Saturday 28 July 2018

Patchwork Rabbit

For the first time I have made the birth sampler before the birth, with the spaces ready for the name and other details when the baby arrives.  Also, with the issues in mind from the last birth sampler / announcement the design has been modified to fit the frame.

Nursery rabbit
Patchwork rabbit




I also changed the colours from the original.  My pallet is a bit less pastel and a bit brighter.



I added a lot more patches making a full boarder around the central rabbit.



The original design as you can see below also has a stripe of colour, mimicking a dado rail, behind the rabbit's head.




I did not think that fitted in with the change to the shape from square to rectangle required to fit the frame I have chosen to work with.

This is a picture of the original design as featured in Cross Stitch Card Shop issue 47.  It is one of six pastel patchwork nursery baby cards designed by Lucie Heaton.



Of the six, having found this pleasant to stitch I can see I might also do the patchwork teddy and rocking horse. I find the Rocking chair, bassinet and mobile less appealing.

Sunday 15 July 2018

From Aunties' tin

I have mentioned my Aunt before in a post about a quilt I made for her. and in posts for quilts I made for my uncle after her death.

I was given some of her sewing notions and unfinished projects. My Aunt liked to embroider table cloths till it became difficult for her to see and painful to sew.

I had sorted out much of the bits and bobs and all of the thread but I had still a few things left in an old biscuit tin to relocate to my own various bits and bobs containers.

Buttons to my button tin (itself inherited from my grandmother and holding almost as many memories as buttons) snaps and hooks and eye popped in there too. A little transfer book of flowers off to live with my patterns.

Rusting pins and empty button cards into the bin, I may be a hoarder at heart but at least for now I have my limits on what to keep and what can be used.

That left this little collection of stuff.  


The brown screwdrivers say singer. The orange red has no makers name. I am sure I can make use of the little brush.  I have never used the tool with the little wheel before, although I have a general idea what to do with it.

Then there are the somewhat more interesting bits.

a sewing machine foot. it also says singer


It is tiny, well compared to the feet I am used to handling for my machine.  I don't have a singer, although I do recall with fondness the singer treadle machine my grandfather had and used .  Sadly there was no room for that in my parents home after his death and it journeyed on, I hope as a sewing machine being used to make things and not getting "up-cycled" to something else. Any way I digress, what to do with it. Keep it in case I ever do get a machine it fits?  Well yes for now at least.

And what about the green metal thing resembling an airplane propeller? 

Well it spreads out to this.



Not seen one of these before either. Any one know for sure what it is?  My thoughts are it is some sort of template either for quilting or for embroidery.  Of course that might never have been its original purpose and it is for something else completely unrelated to sewing and just made its way into the sewing tin because my Aunt used it for that.

This next item, well it is a bit of shaped plastic with a magnet in it for picking up pins and needles.  But what form has the plastic taken?

I think it looks like a serpent with a hint of the Aztec about it.



My mother takes a different view.


In more ways than one and thinks it is a perching owl.