I had extra pleasure in turning the Calendar over to November this year! For a whole month my project is on view in the beautiful Homespun 2015 Calendar.
I am very fond of the Herb Garden design for a number of reasons. I like to use herbs in my cooking and so have a few lovely pots in my garden – thyme, rosemary, parsley, basil and mint, and it gave me great pleasure to design four little herb stitcheries to display on this wall hanging.
I also love that the pattern showcases a beautiful range of fabric. This project was really a turning point in my designing. It was just so easy to use the great variety of fabrics, because they were planned to complement each other, they all belonged in the one range, and so they worked perfectly together.
It eliminated all the struggle of finding just the right combinations of shade, tone, texture and scale – taking fabric to the window for better light to see whether it matched, only to find there was a harsh clash – searching through drawers of fabric to find that elusive piece and then being disappointed that it didn’t really work after all.
That’s when I became hooked on buying whole ranges. I find them so versatile and economical. I like to buy a 10 inch layer cake which usually provides about 40 different fabrics. They are a good size for cutting appliqués plus some squares or half square triangles. With 40 pieces, that’s plenty of fabric to make a wall quilt. Then I usually purchase some yardage of tone-on-tone fabrics that can be used for borders or binding. You can read more about my buying rationale in this "Adventures with pre-cuts" post.
Before we could turn the calendar over to November, we spent a whole week in wonderful celebrations for my husband’s big “0” birthday with lots of family and friends joining us for the festivities. We had a few surprises for him and it was such a joy to see his happiness in what we had organised.
Needless to say, with party preparations, baking, organising, shopping, and family with us, there hasn’t been any stitching happening but I did manage to upload one of my recent designs to my Craftsy Store. The Fan Dance pattern is now available here.
Another of my silk-ribbon embroidery projects has appeared in Embroidery & Cross Stitch magazine (Vol 23 No 4) – Fuchsia Frolics:
When we lived in a cooler climate, I used to grow the most beautiful Fuchsias. Now I work them in ribbons instead!
I'm just back from the Creative Craft Retreat at which I taught some lovely ladies bag-making. It is always a wonderful time of fun, friendship and food - always tastes great when I don't have to cook it!
Happy stitching,
Val
