The wanderer returns

Sorry for the radio silence. Whilst I love sewing I find I need to recharge my batteries every now and then so for the past few weeks I’ve only been doing just a small amount of sewing – hence the lack of postings.

I’ve been using the time to catch up on some reading. I’m slightly dyslexic so it takes me a while to finish a book.  I’ve also been trying to get my head around social media for Gertie’s Bags business.

My Flickr account is up and running and I’ve taken the plunge and become a tweeter. I took an online twitter course so am trying to put what I’ve learn into practice. Next to conquer will be facebook.

While I’ve been away I’ve had a couple more Gertie’s Bags sales; another from eBay and my first one from Etsy. Hopefully once I’ve mastered (or at least got my head around it....) social media it will generate more sales.

One of the things I’ve been sewing during my time away is some potholders for a friend’s house warming present. I worked on the similar idea I did for my friend’s potholders last year, though instead of cats, I used items from a kitchen.  

 

Have a great week.

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.

Crosses before my eyes

For the past few years I’ve made it a little tradition of cross stitching a Christmas card (or two).  Here are this year’s offerings.

 

There is another one nearly completed. I’ve just got to finish the backstitching so that should be ready for the big day.

These are previous year’s cards.

 

Things have been really slow with ‘Gertie’s Bags’. When it was first open for business on Folksy a month ago I did get a few hits and a couple of ‘likes’, but sadly that’s tailored off.  I also tried the eBay market with a small number of make up bags, but again nothing. I’m not giving up as I know it can take a while to get established.

Having read books on starting your own craft business social network seemed to be very big in promoting yourself. That maybe my downfall as other than blogger and, more recently, pinterest, I don’t use any of the others.

I do have a facebook page (I was persuaded into getting one by my friends) but I never use it. I just can’t see why you’d want to tell the world ‘I’m in a restaurant eating a bowl of spaghetti and here’s a picture of it’ or ‘I’m doing the weekly grocery shopping in ASDA’..... 

Got any tips for a social network phobic!!!!

Have a great week.

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.

Potting around

I bet you thought I gone awol again. I was in the middle of two sewing projects and knew at least one of them would be finished in time for Sunday’s blog.

One of our good friends, Jenny, is having a new kitchen installed. So, I thought I’d make her some pot holders to protect her new work tops.

She’s cat crazy (five at the last count – I think! – plus others that she fosters....) so knew she’d appreciate felines’ one way or another.

Instead of buying some fabric with cats on and making four pot holders in no time at all I wanted each of them to be different.

The plan was to appliqué four cat poses on to the pot holders. As I’m not that good of an artist I found Google had some great silhouette images of cats. After making a shortlist of seven pussy cats I eventually whittled it down to four.  The winning felines’ were then rescaled to fit the size I wanted and a template printed out on paper.

Previously when I’ve appliquéd I’ve used felt for the image as it doesn’t fray.  This time I wanted to use fabric. Rather than doing a narrow hem to stop the edges from fraying, I attached a piece of iron-on interfacing to the back of the fabric before I cut the cat out.

There are a couple of stray bits of thread that have escaped the interfacing but I rather like it as it looks cat’s fur.

I wasn’t sure what colour scheme Jenny was going for in her new kitchen so I just chose four colours that would work with the black and cream.

I hope she likes them....

Have a great week.

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.

The wanderer returns

I really didn’t think I’d be away so long. When I last blogged it was summer and now it’s nearly Halloween!!!!!

So what have I been up to?

I managed to fulfil (nearly) all the things I’d mentioned my last post – my recipes and cross stitch patterns are all trimmed, sorted and filed away in their various folders; the ‘spaghetti’ of cross stitch thread is now neat shade cards; as for the model of the Queen Mary II that I’m working on, I only managed to get the white parts of the balconies painted. In my defence my eyes kept crossing.....

Mr Gertie and I had another short break away, this time Stratford upon Avon. We love that part of the country so try and get down there every year. There’s two great places in Stratford to buy fabric so I came away with bulging bags and a worn out credit card.

Once my batteries had been recharged I felt ready to get back to all things fabric. First on the list of things to make were another cushion cover and a back cover for Wizzy (my wheelchair). 

I was fed up with always having a wet back whenever I sat in Wizzy as his back rest is vinyl so between Mr Gertie and me we came up with a tabard type back cover. It also has two pockets at the back, perfect for holding a bottle of water (or two) whenever we go out for a walk.

