I haven't really updated much on my Spirit of Winter but here is a quite recent one. 

Ok, slightly later than planned (by a few months), but here is the finished bag I mentioned in my last post.   I was quite pleased with it for my first attempt and it was followed by many bags,  I will try to find pictures of a few of them.

 

I have recently refound my cross stitching bug though and the bags have been abandoned for the moment.

 

 



I do have some border collie fabric that I bought lately to make some bags up for my sister who is heavily into dog training.  So I will  have to get back to the bag making at some point.

I don't know if I dare creep back in here after being absent for so long!  But here I am anyway.

I've decided to change the name of the blog as I have a new interest and that is my new sewing machine that I bought on impulse last week.  I haven't touched a sewing machine since I was about 19 so haven't got a clue what I'm doing but hey ho I'll teach myself if I can.

While looking on the Internet for ideas and fabrics etc, I've come across quite a bit of information on handbag making - this could quite possibly be my new passion!

I've got some lovely fabric to make my first bag for my daughter, it came this morning along with lots of other stuff I bought, it was like Christmas morning.  I have a book  with instructions and patterns so I will get I to that later. Its called the Bag Making Bible by Lisa Lam.  I haven't started reading it yet and have nothing to compare it with but it comes highly recommended.

I'm still waiting for interfacing and something called fusible fleece to arrive so I can't start the making yet, which is probably just as well because knowing me, I'll dive in head first without knowing what I'm doing and ruin it.

 

Anyway, this is the fabric I'm going to be using.  I'll post photos of the bag in progress when the time comes.

 

 

 

I'm thinking of using yellow speckled fabric for the lining.  As is my usual, I'm jumping in at the deepend  but I'm going to take my time and study the pattern and instructions and maybe start the bag on Friday when its my day off work.

 

Don't think I've abandoned my Cross Stitch altogether because I haven't.  I've spent a lot of time on my Spirit of Winter HAED and am pleased with my progress.  I'll post some pics of it in a while, I want to get on with reading my book!

I have decided that I officially loathe and detest doing photo conversion cross stitch:). Well ok, that's probably an overreaction but the reason I haven't posted here lately is because I decided to do a portrait of my late father in law for my sister in laws birthday. I've given myself very little time to finish it for the date which is May 2nd. I will certainly get it finished, in fact, hope to be finished this week but I have spent so much time on it that I am fed up with looking at it. It hasn't gone smoothly either, I've never been totally confident with it as I did the chart myself from my own software and it's my first attempt. I'm not totally convinced it's good enough but my family are telling me it is so I just have to trust them. Then I discovered, after spending all day on parts of his suit, that the coverage isn't good enough and I have to go over it again (I know I should have spotted it but I thought it was just because I was so close to it). Anyway, here he is, the man himself, god bless him.

I still have my mothers portrait to finish off but that doesn't need to be finished until July so I'm afraid she's going to have to wait because I'm so fed up with photos. I'm going to finish Celtic Spring after Mike Is finished, then I'll finish my mother (should only take a week)- then it's back to my HAED and no more distractions for a while! Here's hoping this will work and be published because I have to do it on my ipad as my dear son has simply looked at all the laptops in the house and broken them! I know I'm full of twist tonight aren't I? But I'm fine really:)

Framed at Last!

This is a tapestry I started about 4 years ago. I bought it from a lovely craft shop when I was visiting my brother in Falmouth. It's been finished about 6 months now but I've only just framed it today.

Ok so the sunny weather went away as was to be expected so back to stitching. I made a start on my mothers portrait and decided to do tent stitch as the count of the fabric was only small (22). And I'm very impressed with the speed, I might have to try this again. This is only 4 days work so I'm very pleased with it.

I'm determined that when I'm finished this one that I will go back to Celtic Spring and finish her off and then it's back to my Sprit of Winter which has been sorely neglected I'm afraid. Now I realise what a difference tent stitch makes to time I'm itching to do a HAED on 25ct in tent stitch - I must not start another HAED before finishing Spirit of Winter, it would be really, really wrong!

Hi everyone, I haven't posted on here for a couple of days so I thought I should pop and and say what I've been up to this past few days. Not much stitchywise I'm afraid because the weather has been so glorious. Strolling around the shops in a t-shirt in March, I don't mind that! Ive had a couple of days off work too, which makes it even nicer. I went to Durham the other day, I must say that Durham is a beautiful City, especially when the sun is shining down. Here are a couple of photos that I took, not this time but last year I think it was.

Back to work today but I got home to find that the fabric for my mother's portrait has arrived so I can make a start on that. It does mean that I have 4 projects on the go at the same time but never mind, they will all get finished eventually and this one is to a time scale so there's my excuse! It's late to be starting stitching but I do want to at least make a start tonight so I will say goodnight.