not yet Christmas?

It is hard to believe that Christmas is only 3 weeks away, with our weather still being more autumn than winter. I took these pictures on our walk only last week and it would a shame not to share them.


So, just a little break from all things Christmas.....

 

 

 

Isn't nature wonderful!

 

But back to all things Christmas,

the first of my Christmas baking today.

As in the previous year, the children in my granddaughter's school designed their own Christmas cards and the school arranged to have them printed.

This is a card designed by my granddaughter, age 6.

Have a good week!

week's update

Not much stitching done this week, besides the 38 blocks for my Scandinavian Christmas quilt border and they are ready to be joint together.
An autumn project with our granddaughter, she made an Autumn book from pressed leaves and flowers.

Vintage Fair on Saturday, another busy venue.

I came home with a pretty piece of cotton fabric, which will go beautifully with some gold coloured silk, a remnant I found in a furnishing shop some time ago.

You can see a lot more pictures from the vintage fair here.

A parcel arrived from Tiggy Rawling's "Indigo Shop", a lovely selection of hand dyed and block printed fabrics, also threads, shisha mirrors, buttons and shell sequins.

Lots of projects and lots of ideas, all I need now is lots of time!

I leave you with some pictures I took last week at the back of our house.

crazy weather and christmas cards

It rained the night before last, it rained all day yesterday, so  most of the snow has now gone. Crazy English weather! It is a beautiful sunny day today and we were desperate for a good walk in the forest, so we set out this morning for a short drive to the woods. But the temperature must had dropped in the early hours this morning, there was a lot of black ice on the roads. After some careful driving we made it to the forest and while walking, we also collected some stuff for Christmas decorations.

While I am waiting for the postman to deliver some wadding for the Christmas tablecloth, I started another small project. I bought this kit for "Heirloom Hannah" by Elaine Aitken from Button Angel nearly two years ago and rediscovered it recently when tidying my room.

My granddaughter's school let the children design their own Christmas cards and then had them commercially printed and made up into packs of 12 cards. The proceeds of the sale of the cards will go to the PTA, for those little extras.

This is a card by my 5 year old granddaughter, with her name as the designer on the back.

introduction to fabric art

Because the school year started a day later due to a teachers training, our 5 year old granddaughter was spending a day with us instead.
She had a fun playing in the garden with her dolls, playing shops, eating plums straight from the tree (oh, memories of childhood!) and generally bossing her granddad about (who, of course, loves it).

Like all children, she likes drawing and colouring, and in particular she likes cutting out shapes from a various wrapping paper and making a collage.
To make it more interesting, we decided to use some fabric instead. She was very exited, because she loves rummaging in my room, and was very pleased when I let her choose bits of fabrics and ribbons.

Our project is not quite finished yet, she will come back to it next time, but what is more important, she enjoyed it very much and we had a lot of fun.