Busy day

Yesterday was another busy day.

I still was not doing any cross stitch, so I thought I would do some finishing, and start my Somerset patchwork patches.

My Spanish sampler I made into a small cushion, I want to get four tassells for each corner, I will pop to our local shop to see what they have, if I can't get anything to match I will make some.



Below is all my cross stitch projects finished, I am pleased with all of them, it's great to do some thing different, and not frame every thing, I do not have so much wall space in my office for hanging items. Kev did give me a look when I told him the smaller cushion was for our bed, we now have 7 cushions on the bed, I did promise no more!

I am pleased with the stitching on both of these pieces of work

I sometimes do patchwork with material, and my favorite is Somerset patchwork, the design is made by folding the oblongs into a triangle and then sewing them to a back cloth.

I have instructions for those who may not of heard of the design, to make things easy for me I make a template for the oblongs, I am using a piece of soft wood, which I have marked out into the required size, I cut long strips from my cloth, I simply mark the size on the material with a pen and then cut, I always use a poly cotton, it's hard wearing. the oblong size I use is 5" x 2.5", but you can scale to your project, if you make them very small, they can look bulky.

After I have my strips of material, I place them one on top of the other, how many you have is determined on how sharp your scissors are, cut each oblong to size.

Below is the stages of the folds.

1. With a steam iron, iron flat your oblong
2. Fold a small flap at the top, I do about 10 at a time
3. Fold onto a triangle bring top corner in to middle front, it is best to place both corners together at the same time to make them match.
4. When ironing ensure the top point is neat, this will be on show.
   

A couple of point's to add, I alway do 10 oblongs at once and let them cool before going onto the next stage, the material gets very hot and I find my finger will get sore if I'm not carefull, you will need a large amount of triangles, because you place them on top of each other.
Below I have placed the triangle just for you to see the effect, I have loads more to make before sewing, to sew you use a machine and sew along the bottom ensuring you sew over the folded area to hold it all in place.


I am off for my chemo this morning, it's a nice sunny day, so I hope not to be in the hospital too long. I will do a bit more of my kitten WIP, I did get some done last night, I started stitching the sofa fabric and have done a good amount, one thing I have noticed, the stitching I have already done for the second kitten is wrong, it comes one row lower than it should, so I shall be unpicking it, I'm lucky I had not done too much.