Buttons, Beads and Bobbin

I have been on my travels this week, with a lovely few days on Deb's new boat, including a bit of foraging in the market, the antique hall and the art shop. I couldn't resist the glass beads - I was very pleased to find the round black ones, because they are perfect for eyes, which means I can get on with adding the faces to the Fairy Tale quilt. I also got a bag of small shell buttons, which have a lovely sheen. It's hard not to see faces in two-hole buttons, and because these are natural and imperfect, there are some interesting expressions among them.  Then we treated ourselves to some stones from the market. The black piece is apparently from Whitby, and contains a mass of tiny fossils. The other is, I think, striped calcite palm stone, and I bought it for its beautiful lines and colours. 

An artistic selection of my new purchases. Now I will have to sort them all back into their little bags.

To our great joy, there was a sale of DMC embroidery thread in the art shop, so we treated ourselves to four skeins each. I'm looking forward to using the new variegated thread - but I'm not sure on what! I also got a present from Deb, a vintage loom spool which will eventually be used to make a scroll. All the cotton has to be wound from it first.

Lovely colours, and a lot of cotton to use up

Travelling by train is a good time to get a bit of sewing done, if it isn't too crowded, but I've learnt from experience that some sorts of sewing work better than others. Joining inch-sized paper hexagons was too fiddly, and it's hard to evenly hand quilt when the train is jolting around. So for this journey I prepared a bit of easy stitching in honour of Hallowe'en. These ten little witches are marching along in their hats and cloaks, looking quite determined. They are about 4cm high, including their hats, and are cut from the bits in the tiny scrap bag. They are attached with minute seed stitches in a single strand of thread, and their hair and arms are six strands, couched on, although, in retrospect, I wished I'd used wool for their hair. The background is adorned with cross stitch, to give it a bit of texture. The advantage of seed stitching is that it doesn't really matter where the stitches go, and its nice to feel all the floppy bits of loose fabric merge into a single piece. 

Witches on the move - I wonder where they are going?

Finally, I thought I would show some of the books in my collection that have given me inspiration over the years. This one is Fairy Tale Quilts and Embroidery by Gale Harker, first published in 1992. Inside, there's lots of advice on planning, sources, materials and techniques, and full colour pictures of some beautiful works by a range of artists. My favourite is the quilt shown on the front cover, especially as the princess is peeping out from her own patchwork quilt. The designer of this quilt clearly didn't have my problem with drawing frogs!