New to my craft room in March

Like last month it’s been a mixed month for the arrivals in my craft room; there’s been some essentials, some bargains and quite a few bits from my mum’s ruler box, and a bit of a splurge - but it was worth it and totally gorgeous!

The essentials were replacement sewing machine needles after breaking two making the impromptu flying geese tote, and it’s good to have these to hand in case I suffer any more breakages, and actually I probably should get into the habit of changing my needle - both on my sewing machine and for my hand embroidery - more often.

After seeing my shabby chic rosettes mum was quite keen to have one herself and so I pulled various pinks from my stash and made her one. While I was doing that I thought I should probably get some more brooch backs and hair clips to finish this and the ones I’d started at the Newark Quilt Show, so that’s almost an essential purchase too right?!

Now most people would have bought a tote bag pattern before they actually made a tote bag, not me - clearly for me the right time was immediately after I finished my flying geese bag! In my defence I saw it on Instagram and was smitten, I searched for it online - it comes with options to make three different sized bags - and put it in my online basket. A few days later another site was offering 25% discounts on all patterns, and checking this one was included - so it would have been rude not to buy it, wouldn’t it?

The cheerful Union Flag fabric is a fat quarter I couldn’t resist from a stash rummage at my patchwork group, and it’s 50p well spent. The skein of wool is one of a kind dyed by Vicki Brown as part of her annual 100 skeins project. I’ve bought one of her 100 skeins for many years now, and they are all stunning - and each one is different. You get an option to state colours you like (and dislike) and I’m really pleased with my mustard, pink and orange request this year.

At a recent visit to mum’s I finally got to look through her ‘ruler’ box, and to help myself to the ones she no longer wants. So I’ve added some quilting stencils and a hole thing to my ‘to play with pile’ along with a ruler for Cathedral Windows and a Dresden Plates template - and yes the price ticket on it does say £4.15, mum’s clearly had it for a while (and it is open even though it looks as if it’s not).

Something using the Cathedral Window design has been on my long-term list for quite a while, though my idea was to use denim and I’ve had many raised eyebrows each time I moot the idea, so I’m guessing it’s not ideal because of the thickness and stiffness of denim, so I probably should take that advice when it actually makes it onto my list.

My splurge item is these Type/ography 10 inch layer cakes by Lori Holt of Bee in my Bonnet for Riley Blake, and you may recall seeing these before as they have immediately made it onto my list of quilt plans for this year as my Word Star quilt.

As I said in that post, it shouldn’t have made the list but it has - and I’m not sad about it.

There’s more than just the red/white and white/red varieties, and I think that together they could make a great ‘star’ quilt but I haven’t really looked at the how yet - I’m still in the admiration phase!

I’ve even had them out of the packet so I can admire them even more closely, but not for long! They’re stored away safely for now, while my thoughts percolate and research takes place on how I can make this happen.

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 pink and orange embroidered pouch

Last week I shared how I added to my swirls and completed my pink and orange embroidery, and today I’m sharing the completed pouch which I first set about quilting.

I wanted to use a decorative stitch on my machine and I’d found some variegated thread which looked a good match. It didn’t work out quite how I expected, but it wasn’t a disaster - and well to be honest, I wasn’t unpicking that first line. I’d tried it out on a test piece before I started so I knew how it looked.

I wanted to quilt this small piece using a variety of styles and so I continued with that plan, and I’m much happier with how it turned out once the narrow straight lines were added, especially once I decided to add these in the mid-section too.

So with my quilted embroidery, it was time for the pouch. As ever I had a plan in my head - and thankfully that worked out.

Onto the pouch!

It will be a long thin pouch, which is idea for its intended use - and this may sound like overkill, but it’s for my round hairbrush when we travel. Currently I use a plastic bag to avoid the bristles catching on any of my clothes, but I knew I could improve on that. I hadn’t always set out on that being its purpose, but the colours I chose also swayed me. It’s been a while since I’ve had orange and pink highlights in the front section of my hair (underneath not right on show) and so to me it made perfect sense to use for my hairbrush, in a nod to my previously more colourful hair.

How I wish I still had those colours, but I’m not up to dyeing my hair myself and my hairdresser here doesn’t do red dyes, let alone pinks - I tried another hairdresser and it didn’t work out, as she did what she wanted to do rather than what I wanted, and I hated it. So I’m not going there for a while yet anyway!

I cut my lining fabric larger than the embroidered piece and hoped that I could use that as a binding; clipping it into place showed me that it would work.

