New to my craft room in April

Once again this month I’ve had some essential spend after somehow breaking my automatic threader on my Bernina. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I do remember thinking how well my sewing was going, and feeling slightly pleased with myself. Next thing I knew something had fallen off, oops. The machine still works and I can thread the needle manually, but I’ve come to rely on the automatic threader, which to start with I wasn’t sure I’d ever use.

So a new one was dutifully ordered from where I bought the machine. And while I was on their site I happened to notice their sale section, so I added another bargain grey for my collection for the background to my floral fancy.

In some long awaited but equally unexpected news, one of the outstanding items from a pre-Christmas order arrived - the pink D-rings below. The final item remains out of stock and so a refund was given for this. It’s taken a while, and I was happy to wait as it wasn’t something I had an urgent need for, but thought I’d use at some point. Though at the time I probably had a use in mind, but I’ve no idea what that is right now!

This month I also ordered the gorgeous variegated blue and green thread, which I’m planning to use on my mystery block of the month quilt when the time comes. I also needed to buy some wadding for that quilt, as without that I wouldn’t have a quilt, and so now I’m also the proud owner of a 15 metre roll of wadding. Well, it’s actually less than that as I needed some for my first charity quilt of the year - more on that soon.

The next bundle of green fat quarters, ribbon and a spent glow stick are from our recent trip to Wales for my youngest niece’s wedding; the ribbon and the glow stick are from the favour bags, and the material I picked up on our look around Ludlow, and thought they’d be perfect for the start of my green collection for leaves for my at some point in the future floral fancy.

At the end of the month I was at the Quilt & Stitch Village show in Uttoxeter, and I did make a few purchases there, including these scraps costing £1.50 at the Project Linus stand - and yes, that’s the charity I donate my charity quilts too if you thought it sounded familar.

I never expected to buy any fabric with onions or beetroots on, but that’s what I did - there was just something about them that grabbed me, and while i was there I also picked up a toning plain to save me the headache of finding one when I need it. I’m not sure how I’ll use them yet, but they do make me smile.

I also could walk past yet more newspaper like text on fabric, it could be said that my curiosity definitely was piqued (again).

The final addition to my craft room this month is a book, on an embroidery discipline that I wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle. But I’ve been one over by the sheer number of geometric patterns included in this book, and my love for hand sewing. I’m looking forward to reading more about the basic principles and seeing where this will take me.

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.

Post Comment Love 1 - 4 May

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.

It’s been a quiet week for me online, but busy in real life. I’ve made it to a garden show - my picture this week is the rhododendron which MOH chose for our garden - and a quilt show in two successive days, and even snuck some new sewing projects in as well. I’ve now a stack of ideas I want to post about, but haven’t got to them yet - I’m sure I will at some point.

It’s a bank holiday here in the UK so we’re keeping the linky open an extra day so there’s a little bit more time to join in, have a great week.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

This April...

As predicted April has indeed been busy, and it’s brought a few surprises with it too - not all of them necessarily wanted, but such as it is we’ve needed to embrace those and roll with it. It’s not my story, though clearly I’m affected but everyone is ok and it’s why my blog has been unexpectedly quieter than I’d planned these past few days. At some point I may share more, but not just yet.

The fields around us have turned a gorgeous shade of yellow, which I love, but which MOH quite literally sneezes at. Though he has discovered a major trigger for his hayfever, so there is that. It’s the first year we’ve seen so much rapeseed growing locally, it could be just the cycle of rotation though, at some point we’ll find out - it makes for a great picture though, doesn’t it?

The month started with a trip to Wales for my youngest niece’s wedding, and somehow the celebrations coincided with those two warm - actually quite hot - days. I’m not sure how they managed that, and I’m not sure they know either - but we’re all very glad it happened that way. Sunglasses were definitely needed rather than the cold weather options I’d been anticipating!

