New to my craft room in February

As predicted last month it has been a relatively quieter month for things arriving into my craft space this month, and in better news for my purse they’ve cost little, or nothing.

I’ve recently started going along to a new-to-me crochet group which impressively meets in the nearby village pub every Friday afternoon - all very civilised! But of course I needed a portable crochet project to take with me, for the first session I dug out some wool I had and a hook and at the first session made the granny square in the photo below.

The wool I had would only take me so far I knew, so I stopped off in one of the shops in town selling wool and picked up three matching 100g balls for less than a fiver. I’ve now got three larger than usual granny squares, a new craft group and a new project. My plan is to make eight of these squares and use them to cover one of the many canvas tote bags which are now ubiquitous aren’t they?

The shop selling wool was just along from where I bought some fabulous yellow buttons (pictured in this older post) which is sadly closing at the end of this month (mental note: must make another visit before it closes!). I was hoping to discover some more vintage buttons, and I did leaving with this bundle of buttons and trims for £10.

At my sewing group I was given these small squares and rectangles of fabric, some of which are the same size that I’m using to make my scrappy houses (more on that project another day), so those have gone straight into the scrappy houses biscuit tin. I’m planning to use at least some of the others for small lavender sachets, that’s the plan anyway.

I also nabbed some pretty remnant Liberty fabric from an Instagram destash sale for £4, and then a few days later I added the rather fabulous and completely eccentric ‘Emergency Brooch Kit’ for another £4. I love the idea of carrying it ‘with you at all times’ for ‘those quiet moments or to kill a bit of time’.

I’m still collecting stuff for potential weaving with waste projects, this month adding three plum fruit nets and a further lime fruit net to my stash, along with the length of blue wire cut from our new chandelier when it was installed.

I’ve also finally relinquished some much loved tops from my wardrobe. They’re well past donating to charity, so they’re currently in my craft room waiting for the perfect project to claim them, or until I no longer need to store them - I’m not sure which will come first if I’m honest.

So that’s another month in my craft room, check out my previous updates for earlier additions, and remember to let me know below what you’ve added to your craft supplies this month.

A year of my 'stretch' project

Around this time last year I rather foolishly (with hindsight!) set myself what I said at the time was a ‘potentially crazy project’ as part of my quilt plans for 2025. It was borne out of wanting to make use of the test blocks I was determined to make so that my mystery block of the month quilt would be the best it could be.

The thing about setting myself this challenge, however crazy it seemed, was that it became a thing that I didn’t want to fail at, even though back then, and every month since, I said I wouldn’t know if I could do it unless I tried…

Well I tried, and I succeeded!

Not only have I made the equivalent of a quilt a month for charity, I’ve also improved my sewing skills and sewing confidence too. I hoped that I would also sew through my stash rather more than I have, and while I clearly have shifted a fair bit of fabric, I’m very much of the opinion that scraps of fabric breed when you’re not looking!

Seriously.

But I have a plan for dealing with that in 2026, as you knew I would, but more of that another day.

My ‘stretch’ project quilts

These quilts aren’t the largest quilts, but the are big enough to give a quilt-sized hug to children that need one. They have been/will be donated to Project Linus who provide quilts to children who are sick, disabled, disadvantaged or distressed through the donation of new, handmade, washable quilts and blankets.

They are:

1. A log cabin log cabin

2. A mostly repurposed vintage star

3. Four pink hearts and a hug

4. The Friendly Bee

5. Pleated Tulips

6. A Raspberry Plus

7. Half the Scraps

8. Blues and greens

9. Marmalade hearts

10. Ohio flower garden

11. My Dresden buttercup

12. Stars and spots
    

PICTURED (FROM BOTTOM): BLUES AND GREENS, MARMALADE HEARTS, OHIO FLOWER GARDEN, MY DRESDEN BUTTERCUP AND STARS AND SPOTS WHICH ARE WAITING TO BE DONATED TO PROJECT LINUS

Lesson learned

I am proud to have finished all of these quilts and to donate them to charity, but I won’t be setting myself any such similar challenges for this year, though I will still continue to make quilts for charity. What I found was that this was the focus of my sewing time, and it meant that I didn’t spend anywhere near as much time as I hoped on the other quilts on my list, or on garment sewing - though of course, I found there’s always time to make a pouch or two!

