The big reveal–Tiny Town!

I have been working hard on this applique quilt throughout the winter.  I am super thrilled with it, and am delighted to give you this Ta-Dah! moment!!

It was a ‘block of the month’ kit from Antique Angel.  I saw it at the Ardingly Quilt Show last year, and fell in love with it immediately.  I love the cute houses and the colour scheme is just gorgeous!  It’s really bright and fresh.  It was designed by Bunny Hill Designs.  Wow!  How I would love to be able to design something like this, and then there’s choosing the fabric!

Each month I received a beautifully wrapped kit for 1 block, with instructions and patterns.  I did keep up at first, but lapsed when I unfortunately cut a background wrong!  (Antique Angel came to the rescue with  a few fresh pieces of fabric).  Since January I have spent most evenings (and some days)sewing!

Now it needs quilting.  I think that might be a job for next winter!  I think I will hand quilt as my machine quilting is not very good, and I don’t want to spoil it.

Some of my favourite bits!  See the school background – the red with the flowers?  That’s my backing fabric!  When it’s quilted, each door will have a tiny button handle.

I really enjoyed the little bits of embroidery here and there like the branch behind the rabbit.  It really sharpens the images and makes them ‘pop’!

I just love Sunbonnet Sue and her little dog!  The dog still needs a ribbon colllar.

How about the 3 shops?

Did I tell you how super thrilled I am with it?

Signs of Spring

It was a lovely blue sky sunny morning when we set off for our dog walk this morning.  I decided to take my camera and look for signs of Spring.

These two pigeons look like they are getting friendly – yes Spring is in the air!

Daffodils just beginning to come out in the sunshine.

But, as we approached home (this is a neighbour’s tree), the clouds were rolling in and it has stayed grey for the rest of the day.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Picture Inspiration

Remember I was going to go back over some of my online classes?  Well, here’s some photos based on the prompts from ‘Picture Inspiration’ class over on www.bigpictureclasses.com

All about me!  here I am in my craft dining room!

Finding a little rhythm on our recent downs walk

How things stack up.  Some gorgeous fabrics purchased recently

Infinity and beyond.  Love how the path disappears into the photo!

What’s your motif?  This is a block from the quilt I am sewing at the moment.  I just Love the little houses!  Can’t wait to show you the whole quilt.

What’s on my Worktop Wednesday?

A couple of weeks ago I went to the ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ family history exhibition in London.  I went to help man the Anglo-Italian Family History Society stall.  It’s something I have done for a number of years and always have an interesting day hearing different family history stories.  I always return inspired to do more of my own family history, but don’t always act on it!  Well, now I have scaled down my duties for AIFHS, I decided this is the year for action!  I bought a lovely box file with carry handle at the fair that will do very nicely for my old photographs. 

So my desk is strewn with old family photographs!  I want to sort them all, carry on identifying who’s who, and remove the photos of people I don’t know.

This rather handsome man is a bit of a mystery!  This photo was taken in WW1, and I did think that he was a friend of my Grandad’s.  But I can’t find anything about him!  On the back of the photo it says:

Pte L H White

22480 B Coy

2nd Leicester Regt (attached)

7th Division

Headquarters

E.E.F.

Late of Mesopotamia

This is the same regiment and place as my Grandad.  I was thinking that this photo is LH White, but I can’t find any record of LH White!  Today when I looked at it again, I wondered if the name on the back was who the photo was to be sent to, not the name of the person in the photo.  Any ideas?

 

Also, I started scrapping the next holiday!  This is Summer 1996, where we took a caravan at Minehead in North Devon for 2 weeks.  What a great time we had, despite the mixed weather!

First is the title page for this holiday.  Thanks to Glitter Girl, who’s LO I have unashamedly reproduced here, and her hot tips for scrapping vintage photos.  I love the little pocket in the top!  The pink and orange striped card is folded to create a pocket for the journalling.  I have a detailed diary for this holiday, so I might ‘hide’ some of it in the here.  There’s just one thing I am unsure of - the title in pale pink.  Do you think it should be darker?  Maybe hot pink like the ribbon across the middle?  What do you think?

I love this bright paper which is from American Crafts Margarita range which I bought in a sale, but it is on a white background, and Glitter Girl suggests a cream background to go with the more yellow tones of older photos.  I’ll save it for a more sunshiney holiday!

I am intending to scrap a few 12 x 12 LOs for my album and use different page protectors for the rest.  Here’s another 12 x12, this time following Shimelle’s starting point for this week.

The West Somerset Railway went right by our caravan site.  As you can imagine, Nicholas at 7 was very excited about this, although a little scared by the noise!  So one of the first things we did was catch the train into Minehead

Not sure what this paper is, I bought this in a sale we held at our crop back in January. It doesn’t have any name on the strip, so I’m suspecting it’s from one of those big pads of paper you can buy at the Range.

