Summer is icumen in

loude sing cuckou

I'm linking this up to the Tenuous Shoehorn Link Party organised by Jo at Serendipitous Stitching, the idea being to post some Summer holiday related stitching.
Summer, of course, is the busy season as far as weddings are concerned, so summer holidays are pretty much anything but holidays around here, and stitching time is severely curtailed.
You could stretch a point however and say that I spend my summer holidays in Cornwall every year ...
because that is where I live.
So here is a tenuously shoehorned picture of an older make, an upcycled (summer holiday)  souvenir of Cornwall tea towel bag.

And here is a picture of a bit of Cornwall that is just down the road from us

Pinterest Project Time

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know I'm all about the Pinterest. I'm always finding ideas, projects or recipes on there to try.
With wildly varying degrees of success.
There have been pinfails, too painful to share. Yes, cheese and pear tart, I am talking about you.
But there have also been minor successes, and I've had a couple of those this week.
The first pin that inspired me was of  a pyramid shaped zipped pouch (tutorial at handmadiya) made from upcycled jeans.
Upcycled jeans, honestly, how could I resist? Here is my version.

I tweaked the tutorial slightly so that the zip was attached on the outside, because I had a pretty lace effect zip and I wanted to show it off. The two panels of cream lace either side of the zip are also upcycled. I'll let you guess from what. (Hint: what garment might have two matching curved lace panels?)
My second pin find was this beautiful illustration of Daenerys by Marta Deer. I am in awe of  this lady's work.
I used the original artwork as my inspiration for this drawing in pastel pencils on dark paper.

The dragon scale effect is made the same way as Naomi's scale effect makeup in the last post, by dabbing colour through a pair of stretched fishnet tights. Not something I'd ever thought of keeping in my art box before...

Carnival Time!

Last weekend saw the annual village carnival and I thought I'd share  a few pictures.

Only at Carnival would you see a Roman Centurion waiting for an Electric bus.
Here is our car all dressed up and looking pretty ready for for the parade

We got third place in our class, but don't get too excited, there were only three entries.
And here is Naomi in her "Beached Mermaid" costume.

Let's have a close up look at the scale effect make up and the fishhook prosthetic she made

Gruesome huh?
She didn't win any prizes but I think maybe the idea was a little too "out there" for a small village carnival

Gifted Gorgeousness July

July already! And it's time for another Gifted Gorgeousness as organised by Jo at Serendipitous Stitching.
You all know the drill by now. The post has to involve a gift in some (frequently tenuous) way.
This month I'm showing this top I made. It counts for two reasons.
1) I made it for Eloise
2) The pattern (New Look 6483) was a cover gift with Sew Magazine.
This is the sleeveless version, view D. The pattern itself was easy enough but the fabric (a Chinese style brocade) was very slippery and frayed like mad, so if I make her any more they will probably be in a nice forgiving cotton.
This is Naomi modelling it as Eloise isn't here, so it looks a little loose on her because she's a size smaller.

Also I'm not sure if this counts as a crafty gift, but Naomi did this henna for me

Drought Resistant Gardening

Not really an issue around here at the moment but still...
Inspired by several Pinterest posts, I made a little succulent garden.

I mixed and matched a couple of projects I found on there. I made the green succulent  at the right from individual oval shaped leaves, roughly following this tutorial except that I hand cut the oval shapes, and stitched them together rather than hot gluing them..
Why on earth wouldn't you sew these together? By the time I've found the glue gun in the garage, remembered where the spare glue sticks are, left it to warm up and burned my fingers twice I could have sewn half a dozen of them.

As an aside, I don't understand the need to make everything "no-sew", especially with felt. Once many many many years ago I lovingly followed the instructions on Blue Peter to make a "lovely felt sunflower pincushion for Mother's Day". It involved gluing a stuffed felt centre and petals onto an old sticking plaster reel. It took me ages. And used a veritable lake of glue to get the felt to stick to the metal reel, or indeed itself.  
It did, in fairness, look lovely (or at least it did to my juvenile eye), but the glue had left the felt so stiff and hard that it was impossible to stick any pins in it, I was devastated.
I decided then and there that glue and felt do not mix, and I've never seen any reason to change that view

The bluish one at the back was made by rolling and pleating a long strip of  spiky leaf shapes in a similar manner to this tutorial. Again stitched not glued.

The glaucous looking one with the two little offshoots at the front left I kind of made up my own method for, and actually I think it's the one I like best.
The "pebbles" are just some wool felted balls I had lying around

June's Gifted Gorgeousness

It's time for June's Gifted Gorgeousness post, as organised by Jo from Serendipitous Stitching, where we show our gifted related stitching and crafting.

This month I'm sharing a travel pouch I've made for Naomi. 

The fabrics are from the "vacation" range by Makower. I made this pouch same way as the ones in this post, following the tutorial from SewCanShe, with the following slight alterations. I put it together with the short edge as the bottom rather than the long edge, made it a little over an inch bigger in each direction than in the instructions in order to fit a passport into it, but used the same size zip as given (extended with a strip of fabric). This means that it doesn't unzip right to the very bottom, which I thought would be more secure.

I also changed the configuration of the inside pockets (very hard to hold it open and take a picture of the inside at the same time by the way!)

It is meant to have a matching wrist strap attached by a carbine clip, but I'm waiting for the ribbon clamps to come so I'll have to add that later

Better Late Than Never

Two finishes!
The March and April Monthly Ornament Challenges from Needlecraft Haven (don't ask about the May Challenge, I'm thinking I'll skip it and move right on to June)
The March Challenge was from Sub Rosa here.
As always, I re-worked the little Cardinal birds to make them into robins. I wanted a simple finish for this one and planned just to hem-stitch the linen all around. Yes, well... I cut the fabric too close by mistake and my simple finish turned out to be anything but. It's taken me ages.
The idea is to tie it around a fat church candle at Christmas, but I don't have any of those to hand, so here it is tied around a Cornishware jug instead.

The April Challenge was from Romy's Cross Stitch here.
I don't know about you, but normally I start by choosing my thread colours, then pick the fabric that works best, and finally choose the trimmings when the stitching is finished. This one I went about completely backwards, by knowing which trimmings I wanted to use, namely two funky coloured jingle bells that came attached to a re-usable Christmas bubble bar/wand from Lush.
The result is definitely not what you would describe as being traditional Christmas colours, but I think it's rather fun.