buy fabric online from the US and pay for international postage, than it is to buy fabric from a shop here. And that's what I normally do - but I miss being able to actually see the fabric and touch it before I buy it.
Anyway, after discovering that the two credit cards that I brought with me were both no longer valid!!!  I was sensible and only bought a few metres of fabric.

Oh and these.

But believe me, I wanted to buy so much more (and if I'd taken the right credit cards, I would have! So close call there!)
So, as I said, it was a lovely day! And actually after saying that Nana doesn't cross stitch etc, she did do this (a few years ago I think), which I think is wonderful.

She also gave me a fantastic hand embroidered blouse from when she was 14 years old! Which I think makes it from 1936! And it's in perfect condition apart from missing two wooden buttons. I haven't had a chance to photograph it yet, but I will soon.

As well as buying the new fabrics I've also found some interesting vintage fabrics recently.

This is actually a pair of full length vintage curtains that are wonderful. This picture doesn't quite show the colours off. The fabric is actually a light creamy yellow. The problem is, do I cut them up or not? I often wonder this when I find full lengths of fabric. I wonder if I should preserve them as they are. Actually, thinking about it I might use these in our bedroom.

I also found this fabric, which is quite amazing in it's depth of colour.

Again it's a pair of curtains.And I got those and the one below for 50p because an old guy was using them to wrap up the junk that he was trying to sell at the car boot sale.

Honestly, the old guy that I bought them from thought I was a nut for actually paying money for these old pieces of rags!
And then I also found these!

For 20p!  Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Fabric!

The last couple of weeks have been pretty good when it comes to fabric. For a start who could resist Denyse Schmidt's new fabrics? (Have you listened to her being interviewed on craftsanity ? Very interesting. As is the interview with Claire Garland). They arrived just the other day and I haven't been able to even take the wrapping off them - they just look too pretty as they are.

How am I going to cut into them??

Then the other day  I found a shop with some very Cath Kidston like fabrics.

I like Cath Kidston, in general. And have really enjoyed looking through her new catalogue. But can I just say here and now that anyone who writes about covering a house brick in fabric to use as a doorstop or explains how to use old pieces of cloth as a cleaning rag, as though this was a craft project (seriously! come on!) really is pushing it. Don't get me wrong, she's done some beautiful stuff, but really, no matter how talented you are you can not get away with pretending that cutting up old boxer shorts and hemming or not hemming them to use to clean with is either exciting or interesting.  That said, I love most of her fabrics and would kill for a pair of her cowboy pj's. And was pretty pleased when I found these fabrics at a fraction of the price of hers. I also bought this oil cloth, which has already earned it's keep by preventing Bella from pulling everything off the kitchen table, as it doesn't slide the way a tablecloth does. (Actually, as much as I've just critised C.K can I just thank her for making oilcloth cool - it's so brilliantly practical and apparently I'm now very old and care about these things!).

Then last weekend I popped in to Laura Ashley and took advantage of their fabric sale.

And finally, some thrifted fabrics from last weeks car boot sales.

I've even had some time today to actually use some of my new stash!

Princesses, Bliss and Hockney

She's almost finished! I've been working very slowly on the Princess. The combination of flu and trying something completely new has been an interesting one. I'm finding that flu induced mistakes are so much more interesting than normal ones! But I do believe that I'm almost there.

I'm making a few different Princesses, with different dresses. I haven't made a proper dress before and have really enjoyed learning how - although I'm really having to up my game when it comes to my hand sewing!

I've also been trying some new quilt ideas.

I'm pretty excited about this and am hoping to have a lot more of it to show by the end of the week.  Bella is going for a little holiday to my mom and dad's for Thursday and Friday so I'm really hoping to get a lot of catching up done. With being ill I haven't done any real work for over a week and am so, so behind.

Over the weekend Jim and I went to David Hockney's art gallery, Salts Mill. I love going there. It's an old converted mill that houses a very large collection of Hockneys work as well as a great restaurant, fantastic bookshop (and I do mean fantastic) and an amazing shop that is pretty much just a modern design museum.

We went for lunch and a wander around and Jim was a sweetheart and bought me a new notebook by Jill Bliss.

 

And I bought this print of a Hockney that I just LOVE!!!! Oh his work is wonderful!

