Signs of spring

 I was out in the garden on a few days this week, sprinkling bone meal over all the beds, and I was pleased to see clumps of snowdrops already blooming and many more in bud.  I split the clumps up while they were 'in the green' a few years ago which was really successful, so there are a lot more now. The magnolia tree has fat buds growing, and even the spring-flowering cherry tree is covered in small buds.  A few primroses are fighting the good fight against the slugs as well. It's nice because it reminds us that in only a handful of weeks it will be spring again.

I spent several hours this week finishing off Month 8 of the Australian BOM. It seemed to take a long time to complete this month, I think because there were two blocks instead of one.  Block 9 showed up the day before I finished so I am already onto the next one.

I finally completed weaving in all the ends on my Bucks Point butterfly mat and it is completely done.  Due to my brain glitch with the gimp threads while working it, the back is not as tidy as it should be, but 'done is better than perfect'. I have added it to the lace collection underneath the protective glass top on my dressing table.

In the sewing room, this week I finished off the Christmas wall hanging that I started at Christmas when I cut out the fabric fusible appliques using my Brother Scan N Cut.  This is a pattern called 'Winter Glow' from Today's Quilter magazine.  The machine made it fairly quick to cut out all the appliques, but of course then you've still got to do all the work of applique (raw-edge in this case) and quilting, so the hanging had been sitting around until I finished my Wreath quilt.  In the original they quilted with embroidery floss French knots, but I tried out a snowflake stitch on my machine.  Consulting the manual, I learned how to program my machine to stitch one snowflake then lock off the stitching.  So I stitched snowflakes scattered across the background, after stitching around the motifs. It makes a cute wall hanging for display next year.

Then I started working on a casual linen dress, based on the Hinterland pattern which I found on a website called Sew Liberated. I was previously going to make the Ella Harp work dress but after downloading the free pattern and making a toile before Christmas, I found that even the size large was far too small.  The first toile I made from the Hinterland pattern also revealed some issues, starting with the bust dart placement which was all wrong.  I tried moving the dart properly, based on Youtube videos, which made it worse, so I recut the toile and just winged it to get the dart into a better place for my body.  The shoulders and neckline went through a similar cycle of attempted correction making it worse, then back to the original pattern where I combined the upper size 14 with the lower size 16 to achieve a bodice that fits a lot better.  Then I added the sleeves to the toile, which were too tight, so I went back to Youtube to learn how to do a full bicep adjustment.  Having now sewn the stupid bodice about 8 times, I feel like I should at least have a dress by now.  But I think I'm ready now to actually cut the linen fabric out, which is eco-linen from Fabric Godmother in a colourway called 'lavender' which is actually more of a dusty rose.

I've been playing a bit more with my Brother Scan N Cut. I found a teacup shape in the basic shapes, and practiced flipping it and mirroring it, then welding it to the original shape, to create a hinged teacup card in a couple of sizes.  Fun.  DH has enquired what I am going to do with them. Which is fair, as I don't write many actual letters in this electronic age.  I do wonder sometimes when watching cardmakers on Youtube churning out cards, what they do with them all (if they aren't sellers). I wonder if their families get a bit tired of being bombarded with new card experiments.

Some downsizing wins this week: a patchwork ceramic bowl I never used went off to a new home and the almost-finished big cross stitch sampler I rescued from a charity shop was re-homed with a grateful stitcher.  Twenty balls of yarn and a antique framed print sold on ebay.  I have so much yarn to move on, I used to shop the half-price sales in London at John Lewis and Liberty's when I worked down there, and bought a lot of Rowan cotton in particular.  I have since found that knitting in cotton really hurts my hands and that cotton garments tend to be quite heavy, so that all needs to go.  Baby steps.

Have you had a good week?