Green wood working class

Near my house is a lovely area.  It used to be a wholesale market and has recently been regenerated.  It is made up of a series of units occupied by artists/crafters, along with a Handmade shop (where I took the lampworking class), cafe, brewery and tap room; and a Vietnamese cooking school.  New units are constantly opening up.  One that opened a while ago, and that I've been eyeing up, is By Our Hands.  Martin owns the business and runs workshops making things from green wood using traditional tools.  There is no electricity in this workshop, no machines, nothing modern!  

I went along with Zach, who was also interested in learning a bit of woodwork, to make a "something".  Martin runs stool making and spoon carving workshops, but this one was an Introduction to Greenwork and we were to make a spatula, or something simple.  We started off with logs and an axe.  I managed to damage Zach at this stage, I hit him with the axe!  Luckily it was the handle that hit him, and no, I didn't aim for him!  

After chopping off a chunk of wood to work with, we carried on with the axes, stripping the bark.  Zach moved over to the other side of the room...  He actually carried on using the axe to shape his spatula/spoon, but I found my comfort zone with a draw knife.

I worked sitting astride this bench.  The wood was clamped in the top and held in place by pressure from my feet on the pedals.  Much like driving a sewing machine! 

I used the draw knife to skim and slice bits off the wood to get the shape I wanted for my spatula.  I really enjoyed this!

When I had a good shape, I was handed the knife shown above and a leather apron and the close-up work began.  Whittling, I suppose you could call it.  I then attacked it with sandpaper and a bit of oil and...

Ta-dah!  It's a spatula.  Yes, really, it is!  I carved that from a log.  I'm very proud!

Here's the other side.  Not the best shape in the world, but hey, it was my first time and we only had 3 hours!  I didn't take a photo of Zach's spoon - although we weren't supposed to be carving spoons, he was so good with the tools and wood that he was allowed to give it a go.

Detail of the base of the handle.

Martin carved this crochet hook for me - to show me the possibilities.  I guess I need to get myself a knife!  And a tree...

We both LOVED this workshop and will be going back to the make a stool workshop at some point.  I also want to try wood turning.  So far I've made a clock on a scroll saw; made a picture frame from scratch; made a bent hazelwood chair and laid a floor.  These are some of my favourite workshops, maybe I should give up the day job and become a carpenter!!

Continuing the shawl

I've been making the Sunny Day Shawl for aaaaaaaaaaages.  I bought some grey Stylecraft Special DK for the main body, and a ball of turquoise and green for the accents.  I misread the pattern and should have had more colours than that!  Ah well.

I'm on the last but one row, then there's some blocking to do before it's FINALLY finished.  Just in time for autumn though.  I went camping at the end of August (don't ask, and no, I'm not convinced I'd do it again) and wanted a small project to take with me.  I also, as usual, thought I'd get LOADS done.  Of course I didn't.

It's going to be this amazing Persian Tiles blanket.  It will be identical to the one in the link as I bought the kiut.

As the kit comes with lots of balls, I thought I'd better do some winding, so I got my winder out.  It's pretty good, except the metal guide falls down so you have to hold it up, that's a bit annoying.  

These are 100g balls.  I think the winder makes cakes for 50g balls.  The cream one at the back was a whole ball wound!  I learnt my lesson after that and the others are half a ball, or approximately half a ball as you can see they vary!

After I've finished the shawl, I'll get going on this one.  So expect to see the finished blanket approximately 2029.

Paint by Number Quilts blog tour

Good morning and welcome to the Blog Tour!  My good friend and co-founding member of the East Midlands Quilt Group, Kerry Foster, has written a book!  It's actually a bookette, and is well worth a read.

Kerry's technique is certainly unique, I haven't seen it anywhere else, and it's great fun.  The bookette takes you through making 4 animal appliques for which full sized patterns are included, but you can use this technique to make other animal appliques (as I show you further down).  

The bookette takes you through materials needed, there is a very informative section on selecting fabric, this is followed by instructions on the technique.  

The four patterns are:
Raccoon mug rug
Grizzly bear wall hanging
Fabulous Mr Fox wall hanging
Whitetail Stag wall hanging

Each one includes tips on quilting and selecting backgrounds.



I stole this photo of Kerry from her blog.  You can see the Fantastic Mr Fox wall hanging in the background and also one of her other patterns - Hank the English Pointer.  A few years ago Kerry ran a workshop at one of our Quilt Group meetings.  She took me through making an animal applique from one of my own photos.

You may remember this cushion I made of Colin which is still one of my favourite makes.  This is also poignant timing as I lost my lovely Colin last week. He was 10 and a half, I rescued him as a young kit so we'd been together 10 years.  He's left a massive hole in my heart and now I am rabbit-less.  This cushion feels like a good memory of him.  It was really easy to do following Kerry's instructions.

Kerry wasn't able to get all the patterns she's created into the bookette, so she's made 5 of them (including the lovely Hank, above) available in herpattern shop HERE. In the next day or so they will also appear in her Etsy and Craftsy pattern shops, however you will need to own Paint By Number Quilts in order to know how to put the pattern together

Interested?  You can buy the bookette here

Follow the book tour for more views of the book and some chances to win a copy!

