This March...

I ended last month’s post on needing to sort myself out a wedding outfit, thankfully that turned out to be a relatively easy task in the end. I saw a dress online that I loved and ordered it, but when it arrived it was lovely, but just wasn’t right - a tad too flouncy for me, and I knew that I’d be fiddling with it more than I ought to be. It was the type of dress that was all chiffon and floaty, but it wore me rather than me wearing it if you know what I mean, so it went straight back.

So I took myself into Newark and wandered into the posh dress shop and well basically stood there looking overwhelmed which was absolutely the clue the ladies in the shop needed to jump into action. I tried on many dresses and left with one of the first ones I tried on.

I have a hat (well on a headband), a jacket or a silver cardy, one or other or both depending on the weather - it is in Wales in early April, so you never know. I have a couple of options on shoes - as you’d expect, and have also purchased a lovely green bag, and a pashmina too. So I’m all set.

Well apart from the food shop - we have three nights in an AirBnB with my parents and my brother and his wife. But that should be easy enough, shouldn’t it?

At times it’s felt like spring has arrived - and we’ve had lunch outside at one of our favourite cafes - and yet at other times it feels like winter is well and truly back. But there is hope of more blue skies to come, as the garden is also starting to wake up.

There’s been a couple of torrential downpours, almost storm-like conditions and way more than ‘April showers’ and we woke one morning to further issues with our heat pump, with it tripping the RCD which wasn’t great. Thankfully this was easy to resolve and shouldn’t happen again.

One of our old - and the most used of the two - sofas has been collected, which leaves one to get rid of which I’m hoping we’ll be able to give to someone who needs a sofa - but that won’t happen until I’ve sorted that out obviously.

We also have a brand new road through most of the village, and right outside our front door. It meant two overnights of work but it’s worth it. We no longer have pot holes and it’s much quieter with the traffic too. Though it followed a week of overnight closures on the nearby A46 which meant increased traffic for those nights, so it’s been a long slog of interrupted sleep. But with the roadworks cleared on the A46 there’s definitely less traffic passing through the village - there’s still some speeders, and these are much more noticeable with less traffic so there’ll still be ongoing speed watch sessions I’m sure.

MOH flexed his cooking urge making slow cooked lamb shank and artichoke ragu from the Padella cook book which he received at Christmas. It tasted fabulous and while the original plan was to also make the pasta, that was shelved for another day, which is fine as I’ve got two more meals-worth in the freezer ready to go.

We’ve been out and about a fair bit this month too, even heading to Nottingham twice in a few days once to watch some Super League Netball games, and the other for Alex James’ Britpop Classical. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in and around the netball community, and even then in a totally different area, but it was great to see a friend umpiring one of the games.

We’ve been enjoying listening to Alex James’ Sunday evening show on Virgin Radio and it was great to see the Britpop Classics in person, as well as having a good old 90s singalong and bop around to the songs.

It’s been a busy month for making too. I’ve set out my quilt plans and non-quilt plans for the year and it’s helpful to have a plan. Last year my sewing was dominated by the one a month charity quilts (aka my ‘stretch’ project) so it’s good to have time to explore other things.

And I have. Already I’ve explored some miniature makes and taught myself how to use the Flying Geese rulers I’ve had for a while, and which will be a game changer for my Teal Flying Geese quilt. I’ve even finished my most recent hand embroidery project which I already love - and it’s so my colours.

I was also pleased when my skein from Vicki Brown’s 100Skeins project arrived this month in ‘my colours’ - I have no plans for this at the moment, but it’s a project that I love and I love to support. Each year Vicki dyes 100 skeins which are all different and does this with the support from backers who pledge to buy at least a skein. Times are tough right now, especially for small businesses and so I was really pleased to see this initiative continue, and it’s even better when she sends a skein that matches your preferences so well.

So that was a busy March, April is already looking just as busy but with the lighter evenings I’m here for it.

