The Treehouse

One Flower Wednesday

It's been a while since I worked on my flower garden but I got my hexagons out on Friday last week. While I was stitching away I came up with the idea of stitching one a day throughout November. As it was already the 5th I had a little bit of catching up to do so I decided to concentrate on doing just that over the weekend. It's the 10th today and here are my 10 hexagons

Also at the weekend while I was on a roll I finished stitching the triangles and diamonds around one of the flowers and stitched the outer ring on another flower. I think I've added quite a bit of extra work with the diamond path but I think it's going to be so worthwhile and will look lovely in the purple fabric.

 

I may try and fit in stitching the outer ring on a couple of flowers each weekend as well, I'll have to see how it goes timewise. The more flowers I make, the more excited I get about seeing this quilt completed in these lovely fabrics and I could do with snuggling up beneath it at the moment as our weather has turned icy cold this week, definitely hat, scarf and glove weather - especially when watching a lot of sports outside! I did make a single klos on Saturday night as well but I forgot to photograph the poor little thing!

One Flower Wednesday Christmas Style

It's been a little while since I added to my garden and strictly speaking I'm not adding to it this week either! I finished off the snowflakes for Dawn's Frosty Flakes BOW and have just the embroidery left to do on them. I think I'll call this my winter garden :) I will have this finished before Christmas and hanging on the wall but I need to buy something for the sashing and borders when I'm next at Patchwork Chicks (that will be on my birthday later this month). 

I'm ironing this loveliness this morning - it's called Sew Chick and is destined to become Dresden Plates. I LOVE Dresden Plates as much as I love pinwheels! I'm awaiting the delivery of a lovely pattern that I stumbled across last week which is all made up of embroidered and pieced Dresden plates...that's for the future though.

 

I'm wishing the postman would hurry up actually - I'm still waiting for a delivery of Kaffe Fassett fabrics so that I can get started on my Kim McClean Hearts and Flowers quilt. I went to the copying shop and had it all enlarged as per the instructions in the book (Quilt Romance by Kaffe) and now I just need a delivery! This is my first venture into using Kaffe fabrics which are considerably out of my comfort zone both colour and pattern wise. I did have a small delivery from a UK shop and the colours of the fabrics are stunning. I'm looking forward to the challenge. I could get all my shapes traced while I'm waiting - I think I will so that I'm ready to go when the postman delivers. 

While I'm busy with the stitching the rest of the family are happily playing with kayaks...I have had a go and I enjoyed it however my back wasn't happy about it at all and made its feelings very plain! We have a new addition to the family - I'm fairly sure that it's not meant to be living in the house really but I'm told it needs to dry off after a good dunking on Monday night.

Look at it lounging there in the conservatory with all its associated 'stuff' :o John was very canny when he bought these new members of the family...one is green and the other is orange, two of my very favourite colours!

I see the postman coming down the path...

One Flower Wednesday

I managed two flowers this week and have started to put the diamonds around another - I was impatient to see how the new purple fabric looked. I thought I would have had time to finish the diamonds last night but after a whole afternoon of cycling and boating we came home, had a lovely bbq and then I was just too worn out to sew - I needed my bed!

 

Photos are funny things - the new purple fabric doesn't look anything at like this in real life...it's a little bit brighter than the purple in the middle. I''m not having a good photographing day today at all!

Today is back to school day...I could quite happily have carried on with holidaying for a few weeks more! We did the usual photos before setting off in the car but the light was odd and the little camera not behaving very well at all in those conditions so I'll have to make them suffer pose again tomorrow morning!

 

This is Catherine's third year of high school now so she's well and truly got the hang of things but my little guy there - this is his first day of high school and he looks far too grown up in that shirt and tie in my opinion...where has my baby gone :o So exciting for him to be moving on though and he's ready for the challenge and all of the wonderful sporting opportunities of course, lol! Today is a short day (Wednesday is always a short day) and they finish at 2.30pm and will be home by bus for 3 o'clock. I'm looking forward to hearing all about it!

 

 

One Flower Wednesday

I've missed my weekly flowers but I've been so busy concentrating on getting some of my stitcheries completed that I've neglected them...although I did make the 3 snowflake flowers last week for Dawn's sweet block of the week (there is another one available this morning). Here's the first flower in a while for my garden posing in the lovely smelling mint!

 

I finished this off last night - the 8th Tail Feathers block...I have one block left to stitch which is all made up and ready to go and then 4 little cornerstone type blocks that are similar to the small robin block here and then I am done with the stitching. I have some of this quilt stitched together already from my endeavours before school finished and it's looking very exciting indeed...I can smell a finished quilt here, lol!

 

 

 

My Garden and Clamshells

Almost missed my posting, have been super busy running around trying to find extra players for tonight's cricket match today and then ferrying boys to the cricket match this evening. Now I'm back home and have managed to iron and photograph this week's creations. 2 flowers for my garden and sadly, in spite of my determination to put an outer ring on each week, the sporting schedule has been so full that I've just not managed it - perhaps I will aim for two next week.

 

On the clamshell front things turned a little peculiar - to say the least! I spent a good portion of time printing and cutting clamshells so I knew I wasn't going to get too many stitched together...and actually, I was a little worried about those curves. Part way through the cutting, I could stand it no longer and had to get started stitching and I was hooked straight away - these little shapes go together unbelievably easily. Unfortunately, I was stitching at not the best time one evening and got a little distracted and before I knew it - I'd stitched a clamshell in the wrong way round. Well, I sort of liked it so I thought I'd keep it like that and see what developed! So - instead of rows of different blue fabrics I ended up with this...

