A Lovely Autumn Walk To Blow The Cobwebs Away

Some of you will know that this has been a terrible year for me and I have been trying to cope with everything that has been thrown at me.  As if things weren't bad enough, I had more terrible news last Friday regarding a family member and my head was screaming to get out of the house.  As it was a lovely autumn day yesterday, we went for a stroll to Buscot Weir and it really did me good to do it.  It doesn't change the news I had or how we will all cope with it but at least I was able to forget my worries for a little while and appreciate nature.

Here are a few photos:-

Memories of Rye .......

Mr V-B has now uploaded all our photos from our week in Rye last week. There were so many to choose from but here are a selection I have made into 4 collages.
                                                               
                                                          Great Dixter House & Garden

Rye, Smallhythe Pace & Dungeness

Fabulous sculptures dotted around at Pashley Manor Garden

Scotney Castle

 Hope you like them.   

Crumbs - a new meaning!

As promised here is what I discovered:-  ladies, ever have lots of these (tiny little pieces of left over fabrics):-

but you think they are way too small to do anything with them but keep them anyway as they are too pretty to throw away but haven't a clue what to do with them?  Well, I have quilted on a small scale for many years now and so had absolutely loads of scraps hoarded away in jars and cupboards.  Anyway, whilst on holiday and having the luxury of time to surf the net, came across lots of useful quilting and scrap blogs and this article on crumb piecing fascinated me so I had to investigate and find out more.  Each scrap is referred to as a "crumb" and by piecing them together in random fashion, you can end up with all sorts of blocks, which in turn can end up as quilts.  Here is the crumb piecing tutorial for anyone who is interested:- http://www.quiltville.com/crumbs.shtml .

photos courtesy of Allison Aller at http://alliesinstitches.blogspot.com/2010/10/crazy-crumb-piecinga-tutorial.html .
I expect you more experienced quilters will already know all about it but I learned something new and have been crumb piecing like there's no tomorrow in the quiet evenings whilst away. I may not make a quilt but have ideas for new little items for my shop.  Here are a few photos of my first very basic crumb pieces.

I will add bits of lace and maybe a button or two and whatever else happens to be suitable.  I will post again when I have actually made them into something.  

I've Been A Little Bit Quiet .....

.....having a week's break down in Rye on the South Coast. It has been a lovely, restful week and Mr V-B and I are just getting into the swing of being on holiday.  What  a shame we have to go home tomorrow.

I will post again when I get home with piccies of some of the things we have seen on our travels and also something I found very interesting on ..... crumbs ......, yes, crumbs!   See ya!

A New Mini Wall Hanging In The Shop

I meant to post about this last week but never got around to it. so here are a couple of sneaky peeks of a little fabric and lace hanging I have put into my shop.  Hope you like.

Guess What I've Been Doing

This is what I started off with:-

  a pile of snowy white lace, broderie anglaise, tatting and other bits of net and trim.

                                       Here are the same items afterwards:-

                                         varying degrees of subtle pinkness. Yummy!

Yup, you guessed right - avocado dyeing again.  DH is the avocado fan in our house - I don't like them and he used this up at the weekend and I asked him to save me the skin.  I wasn't ready to use it at the time so it was put into a plastic bag in the fridge for a couple of days and brought out yesterday.  I wasn't sure if it would work as it had been in the fridge and not used when fresh and ripe.  I found that it took longer to boil this time maybe as a result of this but I ended up boiling it all for an hour and a half (much longer this time) until I could see a murky brown colour in the pan and I knew it was starting to take.

I put the skin inside a piece of cotton scrim to boil this time as it is a fairly messy job with all the little pieces of avocado pith floating around and it seemed to work quite well at keeping them all inside.  I don't think the colour was as strong this time but it's still pretty and some of the pieces are such a delicate shade - not quite white, not quite pink, as every type of lace takes the dye differently.

It's quite a time consuming job but well worth it I think.  Now to use it!

Sneak Peeks - New Goodies Now Available

Here are a few sneak peeks of new items I have listed  in my shop this afternoon. - pop over and have a look.