Week in the wilds

Oh dear, I seem to have been neglecting my blogging responsilities of late. Never fear I am still here, just had a challenging week.

I have however been thinking of some crafting projects and I have some new books for inspiration. When I have started sewing and have some photos to show I will elaborate.
 Back soon!

Weekend of Wonders

The wonderful part started before the weekend - with one of my best friends getting engaged. Top news. Then on Saturday I caught the train down to Sussex, I had a large cup of earl grey tea and a good book, and I could feel the stress of the week seep away.

My favourite part of the journey is just before Haywards Heath Station; the train passes over a viaduct and the South Downs open out in a panorama in front of you. For me it is home, the familiar and the safe. 

When I arrived at Lewes I popped in to the Patchwork Dog and Basket to get some wadding and then I headed off to the Southease Chili Day with family and friends. Southease is a lovely little village just down the valley from home.

There were plants for sale, chili with rice and nachos, chili ice cream and local Harvey's bitter.

It was a good scene, plenty of families and bouncy friendly dogs.

When I got home I did some patchworking. Because I'm slapdash and hopeless this didn't go as well as I had hoped.  I'm hopeful that when I quilt the layers together the fact that it is all a bit puffy and the front is bigger than the back won't show so much! Still as a first full size quilt attempt it's ok.

On Sunday I spent some time in the garden - I harvested the dahlias. These have been flowering non stop for months and I love the vibrant colours and the big flower forms.

My Dad also made this delicious Canterbury Apple Tart. It is one of my favourite recipes - the middle is shredded apple with tangy lemon and it is so so tasty!

Quilting legacy

I mentioned in one of my first posts that my Grandmother was a keen quilter. She also spun, knitted and dyed wool and sewed and stitched many projects which I remember very fondly and look to for inspiration and memories now.

Here is the quilt she made me in 1993 in my favourite pink and blue colours - as you can see she used a variety of traditional block patterns incorporating materials with different textures and durability levels - some are more threadbare than others now!

The only other quilt that my grandmother made that is in my parent's house is of a very different style and includes appliqué. She chose to use all pain fabric and I think was particularly interested in Picasso and Matisse when she made it.

My Gran used to ask us what we wanted her to put in her quilts, this particular one has my parents names embroidered in it as she had asked them for ideas.

Here you can see a pig, a bird and an apple. I love the way that everything is hand quilted and slightly wobbly. It makes the pieces really tactile and genuinely makes them seem fill of my Gran's character. Like me she was not what you would describe as a precise person!

This weekend I hope to finish putting my first large quilt together as well as completing a couple of other smaller projects. Here is some stitching I did last night - bringing together some lovely vintage feedsack fabrics that I bought from Sal's Snippets.

A is for Autumn

I write this in the late afternoon sunshine in Sussex as I reflect on a varied and busy few days. Autumn is definitely here; the apples are ripe, the plum trees are laden with fruit and the Aga is back on. My parents have always turned the Aga off in the summer, and it is one of my favourite moments of the year when the constant warmth returns to the kitchen. The jam making and the cake baking will commence in earnest at the weekend! 

Last weekend I was, as I mentioned before, reunited with friends in Cambridge. I thought I would share with you a few pictures of the fleeting summery time. The town was busy but the colleges were quiet, anticipating a new influx of students in October. 

We had a lovely teatime picnic in Magdalene College beside the river :

Watching punting parties, a couple of near capsizing incidents and eating scrummy cakes.

When I returned to London on Sunday I spent a few happy hours baking scones and cake for my flatmate's surprise birthday tea-party. I have been friends with this particular flatmate since we were 16 - so for nearly a decade! Fortunately he was away playing a concert in Yorkshire on Sunday, so I didn't have to pretend I was cooking for some other reason!

On Monday when I got home from the office one of my other housemates took the birthday boy off to the supermarket so that the remaining housemate and I could frantically decorate the flat and lay the birthday spread out on the table! We had invited a few special guests along to, and asked everyone to dress according to theme: Battle of Britain and Dad's Army  - a favourite series!  We got everything in place in time and evening was great fun,partly due to our disregard for 1940s rationing:

Back in Sussex. Now I thought you might like to see some pictures from a recent visit to Charleston Farmhouse Garden. Charleston is just across the valley from my village and was where the infamous 'Bloomsbury Set' made their home. I love the house with it's eclectic art and painted furniture, full of stories, scandal and literary heritage, but I also think the walled garden there is a total gem:

I particularly enjoyed this statue surrounded by cloud effect topiary:

Snug as a bug

I have just returned from a lovely weekend in Cambridge spent with some of my very favourite people. We have a yearly meet up as a group - it is lovely to hear what everyone has been up to and to return to the familiar dynamic within our little gaggle. We hid from the rain in the cinema and then basked in the sun, when it appeared; eating cakes by the river and watching the punts laden with cheery tourists make their brinky way downstream. There were preening ducks and weeping willows to remind you of a 'Wind in the Willows' scene. I feel revived, despite the sleepover slumber deprivation.

