Tilly and the Buttons Frida shirt

 

I bought the Tilly and the Buttons new pattern for the Frida shirt at Stitch Festival in March. Lizzie and I started the pattern in April and finished it at retreat in May. The fabric is by Seasalt and could have been bought ten years ago. It was perfect for the shirt apart from the right and wrong sides looking identical which caused me some head scratching when installing the plackets on the sleeve cuffs. This was a new technique to me but after finding a good Youtube video, I was back on track. Lizzie didn't have that trouble as she did the short sleeved version.

We bought some lovely ceramic buttons in Nantes and Lizzie had those, so I had to wait until retreat to add the buttons. The cream buttons on the front were purchased from Fabworks in Yorkshire. A pleasing make.

Summer blessings

 

I am pleased to hae achieved one small goal for this month. I have finished the Summer Blessings Friday freebie from Primrose Cottage. I was pleased to find some of this yellow dot fabric from Moda to finish the piece. I put some crushed walnut shells at the bottom of the pillow and scraps of wadding to fill the top.

I have also found the Sew Quirky Moon Bunny pattern to complete the UFO challenge this month but the pack of fabrics wasn't with it. Today I plan to photocopy the pattern pieces so they can be cut out and look for the fabric pack.

June 2026 plans

 I am only making small achievable plans for the month as my energy is very low and the hospital even slower!

The UFO that has been chosen for our group challenge this month is a Sew Quirky project. My first task is to locate the project and kit!!

The weather at the moment is perfect for this dress which I plan to start cutting out today. First, I need to decide the size that I need to sew. I have circled size 12 on a copy of the pattern, but I think 14 might be better. It has a lot of positive ease but I don't want the dress to be too big.

I picked up this Primrose Cottage work in progress from my basket last week whilst waiting for this month's UFO to be drawn and it should be achievable in small bites as I can't sit for long periods of time.

Another Primrose Cottage project which just needs to be finished into a pillow and displayed in my tiered tray.

I also have two customer quilts being delivered later today which I can work on steadily once set up.

Stash bee - rainbow stars

 

Kerry is the May bee mama for the Stash bee and posted her instructions earlier today. As the weather has broken and it is much cooler today, I decided to have a go at making two 12" blocks. It seems that I have fewer low volume fabrics than I thought and some are more off white than white. 

The block is called Falling Star by Sarah Watts of Ruby Star Society and was a Moda Blockheads 5 free pattern. I will package the blocks up over the weekend ready for hubby to post them on Monday when he goes int twon.

Summer blessings

Summer blessings by Primrose Cottage was the free stitch for May for being a newsletter subscriber. I find it uncomfortable to sit for more than an hour, so this has taken longer than I had anticipated. Today is a bank holiday and it's hot, so time to finish off the small bees and flowers. I will make this into a small pillow but need to find some suitable fabric.

Stash Bee - plus blocks

My local friend, Jane, recently started a stash bee so as to use up our stashes and scraps. Jane's block was chosen for May, and I initially stitched these at the Modern Quilt Club retreat. I was using an unfamiliar sewing machine, and I was disappointed that my blocks were not coming out at 6.5" square. Once home, I unpicked and resewed the blocks and I'm now much happier with the outcome.

My month is July, so not long to wait and that is also a retreat month so I might collect some blocks at retreat.

Barbara Ana - Spring

Having completed winter, I decided to finish Spring too. This is number 1 of our UFO challenge 2026but the number hasn't yet been called. As you can see I had made good progress already with Spring.

I did make a counting mistake on the bird on the right-hand side but decided that it didn't offend me, and I added an extra blue cross to that side for balance. I have decided to put away this project until number 2 is called which is summer. However, I have updated my floss ring to include only the summer colours.