Monday Sept 17 – Kerry @ PennyDog
Tuesday Sept 18 – Deirdre @ C&T Publishing
Wednesday Sept 19 – Anita @ Daydreams of Quilts
Thursday Sept 20 – Sarah @ Coopcrafts *
Friday Sept 21 – Krista @ Poppyprint *
Monday Sept 24 – Elizabeth @ OP Quilt
Tuesday Sept 25 – Wendy @ The Crafter’s Apprentice
Wednesday Sept 26 – Angela @ Heart of Charnwood *
Thursday Sept 27 – Leanne @ She Can Quilt *
Friday Sept 28 – Katy @ The Littlest Thistle
* Instagram link

Paint by Numbers Quilts

My lovely friend and fellow guild member (despite the fact she moved to Canada 2 years ago!) Kerry has written a book!  It's out now and we're having a blog tour.  Paint by Numbers quilts are really something innovative, and not only for quilters, but for anyone that likes playing with fabric.  The tour starts on Monday, go and check it out!

Monday Sept 17 - Kerry @ PennyDog

Tuesday Sept 18 - Deirdre @ C&T Publishing

Wednesday Sept 19 – Anita @ Daydreams of Quilts

Thursday Sept 20 – Sarah @ Coopcrafts 

Friday Sept 21 – Krista @ Poppyprint 

Monday Sept 24 – Elizabeth @ OP Quilt

Tuesday Sept 25 – Wendy @ The Crafter’s Apprentice

Wednesday Sept 26 – Angela @ Heart of Charnwood 

Thursday Sept 27 – Leanne @ She Can Quilt 

Friday Sept 28 – Katy @ The Littlest Thistle

Find it here! (not affiliate link)

Studio update

Hello!  I disappeared then... not that I've been very good about blogging consistently over the past year or so.  I went on holiday, I had intended to post before I went, but ran out of time and then didn't want to advertise that I was away.  I mean, I am THAT famous that surely everyone knows where I live and all the local criminals read my blog...

So, I showed you the floor I was laying in my craft room/studio.  You can see that post here. I've nearly finished...

The weekend before I went away, I laid the beading between the skirting and the floor.

I don't think I did too badly with my corner mitres!

I did the window wall last as it involved the 2 pipes and I thought it would be complicated.  It really wasn't!

The slight gaps are bigger in the photos than in real life, but I have already been round and pollyfilled them.

I had to cut a rebate for the plug sockets (3 of them!).  It wasn't really difficult, though I didn't have the right tools and had to use a big hacksaw.  I could have done with a jigsaw for this.

Bit of a mess by the door frame.  I wasn't sure what to do here.  After cutting and gluing it all, I showed my (engineer) friend at work on the Monday and she told me how I SHOULD have done it.  Ah well!  This will be behind the door anyway.

So, next up is sanding the filler and then a quick coat of paint.  I bought white beading to avoid painting but wasn't counting on my clumsiness and it's scrapped in many places.  Then the room arranging can begin!

Comments

Good morning,

I just wanted to make you all aware of something about leaving comments on my blog.  If you are a no-reply blogger, or are on Wordpress, I can't see your email address to reply to you.  Since the European Data Protection law came in, I also can't see who you are by clicking on your name, so I can't reply on your blog (if you have one).  I used to have the email addresses of Wordpress bloggers who commented often (Alex, Jane, Chris...), but I changed email programmes recently (my previous messages used to go into your spam!) and no longer have them.

So, what would you like me to do?  I can reply to your comments on my blog, but that relies on you remembering you left a comment and coming back to see if I've replied yet.  You could also give me your email address in a comment (I'd suggest leaving a comment, then leaving your email address in another comment, then I won't publish that to the blog).  Any other suggestions?

UPDATE: It seems that if you are no-reply, if you tick the box for "email me follow up comments", I can reply on the post and you will get an email notification.  HOWEVER, I don't know that you've done that unless you tell me!

UPDATE: Sarah found a link to tell you if you're a no-reply blogger and how to fix it:  CLICK HERE.  Thanks Sarah!  Feel free to share far and wide people!

Festival of Quilts

It was the Festival of Quilts at Birmingham NEC last weekend.  I didn't go last year so as I had no plans for the weekend, I thought I'd take myself off there.  It's only about an hour and a quarter drive - but it gets expensive.  The ticket is £16, but then they charge an additional £12 for parking!  Add to that all the shopping you end up doing...

I took loads of pictures of quilts, but I can't show you any of them as I didn't take pictures of the name of the maker...  I'm afraid you'll have to go elsewhere if you want to see quilt pictures - I'd try instagram.  

I am, however, going to show you what I bought.  It wasn't much compared to usual show hauls for me!  I couldn't really justify buying much as I have done almost no crafting recently!

This is a half metre of bicycle fabric to make a new strap for Z's bag.  Long overdue!  I had ordered some online, but when it arrived the bicycles were about 4" tall, so too big!

I've been itching to embroider recently, but everything is still packed away (news on that next week).  I thought I could remedy that with a piece of fabric and some nice threads for a simple embroidery.  The fabric is Riley Blake something or other (sorry, I'm rubbish at knowing what fabric is!).  The threads are: (left) a sparkly rayon by Stef Francis, a Finca pearl 12 in variegated pink, a green silk from a stall whose name I have forgotten.  I looked at some DMC embroidery cottons, but thought I knew where my boxes of threads were at home.  I had a look.  I don't.  

This meant I needed a small piece of muslin to back the embroidery.  The olive oil soap is for felting which I've been itching to do for a while.

A couple of pretty fabrics.  The one on the left is very familiar but I forgot to pull it out and look at the selvedge.  The one on the right was a possible contender for embroidering.

Pre-printed Sashiko fabric which I'll do with normal embroidery cotton, probably in a rainbow.  

And this teddy-bunny kit.  I could not resist it.  There was a sample on the stall and I fell in love - so I splashed out.  Ah well, teddy-bear making is on my list of things to try, so I might as well!