While we were there we had a look around Ludlow, and stopped off at Powis Castle on our journey home. I wasn’t prepared for the size of the 300 year old yew hedges there, and so it was a great garden for me, and a pleasant surprise!

I’ll be sharing more of my photos from there, but just wow to the size of these hedges - and to the job of keeping them in trim, that’s got to be quite a task.

It’s great to see the gardens waking up as spring really comes into its own, my garden has suddenly taken off and throughout the month the blossom on the crab apple tree has formed, blossomed and gone for another year - hopefully there’ll be plenty of crab apples later in the year.

Closer to home we enjoyed the Bluebell walk at local Flintham Hall. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many bluebells before, but I’m more than happy to do so again. I was pleased to learn that the gardens will also open in May as part of the National Gardens Scheme, so I’m looking forward to another visit to see a different part of the grounds.

It’s also the time of year for the Newark Garden Show and we went along on the first day of the show, this year armed with a ‘possible plant list’ - we did buy some of those, but we also bought off list, including a lilac rhododendron, which has been on a longer term wish list. Though for some reason my camera roll is of random shots like the one below, which I guess means it’s more inspiration and future shopping based, than just a day out.

We’ve been holiday planning and looking at returning to the Loire region of France, this time travelling all the way by train. If we’re lucky we may add some cycling to this, or we may just stick with some walking, but our plans include staying at a chateau or two, some wine tasting and return visit to the Chateau and gardens of Villandry.

We’ve had our first barbecue of the year - amazing for April - and tried a new to us restaurant in Nottingham, thoroughly enjoying our meal at Skein, so I’m pretty sure we’ll be back. There’s been a Portuguese wine tasting in Newark, but I found most of the wines more ‘challenging’ than previously but the evening was designed to showcase the diversity in the region, and it certainly did that.

I also discovered that my gold trainers cause my achilles pain, so I’ll be giving those a very wide berth for the foreseeable future; and when in Nottingham last week I seemed to have randomly hurt the top of my foot, the same one obviously, so I’ve been icing and elevating it as much as I can, which seems to have done the trick. I know that for the RICE approach there’s supposed to be the ‘rest’ element too - but with the Newark Garden Show and a quilt show at Uttoxeter almost immediately after the random swelling, that was always going to be tricky.

I went along to the Quilt & Stitch Village show with friends from my sewing group. It’s a show that wouldn’t have even been on my radar before I moved here, but it was a great little show which is held at the racecourse, and as it’s just an hour and a half away by train, so that’s what we did. The station is right next to the racecourse, so as walking goes it was relatively lighter than expected, which was definitely good for me.

Though I never thought I’d be buying material with beetroots and onions on, but I did - and I love them. I’ve no plans yet, but I’d not seen anything like this before and knew instantly that they’d be coming home with me. It was great to see some new to me suppliers at the show, along with some familiar favourites, and of course there was also a quilt or two on display!

Over the past however long I’ve been crocheting larger granny squares at my crochet in the pub group, and this month I reached the eight squares I’d been aiming for. My plan is to use them to embellish a tote bag, but first I had plenty of ends to sew in. It’s not my most favourite job, but remarkably they were sewn in within a couple of days - look out for the finished project which I’m hoping to share soon.

I also realised that I probably had enough scrappy houses now to make my first ‘village quilt’, and so today I’ve finished my first charity quilt of the year. I’d hoped to have finished it and shared it before now, but that life surprise got in the way of this too, so that quilt update will also follow soon, I hope.

I signed myself up for the online taster weekend for the Thread Academy as I’d seen Jo Avery’s delightful ‘Dream Birds Coin Purse’ and thought I’d have a go at making my own. I mean, a bird shaped pouch - what’s not to like.

This is as far as I’ve got at the moment, and clearly the taster weekend has been and gone now, but I have enough information and hopefully wherewithal to finish it and to do it justice. Isn’t it super cute already though?

So that was April, both brilliant and at times uplanned and unexpected. I’m hoping that May, my birthday month, goes a little more to plan!