Pretty In Pink

This pretty pink scarf came about from scraps. One of the ladies in my local sewing group was having a de-stash, and I found this lovely piece of pink embroidered cotton voile. It was long and narrow, perfect for making a scarf, so I tucked it away in my stash with a little note as to what was to be done with it. That was way back in the beginning of last year.

Then a while back, I needed a quick project to do one group day, so pulled this pink fabric out, found some matching thread, took it to group day and proceeded to hem it.

The hem is a very fine turned zigzag, to me it is much quicker and easier to do than threading the over locker to do a rolled hem. As I was hemming it, I was thinking of what to decorate the ends with. It did come to mind that I could add some free standing digitized lace flowers, to match the flowers in the embroidery. More work, but hey, I could handle that, and it would be a good challenge.

When I got home, I searched through my stash and found a ball of crocheting cotton, that was the perfect pink. So rather than going to all the time and effort of digitizing some free standing lace, I decided to crochet some flowers instead.

The flowers add another dimension and some weight to the scarf, even if they do get tangled. I crocheted the flowers first, then added a chain length to add them to the ends of the scarf. I had previously added a little edge in crochet all the way around to help give it more strength and weight, and this is what I attached the flowers to.

Pink is not a colour I normally wear, but it may jazz up a navy or white top in spring or even jazz up a hat in summer. Whatever it goes with, it is finished, and I have something off my to-do list.

Another Time Another Place

Now for the pages that I created for this book RR.


This one was for a book titled "Another Time Another Place, " and my inspiration was water & the coastline. I love the coast, & hope to retire there some time in the future. So the coast was my "other place" & retirement my "other time".

I started with a postcard of the Great Barrier Reef, scanned, cropped, manipulated, then printed onto textile transfer paper & ironed onto white cotton fabric. The flowers were made by trapping threads in between two layers of sheer fabric, then machine stitching in the flower shape to trap the threads. The "Sun, Surf & Sand" has been digitized.

I was proud of this page & it was like nothing I had ever done before. It was my first attempt at using the transfer paper & I learnt lots about editing needle points in my digitizing software.

Crochet Flowers

I've been crocheting flowers for my local lace group, for "goodie" bags somewhere in the future. These are only a few of what I have done, all out of donated crochet thread, so all they have cost is my time. It's been a long time since I have done any crochet work & they were enjoyable to do, as they are so simple to make. I could manage two in a sitting, & if my hands cramped up I could change to some stitching & still feel like I had accomplished something.

Crochet Time

I have been asked to teach a young girl how to crochet. So I gave her her first lesson last week, beginning with chain stitch, and practicing handling the hook & pulling the loops through. G progressed quite quickly and was making double crochets, trebles, double trebles & slip stitches by the end of our time together. G wants to make hearts, so my brain started ticking over how to create the shape. I suggested that she look on the net for patterns before our next session. I had a look myself, and there are heaps of patterns out there, all different. So I picked one & tried to sort out the pattern. Of course, it was written by an American, therefore I had to substitute stitches for it to make sense. At the end, the pattern was what I had in mind anyway. The finished heart was supposed to be decorated with a flower, flowers that my Mum used to crochet nearly every day. So these little flowers are not new to me, they are in heaps of old crochet books of my Mum's, all of which I still have. I think I can do much better than this thread though. I'll have to go on a seach in my stash to look for something better.

A Bugs Playground

When I first set up this blog over two years ago, I wanted it purely to show off my stitching to the world. Over time, parts of my garden have shown up on it as well, especially in my last post. So yesterday I made a decision to keep both my garden & my stitching seperate, and started another blog just for my garden. I am not sure how often it will be updated, only time will tell.

Spring Has Sprung - finally

After officially recording the coldest August in 60 years, spring has finally arrived in Sydney. Currently we are on 25 degrees, the warmest day in quite some months. So to herald the sunshine & the warm weather, I thought I would share with you some of my garden.

My Favourite Flowers