Apologies to Wizzy for cutting part of him off the photo, only it was starting to rain (the big drops kind) and Mr Gertie was getting wet....

Both the cushion and back covers were made from Laura Ashley sample upholstery fabric (I inherited them from my mam and I’ve no idea where she got them from!!!) and I simply stitched the pieces together.

In the ‘a new beginning’ post I mentioned about my ‘new life’ and some of the things we were planning to do. One of them we did during the summer when Mr Gertie and I renewed our wedding vows. The other was starting up a business designing and making one-off bags and other handmade items.

It’s been quite a journey getting everything sorted (bags to make, setting up various accounts, etc, etc). Poor Mr Gertie must be sick of me talking ‘shop’ but I’m hopeful that at the end of the month ‘Gertie’s Bags’ will be open for business. Scary !!!

Have a great week.

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.

Seasons greetings

Here's wishing you a very happy Christmas and a wonderful new year.

Gertie xx

Deck the halls

Last week I showed you 'Rudolph'. This week I thought I'd show you a couple of other Christmas decorations in the Gertie household.

This is the fireplace in the living room. There used to be a gas fire in the centre. We inherited it when we bought the house but it got condemned several years ago !!!! Normally the large vase, which you can just make out on the right of the picture, sits in the centre, but during the festive season it gets replaces with a cross stitch wall hanger.

I bought the kit from a sewing shop in a beautiful place called Solvang in California. At the time (1991) it was the largest cross stitch project I'd ever done.

  

We go from the largest to the smallest project I've ever made. These are 'the 12 days of Christmas' cross stitched on 27 count fabric - that's 27 holes to the inch. Ouch !!!! I seem to remember setting myself a challenge to make one 'day' per month. I think I did it with one month to spare.

These cute little fella's are Waverly the snowman and Iggy and Mo the snowballs. They're all hand knitted and Waverly's sack contains twelve little knitted bags, each with a knitted present inside.... 

On either side of the mantelpiece are two cross stitch Christmas cards and above that is the 'jingle bells' bunting I made a couple of weeks ago. We had some baubles spare from the Christmas tree so I just put them in a glass vase, which is at the bottom of the main picture.

I decorated the dresser in the kitchen with paper snowflakes (so easy to make and surprisingly very therapeutic too). The 'falling' snowflakes are simply made by attaching them to a length of white sewing cotton.

Have a great week.

Love

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.

Christmas buntings

Here at last are my Christmas buntings. Last weekend was one of those where time just disappeared so we weren’t able to take some photos.  I was determined to get them done this weekend so there would be no lunch on Saturday until they were photographed....

I wanted to put a Christmas motif on the flags but not something that wasn’t too intricate, given that the maximum width of the flag is six inches, and it had to be instantly recognisable. I never make things easy for myself !!!

Having looked at all things Christmassy I decided on a snowman.  Why, I have no idea, but I somehow convinced myself that drawing the snowman using ‘Word’ would be better than using ‘Corel Draw’. The result was Mr Snowman ended up being a little misshapen....

There were lots of beautiful Christmas fabrics to choose from, however I wanted something that was festive, but not too shouty so the applique images would be drowned out. I eventually went for red and green fabric which had tiny stars printed on it.

 

I knew what kind of lettering I wanted for the flags - sort of rounded, bubble, kind of thing - so thought 'Word' or 'Open Office' would have a font suitable. Sadly they didn't so I did a search on the internet and found just what I was looking for.

As each letter was A4 size (they were meant for children's school posters) I printed the letters I needed, scanned each one, then using Coral Draw, I re-sized them to make the templates.

Both the letters and snowmen were cut from felt and attached using a machine blanket stitch. Normally I would have just stitched them by hand but as there were so many to do I thought it would be quicker to do it by machine.

For the top ribbon I simply used some red spotty dressmaking fabric.
 

Have a great week.

Love

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.

How many work in progress do you have?

That was one of the questions set by Natalie in my recent post 11 questions.

I replied: 'I can't count that high !!! Off the top of my head I have: a knitted cable jumper; a knitted cable blanket, a crotchet blanket; two needlepoint cushions; two needlepoint glasses/scissors cases; four quilts; three cross stitch Christmas cards; two large cross stitch patterns – a tiger cub and a tigers eye; a four foot model of the QM2 cruise ship and a large needlepoint of the Battle of Trafalgar (started in 1985 !!!)'.

