Hi Everyone

Barbara's funeral took place last week and this was the order of service.
http://www.buntybarmcake.co.uk/A Celebration of the Life of V2.docx
I thought one or two of you may be interested to see her choice of music and so on.

It was a lovely service and many people came from miles away, which was very kind of them.  We collected about £700 for Barbara's favourite animal charities, which is brilliant.  We had the two leaders of a local choir (Voicebox) lead the singing of Waterloo Sunset and they performed Forever Autumn by Justin Haywood, both songs that meant a lot to Barbara.  Autumn was her favourite time of year and the words are especially poignant to me.

This is the Eulogy as prepared by the Celebrant, who was lovely and set just the right tone:
http://www.buntybarmcake.co.uk/DUNFORD Barbara Patricia Alexandra.pdf

Thank you again for all of your lovely comments and tributes; I know that Barbara would be embarrassed, flattered, amazed and delighted.

Take care and be happy...

Love
Paul (Mr V-B)

My Sad Loss

Hello Everyone

You may have guessed from the lack of posts that Vintage Bunty (AKA my wife Barbara) has not been well in recent months.  Unfortunately she finally lost her 21 month battle with Ovarian Cancer on Wednesday 6th February 2013 at 10:00pm.   

She bore her various treatments and procedures with great grace and I will miss her love, friendship, loyalty, humor, smile, tolerance and support so much that I cannot find the words to explain how deeply I feel her loss.

She started to deteriorate rapidly from the Friday before her death but managed to stay at home until the day itself and at least avoided her worst fear of an agonising end that went on for weeks or months.

She was such a talented person yet so modest.  She could paint, embroider, sew, do patchwork, take great photographs, and above all combine these to great effect, making beautiful collages.   She also made up kits and sold them alongside digital backgrounds for scrapbookers and so on.  Yet in the house we have very few items as she thought displaying her own work was immodest.

She leaves behind not only her husband, but a brother, sister, mother, two nephews, a niece, sisters and brother-in-laws and many friends who will miss her gentle ways and sweet, tender nature.

I know she really enjoyed her blog and loved swapping tips, ideas and goodies with many of you.  Thank you for following her blog and take care.

RIP my darling wife.

Mr V-B (AKA Paul)

Update 11:00pm Sunday  - the amazing Laurie has posted a tribute to Barbara on the Button Floozies blog.  Thank you, Laurie.  Her other friends and family will love it as much as I do.
http://indulgeyourshelf.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/farewell-dear-barbara.html

Extending Embellishment

Well, the course has finished today, instruction-wise that is and it's been very full on - so many techniques and fabulous inspiration from the very talented Karen.  She never ceases to amaze me with her ideas and beautiful work.  I am still way behind as usual and have many techniques to try yet but here is an idea of what can be achieved by free motion stitching onto scrim:-

4 different sample pieces.

2 of those pieces with added fabric snippets (top piece) and vintage embroidery pieces (bottom piece).

                               This is what they can become -

 - beautiful lacy fragments to embellish,

 which can either be joined up with other pieces or used as samples to go into my Embroiderer's Ledger to inform other pieces of future work.  

Thank you Karen for another fabulous course - I really loved it.

Look Where I've Been Today ....

I went along to this event at Toddington, near Winchcombe in Gloucestershire despite the showers and had a ball looking around the beautiful vintage and hand made items, some from my favourite bloggers: The Sea Garden, Hen's Teeth, Nostalgia at the Stone House to name a few.  There was much gorgeousness to be found at every turn and it would have been easy to spend LOTS of dosh but I controlled myself and settled on these lovelies:-

old embroidered runners and traycloths, vintage French fabric and antique lace, as well as a  lovely inspiration pack from The Sea Garden.

There was also a pop up vintage style tea shop - Lavinia's - and the event was very well attended. I have already used one of the items this evening!

LONDON 2012 - OUR OLYMPIC EVENT!

Mr V-B and I set off yesterday for our first ever Olympic event - the Canoe Slalom at Lee Valley Water Park near Hatfield in Hertfordshire.   The atmosphere was great and at times, there was lots of noise from trumpets and vuvuzelas!  The course was very rapid and the paddlers very skillful to stay afloat and in their canoes.  Unfortunately, David Florence, the British hope only made it as far as the semi-final and France's Tony Estanguet won the gold medal.  Fortunately, the rain held off until the final race had just finished and then the heavens opened and there was a mass exodus as the stands had no shelter, so unfortunately we didn't see the medal ceremony.

Here are a few photos from the day:-

Free Motion Stitching Experiment

As part of the online course I'm doing at the moment, we had to do some free motion stitching.  These are a few of my experimental pieces from yesterday:-

The small piece at the bottom is 5 pieces of white tissue paper machine stitched; the piece on the right hand side has bark paper on the bottom, followed by a piece of fancy, sparkly paper and a piece of crinkled voile on the top, all free motion stitched.  The longer panel is 5 pieces of white tissue paper stitched into a grid pattern, which formed a lovely surface upon which to stitch so I decided to embroider some flowers in the colours of the page it is to be mounted on.

The panel with a little more embroidery - not quite finished yet.

I have a few more ideas of layers that might be good stitched together, which I will try next.

More Work On The Ledger Pages

I have been very fraught this week, trying to make several different ledger pages using different techniques.  Some of them haven't worked out right and I have been quite frustrated but think I have settled on what I am fairly happy with now.  Here are some piccies:-

Lots more angst in the pipeline  .....................!