Additions and acquisitions to my craft room this September

It seems that crafting is now part of my everyday life in a way that I couldn’t have imagined when we moved here - and I’m not sad about it. I don’t always get to do some craft every day, but if I don’t I’m pretty sure I’m thinking about new projects or possibly even shopping online, or in real life.

I’m beginning to think it’s true that buying, or acquiring, new supplies is a separate hobby to actually using them, and it’s one I’ve been working on over a number of years. Now though I have the time to start using it all, or some of it at least.

With more crafting time in my days my productivity has definitely increased - you’ll have seen earlier posts on my newly put into practice skills proclaiming my pouch love, and the updates to my quilty plans. I’ve realised though that the accountability these posts give me is good, and so I’m planning to share more about what I add to my craft room every month in this new series of posts.

Some of these I will most likely already shared, like the vintage table runner and £1 fabric sample from our weekend in Malton - not forgetting the cute hand painted little cards.

My plan for the vintage table runner is to have it on standby to use in my hand sewing EPP (English Paper Piecing) blue diamonds project, that’s if I can bear to cut this one up as it is so pretty. For the green chevron fabric sample, that’s looking at a new life as a project bag, though I need to find the perfect fabric to pair with it, but one that doesn’t detract from the striking design.

I’m a convert to Aurifil thread for quilting and generally most of the other projects I’ve been sewing recently, but I’m also a lazy colour changer! This is something I want to be better at, and braver too and as I’m nearly through my ‘go to’ white thread I added some pretty variegated threads to my basket at the Morris Works Quilt Shop to encourage more thread changes!

AURIFIL THREADS: NATURAL WHITE (2021), DESERT DAWN (4648), LIBERTY (3852) & MARRAKESH (3817)

Planning to make more clothes

I also want to make more wearables, and at a recent Sewing Group meeting I saw someone wearing some great 3/4 length culottes strangely not that dissimilar to those in the image below. After thinking I like those, somehow my next thought was I could make some - who even am I?

As fate would have it this pattern dropped into my inbox soon after, and so a plan formulated. I bought the pattern, opting for the A0 printed version (rather than just the PDF self print and stick option) and I’m planning to use the bargain material I picked up from the fabric stall in Newark Market which was closing down. It’s a bold print and so I’m hoping that will disguise any blips I have…

When the pattern arrived I realised I’d also need an invisible zip, and then I remembered that zips are a whole other world - especially when you don’t really know what colour you need to match to your fabric, which isn’t helped when shopping online. So I turned to eBay and picked up more invisible zips than I will probably ever need for £15, reasoning that one of these colours must work. And if I make more of these culottes then I’m a step ahead with the zip already…

It’s true I have made myself a dress, and I have worn it a few times over the summer - and it does bring compliments, more importantly it hasn’t fallen apart. And sewing is just sewing (sort of!), so it should be within my grasp, especially now that I’ve had plenty of zip practice following all those pouches!

Watch this space (but remember to blink).

Still adding to my stash

At the charity sew day for Project Linus UK I picked up these two bundles of fabric from the sale table for less than a fiver. The lighter colours have a touch of Cath Kidston about them, and I liked how they looked alongside the dark fabrics - I’ve a feeling that these may appear in another charity quilt at some point.

Repurposing too

I have finally ‘retired’ my favourite Joules t-shirt, which is well past wearing in public stage - even for gardening, sadly. But I can’t quite bring myself to throw it away completely, or turn it into rags as MOH suggested. Instead I’ve added this to my ‘potential pouch’ pile, and I’ve sorted out some lining and a zip too so there’s some chance this will happen in the not too distant future.

On the wall

Well, it isn’t quite - but that’s the plan. This month I want to get my newly-picked up, carefully unwrapped, admired and then laid on the spare bed for safekeeping Vogue pattern page picture up on my craft room wall. I’m so pleased with how they turned out, that it’ll be good to see them every day. And it’s just as well the pictures were cheap - unbelievably just a pound each, as the framing was a bit more than that - I have expensive tastes clearly!

So that’s a wander through the new things in my craft room, let me know if you enjoyed reading this post - and what you’ve added to your craft supplies this month.

A kantha stitched landscape, and a hare too

Back at the start of August my SIL and I headed off to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC - I’ve so many photos still to edit, and posts will follow but in short so many beautiful quilts! We’d booked on a workshop, and again there were so many to choose from, so in the end I left it up to my SIL to choose which one.

