Needlekeep

I finished the little needlekeep with the vintage quilt scrap, avocado dyed fabric and lace a little while ago. It is very plain inside, just a couple of felt pages and in the middle a little vintage wool scrap with blanket stitch surround. I think I got it in a button box in France, but I am not sure. Arrgghh, old age is a bummer. The quilt scrap is really thick, so I couldn't really do too much with it. I used the avocado dyed fabric for binding the top and bottom, but used a lovely old net fragment for the sides so that you can still see the thick layers of wadding inside the quilt. It ties shut with a little bit of sari silk ribbon. It was such a pleasure doing it all by hand.

Toodlepip xxx

A little bit of progress

Well, that horrid lurgy which seems to have floored lots and lots of people I know floored me as well, and for the last couple of weeks I did not do much more than coughing coughing, coughing and feeling like death warmed up. The last few days have been much better and although the cough persists, I am feeling human again, yay. So I picked up the avocado dyed stuff again, and searched through some antique and vintage quilt pieces to match it. Found one! It is really thick, but I didn't want to mess with it. Decided to make a little needlekeep with it. Nowhere near finished yet, but I thought a little progress report was in order :-) - 

I am enjoying the slow progress of hand stitching, it is quite relaxing and somehow comforting. I might get this finished in a few days, lol. When I say slow, I really mean SLOW :-).

Almost weekend, have a great one wherever you are! Toodlepip xxx

Baby Steps

As a first tiny little step towards making crafting part of my life again, I decided to do a little bit of avocado dyeing again. I had tried it once before, a long time ago, and the results were, errmm, not all that brilliant. But having made guacamole, I had skins and stones and didn't want to just throw them away ( no composting here, unlike at the cottage in France where we compost everything ). And this time, I was quite pleased with the result. It wasn't an earthshatteringly fabulous deep pink colour like some I have seen, but the cotton laces and the cotton/linen mix fabric turned a rather lovely blush pink. In the photographs, I have put a proper beige trim and the white laces/fabric next to the dyed ones to show that the colour really is blush pink. Yay! 

Until the next time, toodlepip xxx

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope everybody had a fabulous Christmas and was able to celebrate the arrival of the new year in style. I wish you all good health and happiness for 2019 and beyond.

One of my New Year's resolutions - to start blogging again :-) ! I do love Instagram, how convenient and fast it is, but I am not that keen on writing on the phone, arrgghhh, I am pretty useless actually. So I don't usually say very much, lol, just a few sentences. Facebook I don't like at all anymore, I spend very little time on there. Instagram very conveniently posts my photos straight to FB without me having to go there, yay. If you have been following my currently sadly neglected blog in the past, when I was rather more active, you'll remember that I was somewhat of a chatterbox, lol. I do miss that, hence my determination to revive the blog and chatter away. 

I am hoping that blogging will also help me to rekindle my love of crafting. I haven't been able to create for such a very long time, and it really saddens me. My head is full of things I want to make, but when it comes to actually doing it, I stare at all those beautiful supplies I have and thats as far as it goes. I need a little challenge!

On a positive kind of crafty note, my DH and I gave each other vouchers for a macarons making class, woohoo! I am really looking forward to that. I do love handmade French macarons, not the factory churned out ones you get in the supermarket. Hopefully there will be some classes towards the end of January. Watch this space for pics, lol!

I'll spend the next few days, while I am still feeling poorly, catching up on the posts of the wonderful people I admire so much on here. I must have missed so many beautiful creations, and god knows what personal stories I have missed and failed to react to.

So, here is hoping that 2019 will be a year of renewal for me, of friendships, of contacts, of creativity and of energy.

Have a wonderful year! Toodlepip xxx