This February...

There has at long last been a break in the rain! There’s also been glimpses of the sun, and for a couple of days I’d even go as far as saying it was sunny. Whether or not spring is really on its way or if the weather is fooling us, I’m not so sure but I am glad to see the cheerful snowdrops and even more cheery daffodils appear in the hedgerows.

Our heating is fixed, and it’s stayed working better than it ever has which is even better news. I’m not looking forward to the bill coming in though, as I suspect it will be more than it usually would be, but life, hey. We’ve spent afternoons and early evenings watching the Six Nations tournament, and have quite gotten into the Premier League darts matches each week too, and we’ve finally started on the second season of The Night Manager - though we had only just watched the first one!

There’s been more speedwatch sessions, and the traffic is still high, and faster than it should be. In one of our sessions the highest speed we recorded was 59 mph, and it isn’t the first time one of our volunteer group has recorded that level of speed, which is shocking for a 30 mph limit - or it is to me anyway.

Somewhere along the way this month I seem to have crocked my ankle, or more specifically my achilles, and I’m not sure how which is odd as I’d expect something dramatic for the amount of pain there’s been. But some rest, my trusty Italian ankle support and putting my foot up and a painkiller or two has taken the soreness down many notches, what really seemed to have fixed it though is one of my regular massages. To be honest I wasn’t sure if I would be able to bear anyone touch it at one point, so for this gentle, recuperating massage to have had the effect it has has been wonderful.

I had a day in London at the Garden Press Event speaking to suppliers and leading figures in the garden industry, learning lots and with plenty more to share from the day in the next few weeks. That same day my blog turned thirteen, a fully fledged teenager now which hardly seems possible. To celebrate I picked up some glorious cut flower hyacinths, which I’ve never seen as cut flowers before, little did I know that my challenges with drooping hyacinths were about to start!

To round off the day in London I visited the most fabulous haberdashery just off Oxford Street, all the time wondering why I didn’t know of MacCulloch & Wallis while I lived in London - and more amazingly, I left without a purchase too. Then we headed to The Barbary in Covent Garden for dinner, which was fabulous and a much smaller than we expected restaurant.

It’s been a busy month in our home too, with a couple of new blinds fitted on the small but long front windows and the blue chandelier was assembled and installed - and we love it.

I’m not sure our electrician loved putting it up quite so much, but he agrees it’s a good addition to our stairway. We gambled on the length, reducing the drop by 50 cms, gauging this just by him holding the wire in place, and we got it right first time, which he definitely was pleased about, but I know if it wasn’t right he would have insisted on changing it. But phew, from us all in this case!

We also took delivery of our new sofas, much earlier than expected. They were due towards the end of March, but the company are ahead of themselves at the moment and so they’re here already - and have only been here a day or two, but even on the day they were delivered they just felt right for our space.

We’d hoped to book a decorator in before they arrived, and decide on the colour scheme too - but we haven’t, and so we’ll sort that out another time. In some ways it’s good to have them so we can be as sure as we can be that the colour we finally go for works, but in the meantime our house is currently auditioning as a sofa showroom and a cushion mountain!

I’ve finished the last of my ‘stretch project’ quilts, which I’m glad about as they really have dictated my sewing time, and I really have so much more that I want to sew. I will still sew more charity quilts, but not on the scale and voracity that I have this past year.

Finishing the last of my one-a-month-charity quilts also means I’ve completed the last mystery block of the month, so now I have twelve blocks to assemble into a quilt top which has taken some maths to make sure I have enough material to carry out my plans. I’ll be sharing more soon on both of these year long projects, so watch out for those posts.

I’ve realised that over the past year I’ve not found as much time as I’d like to ‘play’ when crafting, and trying out things I’ve not done before, this month though I’ve had more time for that and have found myself tackling a series of sewn miniature items. They’re not perfect and I’ll find a use for them (and will most likely share more here at some point) but it’s been good to experiment and get things out of my head!

I’ve had a request for a rosette from my mum, so I need to make her one of those for an upcoming family wedding - which is also a good reminder that I need to sort myself out an outfit too, but it’s a tricky one as April weather could be literally anything - wish me luck!