Quilting

Well hello, sorry I have been missing in action for a while, but I have been so busy making gifts and visiting friends and parents that I have let my blog get behind.

I hope you dont get bored with all my piccies because I had such fun making them all.

I made 6 of these cushion covers in yellow especially for my hubby, he is a real yellow person.

This Autumn runner I made for us as a table center, if ever I actually find the table under all my stuff.

I made a set of 6 of these place mats as a welcome home gift for my parents, who recently returned from France to live here.

I made this set, consisting of a runner, 2 placemats and 2 coasters for the friends who went over to France to help bring my parents home.

The quilts below are presents I made for my parents too.

Last but not least a table centre which was the first time I have done a "Dresden Plate" design, I was really pleased with how it came out.

We have had a lovely couple of weekends recently visiting firstly our friends Samantha, Leigh and their son, in the wonderful Dales of Yorkshire, where we spent a lovely relaxing day chatting stitching and of course eating lol

Last weekend Saturday was spent visiting another lovely friend Tammy in her new home near Whittlesey where we had glorious weather and spent the day sitting and stitching in the garden, Polly and her daughter arrived mid afternoon and we dined alfresco with the wasps. I was also lucky enough to recieve a beautiful Bell Pull that Tammy had made for my birthday

We went back to Pollys that evening to stay over, where I recieved another fantastic gift of the EQ6 quilt design programme, how lucky am I. We came home sunday evening, what a fabulous weekend.

Last week was my birthday and I was amazed at all the cards I got (over 20) and some wonderful unexpected presents from my friends on A Crafty Natter and I got a wonderful new PINK camera from my hubby, its fantastic and does so much, I just have to learn to drive it now lol

I am now going to enjoy the last year of being in my fifties, for next year I hit the big 60 woo hoo and boy am I going to celebrate it.

It seems I have an extra piccie at the top of the page and I cant seem to get rid of it HELP

Feeling brighter

Well I am actually feeling a bit better today and its about time too.
Last saturday I was so full of pain in my leg that I couldnt stand it anymore, and Richard took me to A&E (I didnt want to call the Doctor out) I thought they would send me home with a flea in my ear and a paracetamol and told off for wasting their time, BUT the Doctor took one look at my leg and admitted me right away for treatment. This was a big shock and more so for my darling DH.
It turned out that I had a nasty infection in my leg and being diabetic they wanted to look after me. I came home sunday night with a big tub of antibiotics, I have had to take 12 a day until this sunday and I think that they must be starting to work, as the redness has gone but I still have a very lumpy and bumpy leg.
On to more happy things lol I finished my new cushion covers today, I made them for the conservatory, and they are lovely bright yellow/orange/lemon and green, like a drop of sunshine in our dull wet and windy summer.
Sunday this week I have my "ladies" here, its a hardanger group and we meet once a month for the day, so I have that to look forward to.
My good news this week is that I have 10 of my hardanger designs in Sewandso's top 100 charts, not bad going eh.
I really wish all this wet weather would go away though, as DH desperately wants to start digging the garden to make our stream, which will start near the conservatory and wend its way down the garden to the pond. This has been a dream of his for years now, and finally we have everything we need to do it, apart from a few dry days.
I have been stitching with smoking needles this past 10 days to finish a gift for my neighbour. She had to have her cat put to sleep a couple of weeks ago, and was devastated, he was the loveliest black cat, with a really shiny coat. I decided to stitch Bothy Threads, Follow Me for her, its a lovely design that I hope she will like. I shall make it into a Bell Pull for her. I am on the last quarter of the last page now so might get it finished over the weekend. I will put a photo up next week if its done.
Anyway enough of my ramblings for the time being, thank you for visiting.
Colette

Help I cant stop

Help I'm a stashaholic, I just cant stop buying fabric, I went in to buy just 3 yards of backing fabric for a quilt I have already made, and came out with this as well. Please dont offer any remedies to make me better, this is one illness I can live with.

I also got 2mts of these beautiful little butterflies.

Cotton Exchange

This year the forum I am part of celebrates its 2nd Birthday, (it was on July 4th) and as a 2nd Anniversary is cotton that is what we decided to exchange.

I got these lovely fat quarters from Julie and had a real laugh at the card. She had run out of her usual ones and all she had in stock was this christamas one lol she crossed out christmas and it said happy July.

Thanks Julie for a lovely gift which will be put to good use.

Happy Holidays

We had the most fabulous holiday in Scotland and for the first time ever, I really didnt want to come home, dont get me wrong I love our home and garden, but the Lodge we stayed in was just so comfortable in every way, that I wanted to stay forever.
This is the Lodge, and its situated at the side of Loch Linnhe just outside of Fort William

This is the view from the lovely spacious balcony I sat here stitching quite a few times

Do you know there is not one Needlework Shop in Fort William, dont these people know all about the joys of stitching and stash building!!!!!!!!!

I did manage to find a little coaster kit however, when we travelled on the Steam train to Mallaig. We had the most gorgeous and tasty fish dinner there, and a little look around the shops before travelling back to fort William again.

