The Treehouse

Today's Blooms

I made 3 this week! No klosjes at the weekend but I did do a huge amount of cutting out so there is hope for a good quantity this coming weekend :) I've been having a lovely cross stitch the last few days - I got really behind with my various projects recently when I had a trapped nerve in my back - the pain was just too furious and nauseating for me to concentrate on a chart and count and my first priority as soon as thought was restored to my brain was to get Karen's birthday present made. I made good progress on Mary Wigham's wardrobe, started an Anniversaries of the Heart and now I'm enjoying a lovely treat by stitching up the LHN Needle and Thread pincusion bed and scissor keep...so cute, I love it!

Beautiful sunshine here today so hopefully we won't freeze tonight at bowling. If we're blessed again tomorrow we're going to head off for a day out somewhere :)

 

 

I bought a new Inklingo this morning - Clamshells. I was rather smitten when I saw the design done in shades of one colour, looks fabulous!

Crazy iPad Day!

We got a bit over excited about the iPad and were eagerly awaiting its release here in the UK. Now, ordinarily we don't rush out and buy something as soon as its available, we're more the 'wait a while and see if there are any problems' and 'let's think about it some more' type of people. Ever since we started buying Apple products though we seem to have gone a bit crazy - we just can't seem to get enough Apple in this house! We seem to have been awaiting the arrival of the iPad for a long time so...we decided that one of us would go to the Apple store today and try to get one. Our nearest Apple store is at the Trafford Centre and early in the morning there is a LOT of traffic in between us and the Trafford Centre! John set off very bright and early this morning to join the queue - the Apple store was opening at 8am. When he got there he found that quite a lot of folks had slept over night outside the shop :o There were about 150 people in front of him in the queue and happily he was home before 10.30am with our very own little iPad - we love it!

 

I'm not confident that the sharing thing is going to work in the long term though, lol!

While I was waiting for our new gadget to arrive home, I set too with my scissors and cut out many hexagons from the fabric that I printed onto yesterday and when my hands were tired of that I printed out more shapes for klosjes so I have plenty of spools and flowers to stitch now.

 

I've more still to cut out but I'm going to start dividing the hexagons into flowers next, I've already sorted some of the klosje pieces and pinned them together. I bought some of the green fabrics for the klosjes from the Garden Song range yesterday and I feel that they may have a future as a bag of some sort as well...they're really rather lovely.

The boys have gone off to a cricket match this evening, so while Catherine is catching is catching up with Sue Thomas FBI I've been having a play at making a crazy patchwork block - I'm joining in with Crazy Patchwork Friday I bought a book some time ago by Judith Baker Montano and had this on my list of things to play with. I wasn't paying too much attention to the instructions really so things didn't quite go according to plan.

 

I quite like the way it had turned out so far - it's needing some embellishments yet. The stitching around the outside edge is just a tacking stitch to stop everything flapping around when I come to do the embroidery and embellishing.

I'm going to be spending some quality time with Mary Wigham's wardrobe this weekend...that's the plan anyway!

 

 

 

A bit of this and that...

Last night I was going to put some stitches in The Library and I was all set to go when I saw poor Geranium House sitting there...abandoned for months. I gave it some loving attention and it's feeling much happier now, lol! Looks much nicer now I've got some of the white stitched.

As I've been stitching away the past few weeks there have been a few things piling up that I've wanted to get done. I started printing out some Inklingo Drunkard's Path shapes a little while ago in readiness for a new quilt...one that I will not begin until Tail Feathers is done. I decided to get some more of the printing done this morning as I had the iron going already and I can just iron the fabric onto the freezer paper and set the printer off going happily by itself. I got two more shades of my Rouenneries layer cake printed off...this has to be the worst lot of 10" squares I've ever bought, not a single one is square so far!

 

While the printer was doing its thing - I made the little fabric basket. I saw these on Jenny's blog a few weeks ago and put it on my to-do list. Although it's now crossed off the to-do list I will be making some more, they're super easy and Jenny has a lovely little tutorial here. Next, I ironed and cut the fabric for my exciting Mary Wigham wardrobe project - the fabric is lovely (vintage country mocha) and the threads are even more gorgeous (Threadworx). I even managed a few stitches on Geranium House before it was time to pick up from school - a most productive day :D

Here's the finished basket with a little yoyo decoration and some lovely pieces of fabric:) (I might use stiff interfacing next time I think).

 
 I'm hoping to be in the mood to get the snowmen sorted out tomorrow...and maybe the binding on Matthew's quilt - it's long overdue and a finish would be nice!