Saturday 27 September 2014

How good it feels to bottom it!

As I use my sewing room almost every day I expect it to be a bit dusty. I use loads of fleece and knitted fabrics and cutting them out alone seems to cover every surface with a fine layer of fibres. I hadn't realised however until the other day when in the words of my mother I bottomed it just how mucky it really was! (This was apparently a well known phrase about 50 years ago in Yorkshire, but not used so much now! Although why it was a favourite of my mother a Kentish girl, I have no idea.)
Oh the shame! There was enough fluff to almost fill a cushion., so once I started there was no going back.
It did have its plus points finding as I did one or two things I had 'lost'.... Rolls of ribbon, small scissors and several reels of thread to name a few.
And now its neat and shiny again, for a few days at least and it really feels good.


I've rearranged and thinned out some of my vintage toys and sewing ephemera.




Hung some new bunting (remember the five sided hexagons I crocheted!) They look lovely now linked together and not such a stupid mistake anymore.


Organised my ribbons and trims and bought a couple more really useful boxes to tidy up my fabric overflow.


However I seem to be, rather worryingly, getting a bit obsessed with deep cleaning at the moment.  I'm glad (in more ways than one) that I am well past child bearing age as this sudden urge to tidy my nest might have other connotations. Last week it was the cooker this week the sewing room, whatever next?
I can see I may need to take up yet another hobby before I actually begin to plan Housework!!

Right off now to embroider a baby blanket before I start cutting out and making a mess again.

Hope you have a good week
TTFN
Jenny xx

Sunday 21 September 2014

Just bits and bobs.....

September...almost over, I can hardly believe it!
It seems no time since we were basking in sunshine and spending endless days in the summerhouse and now its almost time to put it to bed and start thinking of cosy nights inside. Sigh!!.....


Well I haven't been completely idle over the past weeks, but I must say I have definitely slowed down....Lots of bits and bobs really..

I finally finished my grandson's jumper.......and it still fits!


and started one for his brother (I hope to finish this one a little quicker)
 
I've repainted another fireside chair. We only had one in the dining room where DH likes to watch his sport on the bigger TV, but the grandsons love being in this room so we thought we would take out the child's chair we had here before and give them both a 'grown up' one now. Cant make up my mind though whether to leave the green covers which I made previously or make some more in a toning red or taupe fabric!
I've had to remake the red checked chair cushion too as the springs underneath had worn the  bottom away .



I've been playing with my embroidery machine too! I love all these cushions with deer heads and while looking for some machine embroideries to my taste, I found an article about 'picture stitch' and remembered that this was a function of my machine. So I found a photograph of a deer, and a hare which I also love and set about converting them to embroideries and this is the result for the deer.....


I love it! I know it isn't perfect and no doubt if I were a bit more savvy with photoshop I could make the original image much sharper which would then make the embroidery have better definition, but I think for a first attempt it's not bad. So it looks like I'll be making a few cushion covers in the next few weeks. They'll be lovely to add to the knitted deer cushion I hope to make from the pattern lovely Lucy from Lemonade Kitty wrote out for me earlier in the year.

So together with the pile of dressmaking I have lined up I guess it's just as well the weather's changing and the nights drawing in as I could be locked in my sewing room for some time.

 That is when I'm not glued to Pinterest or playing with this awesome App.....



 A corner of my bedroom and Winnibriggs House in glorious watercolour!.......What do you think. I think its awesome in fact I think I will print off the house picture and frame it........

Well enough of my ramblings, I hope you all have a good  and productive week...

TTFN
Jenny xx