There is beauty in every journey …
… in every story …
… in pain and grief …
… in strength and courage …
… and in the spaces in between.
There is beauty in friendship …
… in connection …
… in hearing and seeing.
Beauty sits at the heart of life …
… in the midst of it all …
… it is with us.
For all the women and for their deeply beautiful stories.
This is the post I prepared to upload last Friday ~ before our wifi started to misbehave ~ we now have a new router … it is sitting in it’s box in the dining room! It has been a busy busy week for both Mr P and me, and the window of opportunity to swap the routers is yet to present itself … so I am hoping the dodgy one allows enough cyber waves to reach my remote laptop so that I can finally get this post to you!
It has been a little while, and here are some of the places I have been since I was last here …
~ at the sewing machine ~
~ walking the land ~
~ at the flower stall ~
I have some fabric baskets in the shop, some have sold already …
I have stitched up a prototype cross body bag which looks fab …
I have an heard from another gallery who wish to have some of my bags and baskets …
I have made an apron by special request … and have been pacing the floor awaiting the delivery of cotton webbing tape to make ties for said apron …
I have been pulling fabric off the shelves and mixing and matching it for new stitchy projects …
Yes, I have been busy … and it is all good … until, following a delightful wedding last Friday I suddenly found myself exhausted … you know, flaked out, wiped out, fit to drop, pooped!
And so I stopped, and realised that it was the first time I had stopped since the beginning of April … I had been ticking off day after April day without stopping. And I noticed that in trying to set up a business from home it is very easy to never take a day off. And so I switched off the computer, put away the sewing machine and took myself for a walk – that walk up above down the beautiful woodland lane … an old favourite of a walk … which ended with a cold cider in a pub garden, because it was probably the first day this year that it has been warm enough for a pub garden. And it was glorious.
Perhaps I will do the same this weekend!
Wishing you a restful and renewing weekend, whatever you may find yourself doing!
A special feel good friday celebration this week ~ as I have finally completed the quilt I started over twelve months ago!! Oh yes! A big ta-dah moment indeed!
I have been following a quilt block tutorial by Jeni at In Color Order ~ she posted instructions for one block each month, throughout the year, so that all twelve blocks could be stitched together to make a completed quilt! And I am quite impressed with myself that I managed to keep up with it and to actually finish the quilt properly!
So here it is ~ in all its completed glory!
I chose to use up the remaining print fabrics as sashing around each of the blocks … I have noticed that people often use white which gives a lovely clean and fresh look … but I was inspired by this quilt on flickr to use colours, and I love the brightness it brings to the finished quilt.
For the reverse I used one of my favourite vintage sheets …
… which has a beautiful soft feel to it.
You can see on the picture above that I kept the quilting to a minimum … using tramlines horizontally and vertically … this is partly because I am still very much a learner … but also … I like to feel some movement in the fabrics of a finished quilt, I find that some very decorative quilting is so dense that you kind of lose the feeling of layers … maybe that’s the point … but I just like it this way!
You can see the quilted tramlines on the front in these pictures …
I am especially pleased with the binding … I adapted a really helpful tutorial from Petit Design Co I found that using a double layer of fabric has given the binding a density and weight which is very pleasing … and machine stitching it meant that I was able to bind it in an afternoon … my previous hand stitched binding on a much smaller quilt took me about two months!!
There is still so much for me to learn in the world of quilting ~ skills to hone ~ techniques to perfect … and I am sure many experienced quilters will see nothing but faults in this one … but it is my third completed quilt, and with each one I finish I see progress. And that is a good thing.
So there it is! And it is all mine! Completed and beautiful.
And a few other little highlights of the week include …
~ a lovely snow-dusted woodland walk with a favourite friend ~
~ two … yes, two dinners and a lunch cooked by friends last weekend ~
~ BBC Radio … so much variety … I am loving it ~
~ watching Wallander on DVD under a blanket in front of the fire while it is snowing outside … perfect cold weather viewing ~
~ eccles cakes … made for winter ~
and
~ Pinterest … you can find me here ~
Wishing you all weekend full of good things and shining lights!
I may be biased. But it is full of beauty.
Tumbledown stone castles on hilltops ~ a patchwork of arable land spreading out across wide valleys ~ trees marking their way in fields and hedgrows …
… a backdrop of greenery everywhere …
… mixed woodland, pathways, dappled shade …
… the details of natures beauty all around …
… and buttercup meadows ~ how can you not love a place that has buttercup meadows ~ something about those sunny yellow flowers that just takes me back to the freedom of childhood …
… and I couldn’t decide which photo I liked the best, so I’ve given you two!
There is a definate feel of summer in the air ~ and I am liking it!
Beauty bought to you courtesy of Wigmore and surrounding area, North Herefordshire.
Some days, a shaft of sunlight falling to the forest floor …
… playing with young fresh leaves …
… highlighting the newness, the beauty, the youth of Spring, is all I need.
Oh, and a friend to share it with, of course!
Beauty bought to you courtesy of the Wyre Forest, Worcestershire, England.
Last Saturday was officially declared (by me) the most beautiful day of this winter so far! I know this because as I drove out of town, early in the morning, into the Herefordshire countryside I couldn’t help but exclaim out loud at the wonder nature had worked over night. The landscape was white and sparkling, a hoarfrost had coated every blade of grass, every gatepost, every twig and branch in delicious spiky white fingers of frost. A low sun was creating glittery beauty and the fields bordering the river bank were blanketed in a fine mist. It was breathtaking.
I was on my way to spend the day in a classroom. I so wanted to stop my car and stare. I wanted to turn back and grab my camera. I wanted to skip the Day School and spend the day walking instead. But I drove on and phoned my husband to tell him to go out walking with his camera instead. You can see some of the results here.
Sunday, was not the most beautiful day of the winter so far. But it was the day that I had time to go for a walk, and this is what I saw.
I have walked a path through this woodland often, previously I have been surrounded by tall pines and conifers, their needles cushioning the floor beneath my feet. Now they are gone, a huge area of the hillside is bare, open and covered with swathes of these plastic tubes.
Each tube is nurturing a new tree. A deciduous tree. Keeping it safe from deer and other nibbling creatures. This is a landscape in transition. From coniferous to deciduous. The new planting will return the landscape to a more natural woodland, and will create new habitats for woodland wildlife.
The afternoon sun shining through these plastic tubes created a new kind of beauty, mellow warmth, silhouettes of leaves, the promise of something new.
In just ten years time this landscape will be transformed and I am so looking forward to watching the change take place.
The light was low, wintery and hazy.
Once we walked out of the woodland onto a hilltop the sun welcomed us. It shone like this for maybe ten or fifteen minutes before disappearing again, leaving us to complete our walk in dusk-light.
So, maybe not the most beautiful day of the winter so far. But certainly a worthy consolation.
Thank you for joining me!
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