I have been making Alfred Wainwright Coast to Coast embroideries for some wonderful people from the USA who completed the full coast to coast recently.

They were only the 2nd group in 8 years with this organisation to complete the whole of the route without taking any days off; so for that alone they have been nicknamed 'Team Awesome'.

I have made the embroideries with hand made silk paper top and bottom to represent the two coasts the Irish Sea and the North Sea and then I put a picture of AW himself in the middle with beads for his braces and a few French Knots to emphasise the rocks on the cairn. And his socks have a fluffy topping of knots too!

As I have made about 7 of these I have had to work on a production line and I used my Janome 300e to embroider the words C 2 C and 2011 on the finished items purely because it was the fastest way to do the job.

These embroideries will soon be crossing the Atlantic apart from one going to London and I hope they will express some of the spirit of the wonderful team of lovely Americans I met recently who were determined to finish. This is my gift to them for being such good company on the three days I managed to walk with them; my DH did the whole 14 days so one of these is for him too ;-).

The photography is not my best, but I am in a hurry tonight so I hope you will forgive me.

I have been very busy today.  This was the state of affairs around 5pm this afternoon and I had only just started adding beads and French knots to the embroideries.  But I did finish my project at about 8.20pm so I am feeling pleased with my efforts.  I can't reveal what it's about just yet as it might just spoil a surprise I am planning. I will post early next week and then you will see what I have been upto.

Make do and mend

I sometimes do repairs, but I draw the line at this... maybe restuff them?

The culprit!

I have obviously found the slr and its quite easy to use, so watch out DH your toys are being exploited by predators.

Volunteering again

http://www.quiltersguild.org.uk/ This is the official site of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles, and I have been a member for a couple of years now, so it was a surprise to be invited to join the local Regional Committee, but I have accepted the challenge and hope to meet all of you soon at the Region 15 North West meetings.

I have lost my simple little camera whilst DH has it so I might have to resort to foraging around in his studio and looking for his new SLR: ha ha.  I wonder what he will say if he knows I have been using it behind his back: but I can't blog without the odd photo can I?

Flowers and Lace



A thank you for the quilt

My friend has sent me a bunch of flowers for making her quilt. I arranged them above with one of my 'Moorish dancing girls'. I used to arrange flowers much more than I do nowadays so I am a little out of practice, but bring em on I say, as I love the challenge.

What I really wanted to share with you though was some information on the lace which was attached to the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding dress.  I was browsing the news this morning and noticed it mentioned the lace, so after some digging around I found this page http://www.jeanleader.co.uk/articles/weddinglace.html so enjoy.