Now I am back in London town I am thinking about what project to embark upon this week. I have a fun evening planned for tomorrow that I will tell you more about when I have photos to show for it.

In the menatime here is a project I finished a couple of weeks ago. One of my dear friends in America who I used to work with in London town had a beautiful baby girl at the end of August. The baby was born over a month early - so this project ended up being a race against the clock in a way which I had not intended! 

I wanted the quilt to be bold and fun and rather than all the pastel shades normally associated with baby stuff  I went for bright colours with a mix of prints.

 I included some Cath Kidston cowboy print and red and white stars, as I wanted it to have an American slant, and complemented those with patches of florals, spots and Cath Kidston 'Stanley' fabric. I used tied quilting in red pearle cotton in each of the patch corners. 

I included a matching lavender bag in the parcle and also a selection on my favourite children's books in fairly indestructable board book format. it is never to young to start hearing stories! Here they are all wrapped and ready to go. It was very satisfying to think of the package arriving all those thousands of miles away.

Home Improvements

Hello, I hope you are all having a good week. As promised, here is an update about some room alterations!

Since moving into my London flat, about five months ago, I have been contemplating some changes to my room. It is a small space - and used to be an office so if full of fitted furniture - shelves and desks; nice and useful as a sewing HQ but impractial as a bedroom. Due to the fixed units it is impossible to fit a double bed in there, and the single bed that came in the room has no headboard, so my pillows fall off the bed in the night and I can't sit in bed and read etc. So, I pushed the head of the bed up against the wardrobe - which meant I had to move the bed every time I wanted to put clothes in or out. A bit or a chore. I have therefore got a lovely new bed from Ikea, it arrived today....

I can store things in my wardrobe - and my bed can act as a comfy sofa in the daytime. This is good. The cushion designs come from the Cath Kidston 'Sew' book - I made them during my Easter break in the Lake District.

Speaking of the Lakes do you like my Herdwick sheep wool blanket? I love Herdwicks - you can get these blankets here: www.cumbrianwool.co.uk

I am also pretty keen on my new-to-me eiderdown, from Donna Flower.

I will hopefully soon finish this quilt I am working on and be able to bring that up to London too for cosy winter times.

Summer’s lease hath all too short a date...

Hello there, so I went home to Sussex at the weekend and didn’t look at a computer once, it was a nice change to the daily screen-staring of work. It does however mean that I neglected to write anything on the blog. The computer seems to eat hours of time if I’m not careful, so I am determined at weekends to try and make the most of the remaining summer-y days.








The village where I grew up, and which I still think of very much as home, is pretty small. There is no shop, no pub, no tourist hot spot. Everyone knows everyone and there is still a genuine sense of community. On Sunday we had a village ‘tree walk’ with a tree warden and a South Downs National Park Ranger. The aim of the walk was to get us villagers better acquainted with the signs of disease that affect trees in our area, particularly Dutch Elm disease, so that we can act to stop the spread of the disease and prevent trees from dying. Thankfully the sun came out for our very slow trail through the wood!








After the walk my family gaggle returned home for a delectable autumnal delight – damson crème brulee. Highly recommended – damsons have gone up in my estimations as a result. Then whilst the rest of the gang got on with making damson gin I set to some frenzied patchworking.








Last Christmas I was given a sewing machine by my parents and have since developed a habit for collecting fabric and daydreaming that I have a whole house of my own to fill with homemade cushions!












The enjoyment of sewing, making things and appreciating handmade textiles was long established before the arrival of this gift. My Gran made many quilts including a beautiful pink and blue one for me that is one of my most treasured possessions, despite it being a little threadbare nowadays.


Feeling a little bit unsure of where to start on my patchworking mission I went with my lovely cousin in law to a beginners quilt course in my local town, Lewes, run by Annabel Groom at the Patchwork Dog and Basket shop. Since then there have been a number of projects over the summer, and if you’ll indulge me here are a couple of snaps of some of them.


Patchwork star blocks:








A birthday present for a gardener:


















Holiday stitching by the pool:


















And lavender bags stuffed with lavender from the garden:














I must now go to sleep. But I will update later in the week when certain exciting arrivals will have taken place in my London flat room!