Category Archives: Textiles

This category groups posts around my interest in textiles and textile design

Daisy, Daisy….

I promised a daisy post and while they are still shining vibrantly in the lane I’m fitting in this little post.

I love daisies, don’t you? They are the simplest flower, their shape is the one we first learn to draw, the one we doodle while we are on the phone. They are a link to childhood… did you sit on the school playing field in the sun making daisy chains with friends as I did? And they have become very much linked with the Open Studios season, as each year the edge of the lane leading to the studio is lined with a mass of Ox Eye Daisies…

Last year Kit, my Open Studios partner-in-crime, was inspired by the daisies as you can see from this post and turned her sketches into a beautiful little etching. I treated myself to a pack of cards as they are perfect for personalised letters…

And that would have been all, but for the new book which I reviewed last weekend. Caroline Zoob, writing in the The Hand-Stitched Home featured a beautiful curtain, patchworked from vintage lawn and lace.

It would take ages to amass such a wonderful collection but, nothing daunted, I called into our local charity shop just in case someone had been clearing out Miss Haversham’s attic!

Well, they hadn’t..but in a pile of textile odds and end I found a little crumpled treasure which, carefully washed, starched and ironed revealed…daisies! It’s a wonderful piece of hand stitched cut work on fine lawn, a little frayed in places but this, I think, adds to the charm…

Unfortunately my name isn’t Susan…

but for 25 pence – 25 PENCE! – that’s a minor detail…

I have been debating for a week or two what to put in the little window in the new door into my office. I’m not a fan of nets, I didn’t want to lose the light but I just wanted to hide the interior from prying eyes if anyone called while I was out. This small piece is perfect and with the help of some pins I covered with vintage fabric a while ago I have my own little bright white curtain…

And 25p was well spent, I think you’ll agree!

If you’ve been inspired, there’s still a chance for you to win a copy of The Vintage Home. Visit the post and leave a comment, what’s your sewing story?

All Sheep Shape…

Have you heard the sound of birds singing and sheep dancing on Planet Penny this week? It’s all because the sun is shining and I have finished my piece for the Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios Taster Exhibition at the Forum in Norwich….yippee! I’ve just looked back and found I published my Ta-daaa moment for the last piece almost exactly a year ago today, you can read it here. And I said “This has existed in my head for so long it was rather a shock to realise that I hadn’t actually made it yet, so I’ve been working on it all week” And I can say exactly the same this year. It’s amazing how a deadline focuses the mind!

But first, the sunshine. It’s still not very warm, but it was a relief to wake up yesterday morning and realise the wind was not whistling in the chimney which it’s been doing for days.

I’ve had the doors open into the garden for the first time this year (and kept my fleece on) to let some fresh air into the house and Henry and Higgins have appreciated being able to wander in and out as they please. Henry has a spot on a warm paving slab where in a few weeks he will be able to get spaced out on Cat Mint…

…and Higgins parked himself under the bird feeder to make sure no pesky birds could get at the little dish of water I put out for them. He found it was particularly delicious, so much nicer than the inferior water in the dog bowl!

There’s a lot of bare earth in the garden, even the weeds are holding back, but there are patches of Spring to enjoy…

And so to my big project for this week. I really wanted to do something completely different this time, to step away of the bright colours, the crochet, the small things. Also to challenge myself on the needlefelt front and make something much bigger than little birds and mice. So I’ve used a very subdued palette…

Natural Merino fleece with a background of charcoal grey.

So can you guess what I made? Well, of course it’s a sheep!

It’s actually quite hard to photograph and get the angle right…

It’s called ‘How to Knit a Sheep’… (but please don’t ask me for a pattern!)

The knitted part starts off as unspun fleece and gradually reduces in thickness until it becomes undyed 4 ply to knit the lacy part.

This has been a rare moment when the finished piece is almost the same as the picture in my head, hence the singing and dancing! As you can imagine, I haven’t done a lot else this week but there are exciting Planet Penny things in the pipeline which I hope to share with you soon.

It’s Handmade Monday again this week so I’m linking up with Wendy for Handmade Monday over on Handmade Harbour and I’ll be back very soon…x

ReCraft – The Buttonbag Book

It’s been a busy few days… I don’t often manage to delegate my responsibilities and get away from home, but last week I packed my overnight bag and headed off to the big city for a book launch. The fabulous new book from the lovely ladies behind Buttonbag, called ReCraft. The launch was held at the Oxfam D.I.Y. Shop in Camden High Street, which is a giant leap away from the Charity shops I have come across in the past, and almost demands a blog post of it’s own as you will see from the photographs…

Arriving in London feeling a real country bumpkin, (not quite with a straw in my mouth) I was slightly nervous when I first turned up at the shop. However, after a warm and friendly welcome and a glass of a delicious and (highly potent) cocktail I had pinned on my name badge and was circulating happily…

…camera in one hand…

…and a sandwich in the other!

Buttonbag has been around for a while with it’s kits and haberdashery…

but ReCraft came about after it’s founders Sarah Marks and Sara Duchars undertook a project to design a range of craft kits for the charity Oxfam. Having created all manner of lovely things from the armfuls of charity shop finds, cardigans and men’s stripey shirts, tweed skirts and curtains, plastic jewellery and old records the next step was to share the ideas in a book.

Recraft Book Cover

It was very nice to meet Sarah….

…wearing a dress made from three pairs of jeans, and Sara…

…here modelling an amazing creation giving an old tweed coat a new and flattering lease of life.

The evening was like the best children’s party for grown-ups, yummy food and drink, nice new chums and then the opportunity to sit down and make pretty things! I opted for the Fabric Flower Corsage …

…and liked it so much I made another one!