And she chose well, the kantha textured mini landscape workshop by Angela Daymond. I knew little about what we’d create, but I had been to one of Angela’s workshops before at the Stitch Festival in London back in 2023. And if you go back and read that post, I’m still curious as to how the notebook will turn out as I’ve not yet ‘cooked it’ - though, I do now at least have a saucepan which I could use for this, so maybe I’ll get around to that and show the results here - but don’t hold your breath!

I was looking forward to Angela’s workshop though and was hopeful that I’d stand more chance of completing the outputs from this one, given my increased opportunities and interest in hand stitching. And I was right, but first let me show you how I got on.

A kantha stitched landscape

Unusually I didn’t take any pictures while we were in the workshop, not even of Angela’s finished piece which was a bit daft. But then again it gave me free licence to do what I wanted, and interpret the written guidance shared on the day.

This was as far as I got in the workshop.

We’d started by tracing the design using a fabric marker pen and during the workshop Angela guided the group through the different stitching methods including tips for stitching circles, and sewing with the different thickness threads, as well as how to complete the weaved effect of the whipped running stitch on the stems.

I was keen to carry on and get this finished, so the week or so after the show this became my project.

I loved how it turned out, and I’m sure that each one from the workshop will look the same but different. I decided I needed to add some glitter to mine, on the sun and in the first few circles of the sky - and then well, in for a penny, in for a pound, onto some of the red berries too.

Angela had said that to remove the blue pen you just had to go for it, if you tried to spot remove the markings then it would likely show up elsewhere in the design. So there was nothing else for it, but to plunge this into water and under the running tap.

Miraculously it disappeared. Phew!

I left it to dry on a towel, and as it was drying I began to think what I’d do with it. I decided to frame it, and as luck would have it when we were in the framing shop getting the Vogue pictures framed, I spotted some small frames made from offcuts in the sale. By now I also knew that I wanted to do another one, so I picked up two frames - and added my landscape into the pale green frame.

Designing my own version, with a hare

I’d enjoyed the kantha landscape so much I decided I would do another picture to fill the second frame I’d bought. I knew I had some ‘hare’ stamps and thought one of those might work with a similar horizon as before. In the end I flipped the background and half-traced half-drew the hare in the bottom right corner.

Then I got sewing. I used the same yellow and blue threads from the workshop - there was (and still is) plenty left. But I decided on something different for the ‘land’ and for the hare itself. I had some crochet threads from mum and thought the neutral-green-pink reel would work for the land, but also added a thin darker grey thread to this, sewing with two threads, to give it some extra texture and to keep a consistent colour throughout both ‘land’ sections.

For the hare I used another variegated thread, this time ranging from brown through to bright pink. What do you mean, you’ve never seen a bright pink hare?! Me neither, but hey, I think there may be hares out there wishing they were pink!

Once again the fabric marker pen washed out easily, and revealed the end design.

That too has been framed, this one got the gold frame - but both are now in our spare bedrooms on two of the four fabulous bedside tables, and they look great. I’ve plans for something slightly different on the two bedside tables which remain empty, but that idea yet to be started, so it may yet turn up on a ‘future stitching project’ list at some point. But in the meantime I’m going to enjoy these, and I hope our guests will too.

Making my Mystery Block of the Month: August 2025

You’ll have seen that I plan to complete Sherri’s mystery block a month quilt and in my last post I shared the test blocks which I made into my tenth charity quilt, today I’m sharing the centre block I made for my own quilt.

My challenge for this one was choosing which of the navy fabrics to use, and one that I gave more thought to than normal. This block is quite similar to the patchwork star back in April, but the centre square is made from four smaller squares rather than a single piece of fabric.

My dilemma was whether or not to use the three navy fabrics I had, or to add in some of the other colours from the range, or to stick with one. In the end I went with the latter as there’s plenty of colours in this print, which I hoped would give me the patchwork feel I was after.

I purposely cut different parts of the design and tried to make a bit of a plan.

And after a bit of jiggling about, it worked out ok - well more than ok actually.

Then it was on with the borders, after double checking with my hand drawn plan and another sneak peek of the blocks so far laid out (which I shared in my recent Quilty Update if you wanted to take a look), and before I knew it the August block was complete.

After a quick press it too was hung with the other blocks I’ve made so far. I’ve even caught myself up with my ‘relaxed’ timetable sharing August’s block by the end of September.

Now for the next one!

Join me next month to see how I get on with the next mystery block, and check out my previous posts for my mystery block quilt or the charity quilts made from the test blocks.