Another day whilst out and about, we stopped in a lay by for me to stretch my legs and joy of joys there were 2 Sea Otters playing amongst the rocks, they were really playing, tumbling and diving and then fishing. They dragged the fish onto the rocks to eat and then back into the water. We must have watched them for at least an hour and it was our first sighting ever. We try to photograph them but all we got were blurred images but here is where we saw them.


Old Inverlochy Castle was a beautiful old ruin and the views were fantastic, just look at this photo its looking through one of the arches up to ben nevis and if you look carefully you can just see some snow on the top.We had a trip out to Eileen Donan castle too which is famous for being used in many films, amongst them one of our favourites, Highlander.

Whilst Richard was "in the little boys room" I PULLED lolWe had a trip to Skye too and also a trip from the Kyle Of Lochalsh in a glass bottomed boat. This was one of the most wonderful things we have ever done, we saw hundreds of Moon Jellyfish, Compass Jellyfish, Sea Urchins, hugs Starfish both the 5 armed and 7 armed ones also lots of little fish and the most amazing kelp beds, a true experience if ever you are there.

I have to show you this photo, it is of the disabled loo in The Kyle of Localsh, I felt like I was being watched, but its just so funny.

Anyway I wont bore you with anymore rambling or piccies apart from this last one which took on the way back to the Lodge, the scenery is just stunning and I cant wait to go back next year. (we have booked already)

Day with the "girls"

Yesterday was Lorna's crop day, I do love these days, stitching, chatting and laughing with friends. It was only a small group this time because of holidays, but boy we make enough noise for those that were missing lol

I usually do patchwork but this time I decided to start work on a huge Hardanger runner that I want to make, its the middle one of these 3 and measures 23" x 78"

This is how far I got with it yesterday.

I bought myself a book a short while ago that has at least a couple of hundred quilt block patterns in it, and I have decided to use my scraps up and practise making some of them. here are a few I have done already. I have decided I like the Blue one so much, that I'm going to make a King Size quilt for our bed using this one, but doing it in pinks instead.

I want to say a really BIG WELL DONE to 2 people who read my blog, who today completed the Race For Life, Lorna and Polly I take my hat off to you, I want to say and extra HUGE WELL DONE to Polly's Daughter who is only 4 years old and she completed it too, well done darling XXXXXX
I'm off out to visit friends now, hope you are all having a lovely day.
HugsColly
XX

A Lovely Day

I woke this morning to the birds singing and the sun shining, what a lovely start to the day.
My lovely friend Helen arrived at around 11am laden with lunch (we take in turns) and soon we were sitting and stitching. I am working on a design from The Gift Of Stitching, its called My Little Book Of Stitches. It has 8 pages of different designs and I am using all my oddments of silks and varigated threads, so all my pages will be different colours, some in just 2 colours some in just 1 and maybe a couple with all sorts in :o) I'm doing just what takes my fancy at the time. I will put some pictures in next time I work on it.
Helen was stitching on a needle case that she missed out on at our last Hardanger day.
Where does the time go to when you are enjoying yourself, we had done so much chatting, drinking stitching that before we knew it it was tea time, time for Helen to go home, and I hadnt even though about tea (guess who ended up having chinese) lol.
Tomorrow I am having a day with another lovely friend, Sarah. We are doing the Ladies Wot Lunch thing lol at the local pub, I do love these days out, and love seeing the children too.
I belong to a lovely online board called A Crafty Natter and as it will be 2 years old this year, we are doing a Cotton exchange, there are quite a few of us taking part and I have bought my partner something I hope she will treasure, unfortunately I cant post a piccie yet as she may read my blog but I will as soon as she has opened it.
I do love exchanges although I havent really joined in too many at all but I think I may be doing more, especially as I learn new ways of finishing things off.
Anyway enough waffle for now. I just want to thank everyone who left comments on my first post, as they were all nice ones lol
Colly
XX

I've done it now

Hello to you all.





Well I've finally joined the world of blogging, its taken me all morning to try and put it together and I think I like the way it looks now, but I would like to know where you all get your fancy pages from.





I have been very busy lately with designing but now I have some "me" time and you know, I dont really know what I feel like doing lol





One of my new designs is the needle case and scissor fob thats in my header photo, the other is a dressing table set that I was asked to do, thankfully the customer like it phew

I wish the weather would brighten up, its actually quite cold today I NEED SUN.

We are seeing so many baby birds on and near our feeders at the moment, I just love to see all the feather fluffing and body wiggling that they do in order to make mum notice them.

We spent £25 on a new feeder at the weekend to stop the doves from pinching all the food from the hanging table. The new one has a moveable plastic roof over the top and the little birds just love it, but the crafty collared dove has worked out that if she keeps her head down she can still get to the food, its so funny to see. I keep lowering the top and she keeps trying to get it, and at the moment she is winning, but not for much longer lol. I just looked out of the window and there are 6 goldfinches in it, they are so pretty. By the way I do feed the larger birds too, we have a large table down the garden for them, but they are so greedy they eat all theirs and then move up here.

Well thats all for today, and I'll be better at this as I go along I hope

Happy Stitching

Colly