My New Sampler Book - A 'Sneaky Peek'!

Here's a 'sneaky peek' of some sketches of my designs that are included in my new 'Cross Stitch Samplers' book:

Close ups of four of the designs

It's going to include the charts for 15 cross-stitch sampler designs. You can stitch the whole design, or just pick out individual motifs to make a smaller design.

There are lots of different themes in the book. Below is the sketch for my seaside sampler:

Seaside motifs

Another theme includes 'retro' inspired china coffee cups, teacups and patterns:

Retro china motifs

And a sealife set of motifs.... with dolphins, a whale, lots of tropical fishes, corals and seahorses..

There's many other themes included in the book too. Here's the front cover of the book:

 

You can see it featured on this Turkish website:  http://www.tuvayayincilik.com/kanavice-motif-kitabi--u

Spring Flower Cards - Irises

A quick post - here's a pic of some cross stitch cards that I designed. They were featured in issue 89 of 'Cross Stitch Card Shop' magazine:

Close ups and below them the double paged spread of all six designs

Vintage Textile Finds

Spent an afternoon yesterday wandering around Brighton enjoying the sun and going to lots of lovely interiors shops. Found these lovely French textile patterns.... don't want to say where I got them cos I want to go back and buy them all! (Well maybe not all - but a few more!)

On the back is some lovely scrolly pen and ink writing, dated 1851/ 1852. Some of them say they're designs for taffeta. Don't know if they really are as old as they say, they could have been painted at a later date in the style of 1850's textiles I suppose...

Keeping with the vintage theme, here's some charity shop finds... some vintage textiles I've found...

Top left: William Morris curtains (2 pairs)
Bottom left: one 1960's/ 70's curtain
Right: old dress from M&S (Bit wild for M&S, but that's what the label says!)

Planning to use them for sewing projects... just not sure what yet... although it's a shame to cut up the William Morris curtains.

More 'vintage' stuff below - a friend's shed - I like the phrenology bust and the arrangement of odd plates and glasses... organised chaos..! Sweet cat too :-)

Not really related in any way what so ever - but here's a couple of pics of a lantern that my boyfriend bought yesterday from a shop in the laines in Brighton that sells Turkish rugs, lanterns and jewellry - great colours!

 

Open Houses at Brighton Arts Festival

Well it's that time of year again when Brighton is busy and the festival's in full swing. I like to go to a few Open Houses to see what local artists are up to... and sit in some of their lovely gardens having a coffee and a cake or two! Many of the gardens are amazing - it gives me garden envy sometimes - if only I had the time and energy to make my garden look so good!

 

 I've been trying out my new Instagram filters, as you can see from the photos... if only this was my garden!

Below is the work of Janet Brooke - she does these lovely colourful lino prints. She's exhibiting at the Open Houses in Brighton.

 

Her work is all about Brighton - Brighton pubs, Brighton houses and rooftops, old shop fronts etc...some of it's disappearing as the old shops and pubs close down.. The colours she uses are very appealing - some of them are almost like Japanese woodblock prints.

After a quick soya latte...

 

...I went to have a look around BIP (Brighton Printmaking Open Access Workshops). I'd love to do a course in printmaking sometime - if I had the spare time and the spare cash! One of the people who teaches there is Helen Brown - this is her work below:

 It really reminds me of walking out on the Sussex Downs - the rolling hills and colours of the fields - its very evocative of a breezy summer day :-)

I'd love to learn properly how to do these multi-coloured lino prints and you can do courses at BIP on it. I've done some lino printing before, but just very simple black and white ones - nothing as sophisticated as the work of Janet Brooke and Helen Brown!

Blue Hydrangeas Cross Stitch

I've finally finished sewing the blue Hydrangeas cross-stitch design from Veronique Enginger's book 'L'Herbier du Jardin au Point de Croix'... it's only taken me well over a year to stitch it... well, the shades of blue were very similar, so that's my excuse!

My stitching

Cover of book by Veronique Enginger

Close up of my stitching

 Now I'm wondering what to do with it.. I've got some lovely fabrics in shades of blues so I was thinking I might make it into a cushion with a patchwork style border. Patchwork seems to be quite fashionable lately and well I can't say I'm an expert but I could make a simple square border to frame my stitching..a bit like the patchwork quilts below..

Blue and white quilt

Blue hydrangeas are such lovely flowers - the blue is quite unusual in flowers and you can't go wrong with a blue and white colour scheme :-)

Close up of Hydrangea flowers

Blue and white china

These are my fabrics that I'm thinking of using for the patchwork border:

Shades of blue

I found the fabric below in a charity shop and was thinking I could maybe incorporate this into the patchwork - it's a tablecloth and it's got little printed crosses on it that imitate cross-stitch. It's very sweet - but maybe I'll save it for something else, I'm not sure yet....I might stick to a totally blue and white colour scheme, I'll see how it works out!

Imitation cross-stitch on old tablecloth

One last lovely blue and white image... :-)

Hyacinths and blue and white china