Catching up!!!....

Hi, thought I'd better catch up as it's been a week since my last post. It seems to have gone by so quickly. I don't know whether it's because it was Holly's last week of the half term holidays or not but it flew by. I went to visit my sister Tuesday morning with Holly to catch up as they'd just got back from their hoiday in Australia. Wednesday afternoon was at Lucy's with her french neighbour, Marie, for our weekly french/english session which of course includes cups of tea and homemade cakes. I spent Thursday tidying up the room where we keep all our stuff. There is still stuff in boxes up there from when we moved over here along with 'stock' for our antiques business. Spent a few hours trying to get some sort of order, but I'm sure the other half will shortly go up there looking for something and it will be a total mess again. Friday went to do the food shopping and Lucy and her husband came round in the evening as it was her birthday, a bottle of champagne and some wine later finally fell into bed.

You ladies are so productive on the blogging front, I've had two days where I haven't had a chance to catch up and boy is there a lot to catch up on. I shall sit and have a read this evening I think.

I'm making brooches at the moment. Here are three I made last week, my own little bits of textile art. The one above and below (same one just different coloured backgrounds) is made using all vintage fabrics. A little fine cotton with embroidery on it for the base, then some old broderie anglaise, a heart of provencal print cotton and on top of that a heart of vintage linen and finally some black silk velvet ribbon. Then I stitched on some little beads. All hand stitched and finished with a piece of felt on the back to make it all neat. If you click on the photos they enlarge so you can see the detail.



The brooch above is again mostly vintage fabric, the cream fabric is very fine with some very pretty embroidery on it, this fabric is so fine and pretty I wonder if it was for a wedding dress, as the pieces I have are sleeve shaped and the embroidery fits the shape, rather than be embroidered all over and the sleeve just cut from the fabric. I have hand stitched a hem at the bottom and pulled it up to make a little ruffled skirt effect. Again I have teamed this with some of the provencal print and the black silk velvet ribbon. My other half said he thought it had a 30's feel to it. I then added the little bits of black ribbon with the hearts and some pretty little beads to catch the light.

In case any of you were wondering what had happened about the crochet blanket which turned into a floor cushion for Holly I thought I'd give you an update. I've been looking for some fabric to back it with and hooray! on Sunday we went to the antiques market and I found this rather pretty floral fabric which picks up the colours of the crochet really well, I thought. So hey ho... Holly will very soon have her cushion. I think I'll have to make my own pad for this one.

Well Holly's just got back from school and I'd better go and get her some tea as it's the violin lesson tonight.

Take care...
Nickyx