My list has got a littler smaller as I've just finished one of the Christmas cross stitches.

Whilst I had my camera out I thought you might like to see some of my WIP.

Knitted cable jumper: I'm still getting the hang of the cable patterns so haven't done as much as I would have liked.

Knitted cable blanket: This is going to be a long term project as there's 302 stitches and 33 inches of blanket to knit.... As you may have gathered I like a challenge!!!!

Two needlepoint cushions: This will be the fourth cushion I've done using this pattern.

I made this pattern up myself using a mixture of various needlepoint stitches.

Tigers eye: This is mainly a summer project as I need quite a bit of light to stitch the black fabric.

I'm off to see the Professor on Thursday so it's fingers crossed that he says everything is fine and I can finally get back into my work room.....

Have a great week.

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.

Worth the wait

I'm a huge Wimbledon fan and have been since I was child. I was one of those whose kids who would hit a ball against a wall and pretend I was competing in the Women's final on Centre Court. Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova would try their best but would never take the title.

During Wimbledon fortnight normal life would be put on hold. Everything had to be done before the TV coverage started at 11.30am and meals would always be quick and easy so not to miss too much of the action stuck in the kitchen.

Shortly after I came home from London I decided to make a thank you card for the staff at the King Edward hospital. Whilst I could have simply bought a card I thought it would mean more if I made it myself (somehow I don't think they would get many handmade cards.....).

Under the supervision of Mr Gertie I went into my workroom and gathered together everything I needed to make the cross stitch card.

Normally a card like this wouldn't take very long to do. However because of the tennis it took me the whole two weeks !!!! I'd like to think it was worth the wait (and worth the wait for a British winner. Well done Andy).

Have a great week.

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.

Four long months

Thank you so much for all the lovely comments on last weeks blog (and also over at my other blog the BOGOF blog).

I really enjoyed reading what everyone had been up to over at Handmade Monday and tried to comment on as many as I could.

Knitnrun4sanity - thanks ever so much for the award you gave me. It was such a surprise. I tried several times to leave comments on your blog but for some reason the hospitals wi-fi wouldn't let me.

I can now though because I'm back home !!!!! Originally the Prof had estimated that I'd be in for about two weeks. However I made such good progress that he was happy for me to go home yesterday.

Normally when a patient has a hip replacement they're pretty much immobile for six weeks (for fear of dislocating the new joint). In my case it's going to be at least four months as the Prof wants to make sure that everything is completely healed before I'm allowed to put any weight on my leg.

Thankfully I have more than enough to keep me occupied: plenty of knitting, hand quilting, needlepoint, cross stitching, reading. I will miss my sewing - I'm banned from my workroom - but it'll be nice to do other things instead.

One of which is a tiger cub I'm cross stitching. Here's what it'll look like when it's finished.

This is where I'm up to at the moment

Have a great week.

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.

Trying to keep busy

Just a really short blog this week.

As I mentioned last week I was going into hospital on Thursday for what I hoped will be life changing surgery.

I had the op late that afternoon and so far the Professor is very pleased with his handywork..... You can read more over at 'The BOGOF blog'.

To stop me being bored I brought down to London some cross stitch and needlepoint.

Sorry about the picture quality as the photo was taken from my Kindle.

Have a great week.

Gertie xx

PS Why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what fellow crafters have been up to this week.

Glasses case

Glasses case and lens cloth cover

When I got my reading glasses they came in the horrible case you get given free from the Opticians. 

There was an excuse if ever I needed one to get sewing. I looked through my craft books to see if they had any glasses case I could make or adapt. There were a couple but I wasn’t keen on them – too old fashioned….

Out came my trusty left handed tape measure (yes there is such a thing !!!!) and I did some measuring. Then using graph paper I plotted out the pattern. 

The needlework stitches I’d decided to use were ‘Rhodes stitch’, worked over 10 threads, and ‘cross stitch’ worked over three threads. The wool wasn’t anything fancy, just ordinary double knitting. 

After cutting out a piece of 12 hole tapestry canvas and allowing a generous seam allowance, the edges were then taped with masking tape to stop them from fraying. 

Once the needlework had been finished I stitched the case together. Using some cream fabric I made the lining then hand stitched it to the cover. Finally I stitched a press-stud to the top of the case to stop the glasses from falling out.

I made the lens cloth cover exactly the same way as the glasses case.

Gertie xx