If anyone is ever in the area, I highly recommend a trip to Salts Mill .

And lastly, I bought this vintage print from a thrift shop and it makes me very happy indeed! It's caused us to change the whole look of our kitchen and has even gone some way towards convincing Jim that he does indeed like still lifes!!

Fields On A Sunday

(Can someone tell me whether it's better to have one super long post or several shorter new posts? I find that I sometimes don't notice if someone has a few new posts, so I'm not sure which is best?)

First off here's Megan's Quilt, finished. After such a shaky start I have to say that I've grown to rather love this quilt. I particularly like the combination of the white/blue floral and the torquoise/pink floral and would like to expand on that in a bigger quilt.

And here's the back,  showing the quilting. I machine quilted, as there's just no way I can find the time to hand quilt at the moment. Also I have to admit that I'm not that confident about my hand quilting and when I'm making a quilt that needs to withstand a lot of use/washing, I feel that machine stitching is just stronger.

I just hope that Megan and her mum like it now.

Here in the UK we don't have the type of thrift shops that you do in the US and we don't have house clearances or yard sales, but what we do have is Car Boot Sales. Every sunday, almost all year round, cars drive to a big field, open up their boots and sell their junk from them, from about 6am until midday.
I only really started going to carboots about a year ago, but I am of course completely and utterly addicted to them now. We started going just after Bella was born, when the chance of staying in bed on a Sunday morning was nothing more than a distant memory. We figured since we were up anyway, we may as well go out and do something.
Which is what we did this morning. And look what I got.

I know it doesn't look like much, but it certainly got my little heart thumping. Inside this box was all of this..

Oh my! Look at all those vintage buttons still on their cards! They are just beautiful.

And there's more. On top of all of these there was also a massive plastic tub of cream/white vintage buttons.
And these beautiful mother of pearl vintage buttons.

I wonder where these ones are from for the card to say 'Foreign' on it.

And I love these big buttons!

There was also all of this.

And this.

Egads!!! I almost died when I saw it all. I've never gotten this lucky before. Wow, wow, wow!

I also bought a few pieces of vintage fabric.

And last but certainly not least, I got this fantastic book about British houses in the very early sixties. It's all in black and white but the photo's are amazing. If I can get to the scanner tomorrow I'll post some pics from it. (I have no idea why there's a statue of a naked man on the cover - Jim seriously wondered just what I was buying for a second!).

I've just thought, are carboot sales what you guys call swop meets? Or is that something completely different?

Bundles of Fabric

Since I'm sorting out my workroom/studio/guest room (work room sounds too utilitarian, studio sounds too much like I know what I'm doing and guest room is a bit of a misnomer as we never have a guest and there's no room), I am trying to be brutal with my stash and have decided that I simply do not need to keep every single scrap of fabric. But I can't throw them away. I just can't. So, at the moment I have 4 bundles of scraps of varying vintages (1960's - now). They're small pieces, nothing over 6 inches wide and some only 2"x2" but there's some nice pieces, I think.
So would anybody like them? I'm happy to just give them away, but if anyone had some scraps that they wanted to send to a good home I'm happy to swop too. If anyone would like a bundle just email me your details and I'll pop them in the post to you. They are just scraps though - nothing mind blowing. I'll post some pics tomorrow to give you a better idea.

Not what I had planned

I've come down with a horrible fluey/coldy/bronchioly  thing and have done nothing today other than lie on the sofa moaning. It's meant that Bella is staying at my moms another night so that Jim can look after me properly and I can rest properly. What a waste of a day. And I miss Bella.

This is fabric that I intended to buy this weekend. I have an offcut of it but want to buy more to make new curtains for our front room. Maybe I'll feel up to it tomorrow.

As always at the moment, the lighting wasn't great when I took this, the fabric is a little lighter than it looks here. It's lovely with the wallpaper.
One thing I have done today is surf fabric shops and I've just ordered quite a lot of fabric from here . They have a sale on at the moment and the prices are great compared to what we would pay over here. I had to spend quite a lot of time searching for nice fabric, it's not like Cia's Palette , where you could order blind folded and still get exactly what you want. But I have managed to find some that are perfect for a quilt that I've been wanting to make.