Adding to my swirls

This Indian Block Printed piece has had quite an evolution; it was first printed back in 2024 at the adult learning course I took in Newark. Back then this is what it looked like, and it had plenty of potential.

But with other projects on the go (many in fact) but especially my other Indian block printing embroidery ones, like the three leaves, the birthday bunting, the embroidered heart and the mandala for my popper pouch, this one got put to one side.

Until we headed off on our walking trip to the Gargano Peninsular. That’s what I love about embroidery - it fits into a small pouch, doesn’t need a lot of equipment and importantly when travelling pretty much stays the same size so you don’t need to find extra room in your case.

By the end of that just a bit longer than a week, it looked like this.

And that’s how it stayed for quite a while, though my plan was always to complete the second set of swirls in a bolder colour way. I thought I’d use each panel separately, but the more I worked on it the more I thought it could become one piece.

I’m not sure when exactly I picked it up again - that remains unphotographed and undocumented - but it was some time during 2025. I suspect it was my embroidery project for our trip to the US and Canada last spring, but I could be making that up entirely, though I find it hard to believe that I didn’t take any embroidery with me at all.

But the swirls were embroidered and looking good. Though for me to use them together as a single piece I wanted more, and hatched a plan to use my Indian printing blocks to zhuzh it up and fill in some of that white space.

Indian block printing at home

It was the first time I’d done any block printing since that course, and I was unsure how it’d work out - spoiler, it worked out fine and was just as much fun as I remembered. The spur for me to get my act together was to print my ‘sheep in Christmas jumpers’ Christmas cards, but I think dedicating a block of time (no pun intended) to printing works well

At an earlier stash sale I’d picked up a length of the spotty oilcloth to use as a worktop protector. I’d actually forgotten I’d had such foresight until I re-discovered it in my craft room reorganisation a month or so before, which was good as I’d been tempted to buy some more, but thankfully hadn’t.

Through trial and error I found that the setup above worked for me, this included:

• the spotty oilcloth to protect my kitchen island worktop

• a foam rubber mat to use as my main work area (tip: you don’t need to buy often more pricey blocking mats specifically for crafts, the children’s toy area mats work just as well and are often cheaper)

• My paints in use in front of me, using the plastic lids of instant coffee tubes and ice creams to hold the small dobs of paint and a cut up scourer to apply the paint to the block (both the lids and the scourers can be washed and reused many times).

And so I was off, but of course I needed to avoid printing over my already embroidered areas - so I tore a scrap of paper and lightly taped it over my embroidery before printing.

The mask worked well and my once plainer piece was just what I had in mind.

Though as I was embroidering I realised in some places I’d been over cautious, and so I drew the lines I wanted in place.

My plan was to start with pale pinks, graduating through hotter pinks and into the oranges below the double layered swirl.

I could have used variegated thread, but I didn’t. Instead I pulled a selection of lilacs, pinks, oranges and yellows and cut the embroidery floss to the same length choosing either two threads the same, or similar to use for that section as I went.

Other than that I had no real plan, and I’m super pleased with how it turned out.

It’s already looking different to that last photo, but I’ll save how it turned out - and in a surprise to no one, it’s a pouch - for another post.

Post Comment Love 27 - 29 March

Hello there, welcome to this week’s #PoCoLo - a relaxed, friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they will be removed, and if you see older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

I can’t believe it’s the end of March already, with Easter just around the corner where did the time go?! Actually having mentioned Easter now would be a good time to say the linky is taking an Easter break so after today there won’t be another PoCoLo until 17 April. So when we’re back we’ll almost be through April too!

I’m off to a family wedding on the English/Welsh borders during that time, and I even have an outfit sorted too which is a major relief I can tell you. I am still contemplating whether or not to add one of my rosettes to my jacket, but either way a good start would be to completely finish it and add the brooch back or clip to actually make it an option wouldn’t it?

But that’s not why my ribbon jar has been out, I delved into it - right to the bottom in fact - to finish off yet another pouch - why is it always the way that the one you want is always at the bottom?

Have a great week, and a great Easter.

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