Smelling sweet

small pot-pourri pillow, patchwork, quilted and embroidered

For Janie

This little pillow is filled with roses. Well rose pot-pourri. And it smells wonderful. Just imagine popping it on the pillows on your bed and falling asleep breathing in the smells of a summer garden. Romantic nonsense? No! Everyone needs a little bit of romance don’t they? I know I’d like some. There’s been a serious lack of it around here for years :( (It’s true!)  But I digress. What do you think of the pillow?  I made it for my exceptionally patient friend Janie (it’s a belated Christmas present) and I think she likes it, which is important! As you can see it’s an asymmetrical patchwork design with hand and machine quilting, some applique and embroidery.  The small floral prints are from Liberty and the one with pink and yellow roses is from Tilda.

Are you wondering about the embroidered word ‘trees’?  Maybe you’re thinking “it’s a bit random that bit”? You were? I thought maybe you’d be thinking that!  Janie and I go for regular walks and I wanted to evoke something that might remind her of the beautiful places we’ve been, Trelissick in the autumn, Lanhyrdock in the summer…Miss P’s when it’s raining! (Slackers the pair of us.)  And there’s a certain shade of green that she loves, so I included plenty of it here.  And green, well it does remind me of trees…

I hope you like the photo mosaics I made too.  They’re a lovely way of showing related pictures together, but I think maybe I need to take some better photographs.  Or get a better camera, that might help. I wonder if the images are large enough too – if you click on them you’ll obviously see them full size, but I wonder if people actually bother to do that. Well people, do you?! You will let me know won’t you? I know I can be a miserable git but I really would like you to come back, so tell me what works best for you and I’ll give it a go.

Mosaic showing details of the front of the pillow

Details of the front

a mosaic showing details on the reverse of the pillow

Hidden heart

Until next time then.
Love Stephie x

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Keeping busy

It’s been raining hard again so I’ve stayed indoors and played with patchwork pieces, experimenting with autumn colours.   Continue reading Keeping busy

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hellooo!

Well, yes, hello from me :) I may have had the Mac back for a couple of days, but those couple of days have been a bit fraught; connecting to the internet has been at best intermittent.  But after another trip to the Mac shop and a call to BT I think I’m finally sorted. Apart from putting everything back in place that’s disappeared since the demise of the unbacked-up hard-drive  that is, *groans loudly*.

It feels like I’ve been away forever. It’s hard to actually remember what life was like before we had personal computers, but I know I had one (a life, that is). I wonder what it was I filled my days with? Probably that making art business, or maybe even reading. So, two weeks without a computer and what have I got to show for it?  Well at least a few things worth sharing with you, I think!  I thought I’d use this first post to show you the finished lap quilt I was working on, before every thing Mac went tits-up (what a wonderful phrase that is, it does make me smile).  It’s in an exhibition at the moment at  Art House 2 near Portsmouth, so if you’re in the area pop in and have a look!

I called it Saffron Field because the colours have a warm spicy feel, but next to the daffodils I think I could also have called it Spring Filed!

I called it Saffron Field because the colours have a warm spicy feel, but next to the daffodils I think Spring Field would have worked just as well!

It looks strong against the colour of the grass.

Picnic anyone?!

Stringy detail!

Stringy detail! You can see some of the hand quilting too.

OMG - now what's going on?!

OMG - now what's going on?! It's upside down :(

Did I speak too soon or something? I thought all my internet/Mac problems were over. But as is obvious from the image above, I was wrong! Oh so wrong… Why oh why is WordPress uploading my images any which way IT likes and not the way I tell it to? All I want is for my pictures to be the RIGHT WAY UP – is this too much to ask? Apparently. I’m running out of ideas now – I’ve tried turning them up the other way in iPhoto and loading them, hoping they’ll come out the right way up, but no they still come out upside down. All I can suggest now is that you turn your monitor upside down. I may well be about to throw mine out of the window.

I’m so sorry; I’m sure you can detect my frustration and irritability. I wanted to come back here with a colourful, jolly post (well as jolly as I can be!) and here I am growling. Maybe I should head off to bed and hope that the world is the right way up when I wake up in the morning – do you think that might work?  Pigs might fly I guess!

I hope your weekend has been a bit less frustrating?  Have you been up to anything fun?  I went for a lovely walk along the cliffs with Kim yesterday and I even had some photos to show you, but I think I’ll save that for now!  I had planned to go for a run today, just three miles, and do a bit of gardening, but it’s been raining so heavily I couldn’t bear to go out.  Deluge is an understatement.  My wee bit of lawn will be a swamp; I expect to see alligators in the morning. I did manage a trip to the garden centre though and bought a few packets of annual seeds: pansies; violas; petunias; stock; godetia and some cupid’s dart (a perennial that apparently flowers in it’s first year).  They should add some colour to my pots and flower beds this summer.  I don’t know about you, but planting seeds always makes me think positive thoughts about the future, I guess it’s the anticipation of colour and warmth!  Notice I didn’t say sun?  This is Cornwall: we can’t guarantee sun here but we can definitely guarantee rain!

Well my lovelies, I think I really will head off now and leave the problems for tomorrow.  I hope you had a good weekend and look forward to catching up with you soon.

love Stephie x

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Got something going on

Something creative that is!  Here’s just a few snaps, can’t stay long – should be getting on with it…  Will be back later on though, I’ve got more running rambles to tell you about!

This one's all about the squares

This one's all about the squares

And a bit of colour

And a bit of colour

And is being basted ready for some hand quilting :)

And is being basted ready for some hand quilting :)

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See me in pictures

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