The joy of stitch and gardening...

Apologise for the absence but I've been rather occupied with this...

Saints Exhibition

 ...as we mentioned a while ago we are making a wall hanging as part of the Saints Exhibition and as always the deadline has crept upon us. I've finished the quilting so now it's time for the hand embellishments which will be a nice evening job.

It's not been all work though, I had a chance this week to go to a workshop by the wonderful textile artist Jean Littlejohn. I can't remember the last workshop I attended so it was nice to sit back and let someone else take over. It was a lovely day of hand stitching techniques with bark/trees in mind. We started with thick wool, very large stitches and continued to build the layers to form a raised surface.

building layers

We then went on to a different stitch with foiling and chiffon over the top and filling the spaces with stitch. I love this result, it will need a lot more hand stitching but it's a good sample with lots of possibilities.

stitch with foil and chiffon

And finally...we stitched onto water soluble fabric and tried Jean's embellisher. Now, I've eyed these machines from a distance thinking...I don't need one of those...HA!!! How wrong was I, it was the same feeling of freedom you get from free machining but without thread, so if I go missing at any point you'll know I'm in the sewing shed with something new to play with. Here is my small sample so you can see how easily I'm led!

embellished sample

A quick garden snap for you, last year my dear friend Fran gave me some foxgloves, so I thought as they are so gorgeous I would share them with you...

Don't you just love this time of year in the garden, with Chelsea Flower Show to inspire us and the bonus this year of Monty Don presenting.

Thanks for reading, bye for now
Sue