August UFO

My UFO to work on was It's a small world by Jen Kingwell published by Quiltmania. I did leave it very late in the month to restart it, but I went to the Festival of Quilts for a few days at the beginning of the month, and if I am honest, I have been avoiding this project. 

Bank holiday crafting finish

I surprised myself yesterday by finshing my new project - the haunted birdhouse by The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery. 

I also added a frame of a purple ghostly fabric from my scrap bags and inserted it into a 5" frame. I now realise I have a number of other stitcheries that need framing so will add them to my 2019 UFO list.

And I added wadding behind the Stitchery before adding the borders and added four layers of a stiff pellon behind the Stitchery. Then I glued down the purple fabric and ironed a circle of felt onto the Pellon.

I now realise it's a little off square, but what haunted house isn't a little wonky and run down? Now yo continue with my August UFO.

Bank holiday crafting

Tomorrow is the last bank holiday in the UK, until Christmas Day. Whilst I have made good progress  on my August UFO, I decided that it would be a fun idea to start a small project yesterday. It is a small cross stitch pattern called Haunted Birdhouse by The Frosted Pumpkin.

Instagram is to blame as this new Halloween pattern popped up on my feed. Before heading to the supermarket, I quickly bought and downloaded the pattern. I printed the colour key and added the pattern to my Kindle downloads. I then pulled out a small thread box, added a pair of snips, needle and sourced the necessary threads form my stash. I had to substitute for several colours by referring to the project photo.

I have a plan to finish this over the long weekend by stitching out the black frame first, then today, I will do all of the white areas, then finish everything else tomorrow. I do one section of white and then a section of colour.

You can see that the black of the border is complete and I have made good progress on the tree house. Today I will finish the border and white sections.

Holiday prep

I am headed to the Festival of Quilts on Thursday but this year, I am staying in the city centre, as this was a last minute booking and the NEC hotels were silly prices. I regret having paid for a hold suitcase but it's booked and paid for so I will shop until I drop.

I always take a project with me to work on, even if it's just on the plane or at the airport. I bought some wool got my birthday last week from Dragon Hill Studios. I am using the metropolitan stripe colourway and divided it into two balls. I hoped that the cake started at the beginning of the grey stripe so wound off about 40 grams until I got to the end of a pink stripe. I then cut the yarn and wound it back into a ball so the yarn started with grey.

It's true that a striped yarn almost knits itself as you just want to get to the end of another stripe. I have knit a third stripe today and need to putting it away or it will be finished before Thursday.

I am just under an inch away from the heel turn. I think I will do the heel turn at my quilt group on Wednesday morning and then put it in my hand luggage.