New Designs!

Here are the full photos of my new designs that I teased you with a couple of weeks ago:-

They are, from the top, French Brocade, Knot Garden, Mariner's compass and Waterlily Welcome.

How DD2 went to school this morning..................

.........it was "come as a character from the past" day at school, so this is Blackheart Naomi the fearsome pirate! I think this pirate owes a little more to Johnny Depp than to actual history though, if you look closely you can see the eyeliner and black nail varnish!

The worrying thing is that she would totally go out like that on a normal day if I gave her half a chance ;D

Much hilarity at school yesterday, when the reception class were out in the science garden looking at the frogspawn, and one little moppet asked the teacher why that frog was giving the other frog a piggyback!

This morning's other drama was Spike (bless him) depositing an extreme dead bird under the kitchen table. Ugh! Write out one hundred times:

I love my cat

I love my cat

I love my cat..............

And yet another peek................

Another Happy Dance, another finish and another sneaky peek at a forthcoming release.

All the new designs will be available from 20th February

By popular demand...

....or "How to make a Trinket Tray":-


First backstitch a line around the design about 1" out from the stitched square, (the exact distance depends how deep you want it. Mine is about 1/2" deep).
Cut the stitched square out with a scant 1/2" allowance beyond backstitch. Cut a square of print cotton the exact same size. Fingerpress allowances to back on both squares, put them wrongsides together and whipstitch together, stitching through the backstitches on the linen and picking up a couple of fabric threads on the print cotton.
Pinch corners together and stitch through to hold them together. I put pairs of very tiny buttons on mine when I stitch through.

I don't usually bother stiffening the stitched piece, specially if I've I used a very stiff starchy piece of linen, but you can always iron some medium weight interfacing onto the back of the stitched piece first. If you do that you need to use one square piece for the base and four strips for the sides, leaving the small squares in the corners free.


For more details see my many published works ;D ;D ;D

Monthly Challenge - January

Today is "Reveal Day" for the January Monthly Challenge at Jayne's Attic so I can show my finished challenge piece. We all stitched Eliza's Pyn Pillow which is available from With My Needle. I did mine on 32ct raw linen using Gentle Art Sampler Threads in Cidermill Brown, Old Blue Paint, Berry Cobbler and Shutter Green, and finished it as a tiny trinket tray.

You can see all the other wonderful finishes of this design at the chat forum on Jaynes Attic

More sneaky peeks.......

OK Clever Clogs ;D

(Yes Helen and Julie I mean you), here are a couple more peaks at forthcoming releases. Watch this space as they say..............

Busy, busy, busy!

I'm onto my 4th finish for 2008 and I can't show you any of them ;(

The first is for the "Monthly Challenge" at Jaynes Attic so I can't reveal that until later in the month, and the others are all forthcoming Alchemy designs for release in February.

Oh go on then, heres a sneaky peak at a tiny bit of one of them..........