 

It looks a little odd for two reasons - the grass isn't flat and there is an unstitched between the bottom bright blue clamshell and the cream/blue flowers one. I'm not sure whether to right this off as a practice piece or continue as I'm wondering whether this sort of shape requires a little more planning in the placement of colours than rows. The jury is out on the matter now but I need to decide soon because I want to get some more stitching done (when the sporting has calmed down a little!)

Poor klosjes aren't making an appearance this week either - soon though, very soon!

 

 

One Flower Wednesday plus a few other bits

Last week I managed to complete my to-do list :D One item was to catch up on the My Little Heart SAL and I had done so by Friday.

 

April

May 

June

This week's to-do list included cutting out all of the fabric for Jenny's Christmas Story quilt - I was bursting to start making this quilt and then was hesitant because I wasn't sure about the fabrics that I'd chosen...I was determined to use only stash fabric and not buy anything new! On Monday I managed cut everything out and also I put together all of the stitchery blocks so that was an excellent start :D

 

Not a brilliant photo...the sun was a little too bright at the time but I'm not grumbling about bright sunshine at all, it's lovely.

I had a good hexagon week this week - I managed to make 3 and I like these ones a lot...I think I'll be combining more of the large patterns with the smaller patterned fabrics. I have 20 blooms in little glassine envelopes ready to stitch. Also this week, I wanted to make sure that my outer fabric choice worked so I decided to stitch the outer hexies onto one of this week's blooms - hadn't realised quite how long that was going to take! It was a good move though as now I'm certain that I like the fabric and I also know that it won't be a good idea to leave this part of the project until all of the flowers are stitched or they may be doomed to UFO-dom :o

 

This week's blooms resting in my lovely peony - it's a massive plant now but only started off as one stalk with one leaf! Poor blooms are so heavy that some of them bend right over to the floor. This is the first year that the rain hasn't destroyed them as soon as they opened so I may get John to give them a little photo shoot :)

I have quite a lot of sheets of clamshells printed out now and am ready to cut and stitch. I've also been washing the fabric that I bought for a Dresden plate quilt and for the Life is Beautiful quilt. Trying to prepare lots of things before the school holidays begin so that I've got plenty of hand stitching to take along when the weather is fine enough to go to the park and on picnics.

 

  

 

Busy Bees

I was going to start out with a photo of all the busy little bees currently working very hard in our garden however - they're so quick that everytime I took a photo they'd zoomed off by the time the camera had done it's thing! I'll have to kidnap John's camera in order to capture them I think, they're far too speedy for my little point and shoot!

I have a list this week of things to accomplish. It's quite long. I don't know that I'll get it all done as once again it's a very busy sporty week - and a very successful sporty week too. So far we've had a fabulous netball win (28-5) and a fabulous cricket win (317-250ish) and Catherine came fourth in javelin at an athletics meeting yesterday. Tonight we shall be sporting in a far more sedate manner - it's crown green bowling night. I've declared myself fit to bowl again following the nasty back incident after Easter which left me unable to walk at all for 2 1/2 weeks so I'm hoping I'll get to play tonight...if not, at least I'm off the injured bench and onto the reserve bench, that's progress!

One of my aims this week was to catch up with the My Little Heart SAL cross stitch and I've made some progress - the Easter bunny is stitched and I finished off all of the brown boxes, only May and June to stitch and I am all up to date with that. Here's the bunny with this week's flower for my garden...another green one, I like the green fabric! My blue arrived for the outer circle so next week I may print up some blue hexagons to see what these flowers look like with their blue petals on.

 

Another thing on my 'list' this week was to sew some more of the blocks for Catherine's quilt. I made 4 or 5 on Monday. They're rather large...16" and I'm thinking that I need a little sashing around the outside edge of them otherwise the pinwheels might disappear. I'm thinking of using white for the sashing.

 

(that bit of blur at the bottom...that's the camera strap! didn't see it until I had the picture open in Photoshop!)

 

Left to do on the list are...

Print, cut and sew some clamshells (I washed the blue fabric for these the other day...goodness me, the amount of die that came out it's a wonder there's any colour left in the fabric at all!)

Sew another section of Mary Wigham's wardrobe.

Sew a little more of my Blackbird SAL.

Looks like I'm going to be busy!

 

A Finish!

I enjoyed every little stitch of this...

 

Needle and Thread by Little House Needleworks

stitched with recommended threads on 32 count natural raw linen

and this week's solitary bloom...

 

I wanted to make more but just got carried away with the cross stitch this week!

Off to buy a new vacuum cleaner today, mine has decided to retire!

 

 

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!

Klosjes and Grandmother's Garden

We had a super sunny weekend here with plenty of outdoor activities. I did manage to get quite a bit of work done on the Bluebird block and am now on the stitchery part. Also managed to complete 5 more klosjes bringing my total to 7 now. 

 

This morning I spent a lovely morning chatting with Jen while listening to Tim Rice on the radio - we had stitching at the ready but there was no needle action at all :o After a spot of lunch, I've put together this week's flower for my garden :) I like them more with the smaller prints but as I'm using a jellyroll I'm committed to making use of the large prints as well. I have bought some large print with the bird on for a border...I think it will be quite some time before I'm cutting into that though!!!

 

 

  Scans today - it's pouring down outside!