Patches of Destruxion

Hello everyone! Here's something different from me today, a book review. I was given Threads of Life, by Clare Hunter (Sceptre, 2019) as a Christmas present from my mother and I have just finished reading and feel like writing about it. Before I get into the detail, I would like to start by saying it is brilliant to see a book like this. So much of textile history takes an art historical or industrial history view if the subject, and it is marvellous to see an unashamedly sociological and humanising take. This is an ambitious book, looking at the social, emotional and community aspects of textiles throughout history, with a particular focus on embroidery. But why, oh why, does this book not have any pictures?  Who on earth thought it was a respectful treatment of a discussion of visual material to not have even a single plate? I had to read it with my phone out, ready to do Google image searches of the textiles described, where possible. Aside from this obvious defic...

Hello everyone! I have finished enough of these to sneak in one more monthly roundup before the end of the year. These are my fussy cutting sewalong blocks from October and the theme is Out Of This World. We were encouraged to use space fabrics, Halloween fabrics or explore fictional worlds. I did 5 starflowers for the four weeks. The first week was identifiable motifs in the inner diamonds. I did two blocks for this week.  The first one uses some kawaii Harry Potter fabric that I got from Aldi for the motif. There weren't enough different characters in the yellow material, so I supplemented with Buckbeak and Norbert on a purple fabric.  The outer diamonds are some of my favourite Libs Elliot fabric, because I consider her designs to be out of this world! The second one is a 6-point tribute of my 5-point star creations from my ongoimg Halloween La Passacaglia quilt (See here and here for more about that quilt) . Because I love the way the ghosts spin...

Hello everyone! This is the sorry tale of a poor, badly-treated jumper. Don't worry, it has a happy ending. My mother-in-law bought a gift for her husband, a lovely thick, warm Scandinavian jumper. Sized XXL, it fit him beautifully and was lovely and snuggly and warm. Unfortunately, not long after being purchased, it went on a rather unwise trip through the tumble dryer, and came out somewhat smaller. It was no longer able to fit my father-in-law, but it was still a perfectly wearable jumper. So he gave it to my husband, who is slimmer than his father and it fit him nicely at the new size. We got strict instructions not to put it the tumble dryer. My husband did not put it in the tumble dryer. He did, however put it in the washing machine at 40 degrees. Which theoretically should have been fine, but the jumper did not like that either, and shrunk even further. So it now looked like this: With the baggy lining (which did not shrink) and the changed dimensions, it...

Hello everyone! Sorry that I seem to have been neglecting this blog a bit lately. I have still been stitching away. Since it is nearly Christmas, I thought I would share with you some of the little bits of Christmas stitching I have done over the last few years. Snowman Cross Stitch This was my first ever attempt to design a cross stitch motif all by myself. I used to think when I was in my teens that because I couldn't draw photorealistically that meant I wasn't good at art. Despite the fact I had produced dozens of fabric and embroidered artworks. Because of this belief I thought I couldn't design cross stitch motifs myself. I finally, in 2013, realised I had been telling myself some BS and I could learn to draw better with practise. So I sketched this little guy. And stitched him virtually straight away. He then sat in a drawer for ages, until just before Christmas 2016, when I rediscovered him and decided to finish him into an ornament for the Christmas tree...

Hello everybody! I am trying to catch up on this sewalong, and I am running a bit out of order. So here's September! The theme was food and drink. I did 4 star flowers on this theme. Three out of the four were actually done in September. And this month you have the added bonus of a soundtrack, because each block made me think of a song. Please enjoy! Week 1 was identifiable motifs in the inner diamonds. Strawberries! Strawberries are probably my favourite fruit. I was very much going for a 'strawberry fields' effect with the choice of green fabric in the outer diamonds. I think it works well. Track of the block: Strawberry Fields Forever  by the Beatles. Week 2 was mystery sections in the inner diamonds. I knew what fabric I would use for the sections as soon as the theme was announced. The fabric used is this one, which was a gift from one of my sisters many years ago. It is such a fun fabric it turns up in lots of things I make, even though I...

Hello everyone! Well it's two weeks late, but I finally got my September Tula Palooza block finished. For this month we were using the Dos Cuadrados pattern by Jordan Fabrics. I couldn't work out how to translate the strip piecing from the pattern to a single block, so I cut it out as lots of little pieces. Here is my fabric pull. The meteor fabric was my part of my winnings from a Tulapalooza giveaway (mentioned here ). I don't think this sampler quilt would have felt right if I hadn't found a place to feature it. My original pull had just the black, white and pinm, but after staring at it for a few days (as mentioned on Insta here ) I decided that, oddly for Tula Pink fabric, the feature fabrics looked too washed out. So I added in the green to lessen the tone contrast between the pink and the other two. Unfortunately, I clearly wasn't thinking straight when I cut it out because I didn't cut enough strips of the pink. Which I discovered p...