I am linking up with:

Starting points with Shimelle

What’s on your Worktop Wednesday? with Julia at the Stamping Ground

The Tale of the Lost Blanket

I had a go at scrapbooking some old holiday photos yesterday.  It was May 1996, the school was on half-term holiday so we decided to take Nicholas (7) and Lucy (4) to the Isle of Wight for the week on the train.  We stayed in a little old fashioned B&B with evening meal in Sandown, just a few streets away from the lovely sandy beach.  Despite a mixed bag of weather, we had a lovely time!

It’s a big project of mine to scrap all our holidays.  A few years ago I took all the photos out of the old ‘sticky’ albums and used these albums from Arrowfile, who also sell lots of different inserts or page protectors to go in them.  So it’s another take on Project Life!

The big story of the holiday that I want to tell you today is

‘The tale of the lost blanket’! 

Lucy had a little yellow blanket that went everywhere with her and she would clutch it in her fists while sucking her thumb, a proper comfort blanket.  You know the sort, it got dirty, torn, and gradually got smaller and smaller until there was just bit of the satin border left!    We weren’t quite at that stage at this point, the blanket was still whole and intact.  But, when we got home, we realised that she had left it in the bed at the B&B!  EEEK!! What to do?  We had to buy a new blanket quick, so she could have it for bedtime, and after a bit of telephoning round, luckily the big department store in our town had the exact same blanket in stock, PHEW!

The proprietor of the B&B, Mrs Jessop found the blanket and returned it to us in the post a few days later. So then we had a spare one just in case it happened again!   So a happy ending to my story

I am linking up with Sian for Storytelling Sunday. 

Photo walking round local towns

This is one of our ‘goals’ this year.  I have just finished an album that records ‘52 walks’ taken during 2010 (actually I only did 48, but I’m OK with that!), and I wanted another photography challenge.  I didn’t want to do a photo a day, or even a weekly challenge, so I created my very own challenge, with no pressure!  I am not specifying how many town photo walks we will do, or how often, just as and when the fancy (and the weather) takes us!

Last Sunday morning was glorious blue sky and sunshine, so we took ourselves, and Merlin off to walk around Shoreham by Sea, a small town about 7 miles east of here, at the mouth of the River Adur.

We started off walking along a path by the river right by the houseboats.  Lots of artists live here: safe to say, it’s an alternative lifestyle.  There have been some very ingenious restorations, and some have photos and information on the original boat mounted by the path.

Here’s the view across the river towards the town itself

We walked across the footbridge and sat on the quayside drinking our coffee – lovely!

This photo was taken from the bridge looking east.

and here’s the view to the west:

and here’s the rather ugly bridge!  The bridge connects Shoreham Beach to the town.  The way round by road is much further.  Shoreham Beach has always had a rather ‘arty’ feel.  There are some lovely houses fronting the sea shore.

The town is dominated by the magnificent St Mary de Haura church, which dates back to the 12th century.  There are narrow streets full of lovely old cottages all around here.

Here’s the newest building, the Ropetackle centre.  It replaced some very ramshackle buildings and looks splendid at the end of the High Street.  This is used as a music and entertainment venue.  I am slightly embarrassed to say we haven’t been there yet.  Behind are the usual modern waterfront apartments that are springing up near all waterways!

Lastly a view across to the railway bridge and Lancing College in the background.  The main A27 road is between the railway bridge and the college.  There is a water sports centre just here so there are often canoeists at low tide.

South Downs Way

Gosh!  It’s 10 days since I last posted.  I guess not a lot has been happening – I don’t seem to be inspired to take any photos lately.  I have so many now of my everyday life, that I can’t think of new things to photograph.  Hmm, time to revisit the ‘Picture Inspiration’ class on BPC!  I am working hard on a big quilt, and my Venice scrapbook album, so not a lot of craftiness to show you at the moment.

But…yesterday, the sun was shining so we decided to take one of our occasional forrays onto the South Downs Way.  It’s a path that takes you over 100 miles from Beachy Head in the East to Winchester in the West, and it follows the ridge of the South Downs.  Every so often we drive to the next car park and walk for a couple of hours or so.  Yesterday we parked at Cocking, and walked eastwards back towards where we last stopped.  We walked about 3 miles to the village of Graffham, then back again. 

This part of the path is through woodland so not many sweeping views to show you.  But we came across these cute brown sheep.  Love that some of them have white faces!

That path you can see on the hill in the background is the next bit of our walk.  Westwards to Petersfield, we’ll soon be in Hampshire!