So that’s what I did. I intentionally put a curved corner on the left hand side to echo the motif, and left the right hand side squarer. The lining works well with all of the embroidery despite it not having any, or much, orange in it. It’s one of those ‘Spread the Word’ fat quarters that I fell for last October.

I thought I’d add poppers, but I didn’t like how they looked. I considered the older style metal press fasteners but they weren’t really what I was after either.

Then inspiration struck, in the form of my crochet hook case, and I knew that ribbons would be the way forward - but which one?

I think both the pink and the orange ribbons were from our wedding back in 2007, and so were of course at the bottom of my ribbon jar. And while either worked, I surprised myself and opted for what I thought would be my second choice - the pink.

Yeap, I’m happy with that. In fact I’m more than happy with how it worked out - and I’m even more happy to have something a bit fancier than a plastic bag to protect my clothes from my hair brushes’ bristles!

My garden in March

This past month there’s been actual gardening, and our garden bin has been full enough to empty twice - isn’t spring great?! Though after cutting the buddleia down the bin also had more than its fair share of ladybirds so while the lid is up while I’m working, I always wedge it open with a small stone so they can crawl out of their own accord when the fancy takes them.

There was a few immediate things for my to do list, including taming the buddleia as I know it’ll need a couple more trims over the summer, and trimming the spike in the bush below. We can see this from the house and it’s the only one that’s peaked above the top of the wall, so it had to go.

BEFORE

AFTER

Ah, that’s better!

It’s been great to see things spring back into life this month, and to see so many insects too. I got lucky photographing this bee in the creamy green hellebores, and I’m glad it was enjoying them even more than me.

It’s also been a month for trying to get on top of the weeds, some of them have been huge.

But thankfully as the ground is still pretty wet they’ve come out easily. Though with weeds being weeds they’ve managed to grow in the awkwardest of places, which includes under the prickly mahonias so I’ve ended up with quite a few scratches getting to them, and getting them out.

A single hyacinth appeared in the side of the large plastic rhubarb pot, which then flowered and fell over - but looked very photogenic all the way through!

The wallflowers too have sprung to life. I’d noticed last month that they’d ‘bushed out’ quite a lot, this month flower heads started to form and gradually opened sharing their yellow, orange and pink flowers - these are such a favourite of mine and it’s good to see the plant doing so well. My plan is to keep some seed once they’ve flowered so I can grow more to use elsewhere in the garden. Last year I scattered some seeds, but I haven’t seen any new plants yet - though I could have ‘weeded’ them in all honesty.

The grass has had its first cut thanks to MOH. He’s also started to clean the patio, which will be a long job. Though after his success with the trial Monty Miracle we’ve bought some more to use on the rest of the patio.

BEFORE

AFTER

The crab apple tree, which was still laden with mostly rotten crab apples and much visited by the local blackbirds, also got a trim. I left some of the rotting fruit as I know the black birds have been feeding on these, but it had grown so much it needed a trim. My plan is to prune this alternate years, so hopefully that will work out fruit-wise too.

It’s already got green shoots on it following its prune, so that’s a relief!

We’ve had all the weather this month, but the wind and the rain was tough for the new olive tree. It started the month still wrapped in its winter bubble wrap, and I knew that it wouldn’t last this day. I wasn’t wrong and once it was off the pot - thanks to the wind - there was nothing else for it, but to go out and remove it entirely. I was concerned that otherwise the bubble wrap would act as a sail and the olive tree would be really up against it.

The acer by the back door has gone from just about showing leaves to unfurling its new growth in about a week and a half, and I’m sure it won’t be too long before it’s in full leaf.

I’ve had less success with my daffodils, managing a whole three flowers in total. I definitely need to show those bulbs some love once they’ve died back and I’ve decided to go more traditional and plant them in the flower beds. I’m probably also going to follow some advice shared in one of our local garden visits, which is to buy a pack of bulbs each time we got to a garden centre and shove them in the ground too. Thankfully we don’t go to a garden centre that often, but you know what I mean.

That way I shouldn’t have such a daffodil free spring next year!

It’s been great to enjoy some sunny days in the garden too, and managing to get our gardening time to coincide with at least a couple of those. And I’m so pleased that the rosemary outside the lounge window has also bulked out over winter, and it’s in flower too which I’m not sure I ever really saw from our previous rosemary bush - maybe it just wasn’t that type of rosemary.

I’ve still plenty to do in the garden, but that’s how life is for the next few months - and it’s going to be great!