Summer Garden

Hello

I have been very lax at Blogging, the sewing has been put on the back burner while the weather is good, spending my time gardening, mainly for my customers but sometimes for myself.

Had the urge to do hanging baskets this year for the cottage, I went to a Salvage and Restoration Show at Ripley Castle a few weeks ago and came back with a wire birdcage.  Here it is, I planted it up to use as a posh hanging basket.  I forgot to buy some moss so had to rake some out of the village green in front of my house so I keep getting the odd tuft of grass growing!  The plant up the side is a rather nice clematis which has outgrown its plant support and is heading for the roof, it must have liked the rose feed I gave it!

The birdcage matches my cream table and chair set rather well.

I love this time of year, the white shrub is taking over but I didn't have the heart to chop it back, its so pretty and at dusk the white flowers seem to glow.

Cheers
Sharon

The Gardener's Quilt

Hello

I've been really busy with my gardening business but a couple of weeks got the urge to quilt so had a rummage in my fabric cupboard

Found a pack of blue, green and a sort of mustard colour fat quarters.  Decided on pin wheels again, I just love these blocks, quick and easy to do.  What I am making??

A bench quilt for my lovely customers Don and Margaret to go either in their Arbour Seat or on the bench overlooking the pond so that they can sit and relax while I tend their glorious garden.   They are a bit shy so didn't want their photos taken but as Buzz comes to work with me, he didn't mind posing (he wasn't allowed to lay on the rug!).

Buzz loves visiting this garden as it comes with an endless supplies of biscuits and has a parrot in the house which whistles and asks him if he wants a cup of tea!  Buzz is fascinated by it, at first he ignored it but once is spoke, he is obsessed, if he goes missing, he is in with the parrot ready for a round up session if needed.  Jason, the parrot is quite an elderly chap now, over 45 yrs old.  They are funny together.  When I am gardening outside the window and Jason can see me, he whistles for me and at coffee time, we have a little chat and if he is in a good mood, he lets me stroke his head.

We love our Friday morning visits.

Cheers
Sharon

Apple Blossom

Hello

Today's post is just a quick one, here is my apple tree in its full glory.

Notice Buzz in the corner, he was either telling me that there was a baby starling in the tree or he thinks the flowers are pretty tooooo.

Unfortunately, too cold for the bees to visit today, on Sunday when it was warm the honey bees came for tea so hopefully, they will have pollinated the flowers so I will get apples.  Last year, only 3 apples due to the cold weather when the flowers were out and the bees were tucked up in their hives.

If you want your tree to be covered in blossom, summer prune it in late June.  Look at all this year's new growth, cut off 2/3 of each stem of new growth just above a bud, this is called spur pruning, it encourages the tree to  put all its resources into producing side (spur shoots) which is where next years blossom grows.  If you don't  spur prune, new shoots just keep growing long and leggy and hardly produce any blossom bearing side shoots, then the next year if they do produce any apples (you might get the odd one), they bend the long whippy branches down and they can break off.

Hope it warms up soon, the bees need all the help they can get.

cheers
Sharon

Essex Miniature Sewing Machine

Hello

 I was at an Auction a little while ago and came across this little beauty and thought it would do for a dinky machine to take away in our motorhome when we go on holiday, I had visions of doing small patchwork projects.  It doesn't take up much room and more importantly, it doesn't weigh very much.  My Singer Featherweight is small but needs to travel in its box to protect the lovely paintwork from chips which means that there is no-where in the motorhome to store it so I thought that this little beauty was the answer so put a bid on it and won it.  Yippee I thought, not knowing anything about these machines, thought it was ideal.

Here it is alongside the Featherweight. Its slightly smaller but now I have them both together there isn't much in it.  This Featherweight was made in 1957 but the design is much older than that.  This is Essex is the Mark II version which went into production the same year so they are the same age but miles apart in design.

I had to search the internet to find the instructions on how to thread and use it.  This is when I found the technical hitch in my plan.  It's a chain stitch machine, which means that if you don't finish the end stitch properly, all your stitching can pull out very easily which also means, that you can't cut over the stitching when you square up your blocks like you can with stitching sewn by a conventional lockstitch machine like the Featherweight so it is useless for quilting.  So its it now decorating my sewing room looking pretty.  I really must do more research before bidding!