At other tables old silk ties were being turned into purses, and woolly jumpers into penguins…

Penguins seemed to be making a bit of a takeover bid, both in the book…

and in the shop…

And it was great to be able to see the pieces featured on the pages in real life…

(You’ll notice there’s always a dachshund!)

And the fab deckchair from the front cover…

There is also a project to make my dear OH very afraid, he has a ‘thing’ about shirts, he’s always buying them on Ebay, because they are a bargain. He has DOZENS!!!! We have no where to store them all. But they would look great if I did this…

…or even this…

So you can tell…I LOVE this book, it’s inspired me to go back to my sewing roots and be a bit inventive again, and re-enthused me to go back to some unfinished projects. (Like the child’s chair I was going to decoupage when my first grandson was on the way – he’s now 8!) A definite 5 star recommendation and you can buy it here!

So the sewing machine is calling, and I’d better get back to being creative again….See you soon….x

Back in the Dye Bath…

D’you remember the fun I had couple of weeks customising my bargain tunic top from Cotton Traders in this post? Well I bought a couple more and I’ve been back in the dye bath with those packets of Dylon dye again.

I have to admit to initially being a teensy bit disappointed with the results, I rather thought I was going to get a deep lavender colour and a dark blue, and what I got was a pastel lavender and a rather grey blue…

…and as you know I do like my saturated colours! But rather than buying yet more dye and trying again I decided to go with the flow and see what I could do to make them more ‘me’.

Before I emptied my entire button collection out of the big (very!) box where they are stashed I remembered a little collection dating back several years from a little handmade dress shop in Norwich which unfortunately closed down. I knew one day I’d have the project which needed a selection of tiny fabric buttons and I only had to wait about 10 years for that moment to come!

I think I bought 300, well I’ve used 11 of them now, 289 to go!

As well as changing the original buttons, I’ve also stitch an extra one in between each of the functioning buttons and I really like the effect…

(looking at this next photo it’s actually just the colour I was hoping for…ho hum! )

The dark one? Well I have a cunning plan, but haven’t quite executed it yet so watch this space!

It’s all been rather lovely here the past couple of days. It always seems to happen when the children go back to school doesn’t it?

I’m going to try and take Higgins out for a walk in few minutes. It all went very wrong yesterday when we set out a good pace, got about 200 yards from the house and someone fired a gun several fields away. Without flinching. or breaking stride Higgins wheeled round and headed back home at a brisk trot…and that was that! Hopeless gun dog!

Back soon….x

Dolly Peg Dolls for Handmade Monday Revisited

If you’ve been visiting Planet Penny for a while you may remember that last year I had some fun with Dolly Peg Dolls and Dolly Peg Angels, and there is a ‘how-to’ in pictures in the Tutorial section of Planet Penny. Well now it’s all in print, as I made this little lady…

for a tutorial in the October issue of The Dolls’ House Magazine! And it’s out now!

Please excuse the fact that I’m very excited…

I think I’m going to have to make some more. In fact we are having and Angels and Light Festival in our local church in the run up to Christmas, so I anticipate making several little Dolly Peg Doll Angels for that occasion. There also some little ladies for sale over on Etsy!

The robins have been breeding well over the last week, it must be the weather…

…and some more little robin wreaths are available on Etsy now…

I’m gradually getting into the swing of things after all my sorting out. I’m so tidy and organised now it makes all the difference being able to find the bits and pieces I want, long may it last! Anyway, for now I’m going to leave you with a link to Handmade Monday over on Handmade Harbour, and take my poor neglected little dog out for a walk now the sun has come out at last. I’m getting that ‘look’!

See you soon….x

A Pinboard for a New Term…

I don’t think it matters how long ago it is since you left school, the approach of September always feels much more like the beginning of a new year than the actual one in dreary old January! And it’s so much more full of hope and possibility, we could have an ‘Indian Summer’ to make up for the lack of a British one, the evenings are still light, and it just feels like an optimistic new start. So this has been a good time to get my little office up and running efficiently with pinboards, graphs and flow charts (pause to snort with derisive laughter!) and slowly, slowly get on top of the teetering piles of paperwork. It also means I can reclaim the studio space from being a dumping ground/spare room (thank goodness it was only Tim and I trying to shoehorn ourselves into the sofa bed!) It now looks too tidy to use, even Higgins is surprised…

…and here it is, I had to record it because it won’t last!

and in this one you can see the office at the end, it’s not ready for close inspection yet!

You might have noticed the old pinboard in the first photo, so full of stuff which had been there forever.

Very uninspiring, and in need of a makeover to celebrate the new look. It was even more uninspiring once I’d taken off all the tatty bits and pieces…

You can see just how long some things had languished there by the interesting shadow effects!

So this is how the transformation took place, a quick and easy project as it only took a couple of hours. All it took was some grey emulsion paint, I used a sample pot, and some white, I had plenty around as we’d been painting the studio. Fabric and Bondaweb the size of the board, ribbon and glue and a few buttons.

After giving the board a wipe I painted the frame with the grey emulsion…

Once it dried I gave it a coat of white. It doesn’t have to cover completely, just make sure that the brush strokes follow the shape of the frame. Once it was dry I sanded it lightly to reveal some of the grey undercoat and polished it with beeswax.

I then cut a piece of Bondaweb to the size of the cork area of the pinboard and ironed to the back of my chosen fabric, in this case some jolly red and pink spotty Ikea fabric, peeled off the back of the Bondaweb and ironed the fabric directly on to the cork area…