Thursday, November 26, 2015

Car boot treasures

I've been meaning to show this car boot find for ages now but never seemed to get around to it, but finally getting the larger pieces washed seemed like a good opportunity to take pictures.

A while ago I discovered a quilted patchwork cushion and a rather ratty looking plastic bag at a stall at our local car boot.



I thought the cushion was quite cute, and the quilting was clearly done by hand, and very skillfully too, so I felt I needed to make the effort to 'rescue' it and asked for the price.

I was half expecting some huge price tag, but instead the stall owner glanced at it briefly and then said, 'well, if you give me £2 for the whole lot you can have it'. She meant the cushion and the plastic bag. 

I bought the lot and only when I arrived at home did I realise what a treasure I had found. The bag was full of quilting fabrics and started projects, including a number of other cushion covers and a large blanket, all of it beautifully stitched together by hand.









There were needles and a magazine from which the hexagons had been cut (from the early 1980s, so that dates start of the project!), and various fabric scraps for the different pieces.




In a way I felt quite sad, because this surely was the work of someone who must have passed away, because otherwise you wouldn't give up a project that advanced - there must be years of work in this - and clearly the people who acquired the project, whether they were family or whether it was part of a house clearance, had no appreciation at all for the skill and love that had gone into this work. 

I'm feeling quite humbled that this is now in my hands, and I am intending to treasure and finish the work that was started all those years ago. 

Sunday, November 22, 2015

uh uh...

I didn't really mean to disappear like that.

This time of year is... crazy around here. Three kids birthdays, Halloween, St. Nikolaus Day, Christmas with all the family coming... There is a lot going on, and it's been really hard to keep up with everything, you know?

By now we have two of the three kids birthdays behind us, and Halloween is obviously also done, so I can refocus a bit on getting the remaining birthday and the Christmas festivities organised. 

I'm not complaining, really - it's all been great fun, and I'm also very much looking forward to the remaining family parties, but it can be difficult to find time for anything else this time of year. Every week I am determined to at least post a weekly update but well... it's been a while, hasn't it?

That said, I have been working on things. I'm currently in the process of getting Christmas presents on their way, so a lot of my knitting and crafting has been quite focussed on that. Perhaps I'll manage to snap a few shots of the Christmas knitting tomorrow, but for now, just so I can report on something, here is a little snippet of recent pottery projects:

Little ceramic houses for incense cones or tea lights (although probably best with electric ones, because they can get quite hot). Some of those will be presents, others might end up in the Folksy Shop. There are more of them, but this is a selection anyway. :)


Large platter. I glazed this twice - once with Iron Oxide, and then with a top glaze that was called 'Honey'. I really like the depth of the colours this has created.


Vase, lime green on the inside, glossy white on the outside:


That's enough for today, I have to get on with designing photo calendars as stocking fillers for the family...

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