If you would like information and instructions on this machine, here is the link http://www.sewalot.com/essex_sewing_machine.htm

For those who don't know what a Singer Featherweight looks like, here's mine

Cheers
Sharon

How to catch lily beetle

Hello

Well, cos the weather has been good I have been gardening non stop, including my own garden so today's post is a gardening one, just for  a change.

I love lillies, I mainly grow them in pots at the front of the house so that their scent is around the front door but have a few in the back garden.  Last year the ones in the back garden got lily beetle, for those of you who don't know what they look like, here's a picture.



In all my gardening books, they tell you to pick them off and dispose of them (they mean squish).  What the books don't tell you is that they are devious little gits.  Being red they are so easy to spot, they sit quietly on your lillies for all to see, they are telling the birds with their red colour to leave them alone cos they probably taste horrible.  But, and there is a but, as soon as you touch the plant they drop like stones belly up in the soil, their   bellies are the same colour as the soil so are impossible to see even with my glasses on!  So to catch the little blighters make sure that you put a hand below it before you attempt to get hold of it with the other, this way if it drops before you get it, it falls into the hand below.  There was a programme about them on the telly and the expert said that they also have an alarm call which warns the other beetles so they all drop at the same time.  They over winter in the soil and emerge when the weather get warmer so now is the time to be on the hunt for them.  When their grubs hatch on the plant they are covered in a brown slime so they look like a messy bird poo, make sure that you remove (wear gloves) these as well otherwise you will have no lillies left, between the grubs and the beetles.  On the plus side, they don't move around much so once the hand is below them, they are easy to catch, they are extremely red so easy to spot (unless you are colourblind).  I haven't got a clue how they got in my garden, I have been growing lillies for years without any problem, none of my immediate neighbours have lillies, I presume they fly but haven't seen them doing it.

Years ago, I taught Buzz to sniff out slugs and snails for me so in the summer months when its dark we go out on slug hunts. He is really good, when he sniffs one out, he stares at it until I get it and then hunts for the next one.  He also finds other creatures for me, frogs, toads, hedgehogs and once even a ferret that had its head stuck in the fence.  Buzz never touches them, just lets me know they are there by staring at them and then looking at me until I tell him he's a good boy and make a fuss.  The lily beetles are so tiny, I don't think that this will work for them!

I haven't got a photo of Buzz finding a snail for me but I do have one when he "found" next doors pig, it was at the other side of the fence, Buzz is fascinated by it

Happy hunting

Cheers
Sharon

Revamped Vintage Sewing Basket

Hello

A little while ago, I bought a lovely large sewing basket off Ebay as it was full of vintage goodies including wooden cotton reels and a Singer Needle Threader .  The basket was far too good to discard so I have given it a makeover.

I have lined the inside with pretty vintage fabric which was crying out to be hand quilted so I quilted the base piece, finished off the edges with contrasting vintage cotton bias binding and added wadding to the sides to give a lovely snugly feel to it.  I made a large (it needed to be bold so it didn't get lost in the basket) heart shaped pincushion with a matching needlecase with felt insert for needles and added some lovely vintage mother of pearl buttons mounted on card.  The luggage label attached to the outside says, "You're sew special" and has a handmade thread card embellishment on it.

I have added it to my Folksy shop, it would be a super present for a stitchery friend.

(PS - have you notice the quality of the photos - my super pal did them for me, isn't she good, thanks Julie)

Cheers
Sharon

Addition to my sewing room

Hello

Sorry for the gap in blogging.  The weather has finally improved so I have been busy with my gardening job, not that its warmed up too much, still in my thermals! (not a pretty sight but you have to keep warm).

I was quite poorly the back end of last year and lost loads of weight so am now down to a size 6/8 which is ridiculous at my age.  I have a wardrobe full of clothes that hang off me (one skirt actually falls down when I let go of it) sooo inspired by the BBC Sewing Bee programme last week, a tailors dummy was purchased.  It has a stretchy cover over a polystyrene base, I can pad out where necessary so that it will be the same shape as me. Then I can pin my clothes wrong side out and chop great chunks off them!  Well maybe not quite chunks, I will have to be a bit more refined than that.  I did sewing at school a hundred and six years ago (did I tell you that I exaggerate) so am trying to remember how to sew clothes together again, I am sure it will come back to me once I get the scissors out.  These clothes are no earthly good for me as they are so even if I make a mistake,  it won't be the end of the world.

So here she is - should I name her?

Cheers
Sharon