Buttoned up

Time for another Endeavourers reveal. This quarter rather than all of us working to the same theme Janine and Catherine switched things up a bit. Each of us had to send something to inspire this quarter's piece to a partner, whose name was drawn from the proverbial hat.

My fellow Endeavourer, Gwen, who blogs at Textile Ranger, sent me this glorious array of buttons! What a great jumping off point for several flights of fancy :)

Penny Rugs, Suffolk puffs, Medallion quilts were all considered and discarded.

This is what I eventually created. I am calling it a "Memory Keeper" as every single element of it invokes a memory for me of a place, person or time, just in the same way rifling through my mother's and grandmother's collections of buttons recalled the outfits they were from or the uses they were intended for.

The base fabric for my Memory Keeper is pale yellow linen purchased on our last trip to the linen factory in Lithuania before we moved back to the UK. The pocket fabric is from an early Imperial Collection line by Robert Kaufman and it was the first quilting cotton that I ever purchased! As you can see it formed the centrepiece for the cushion, made at an evening class, that was my first ever patchwork project too.

This clay button was the subject of a very early blog post and, I think, the first ever link party that I linked up to!

This modern Dorset button harks back to an earlier age when buttons were handmade and beautiful in their own right. If my memory serves me well (always debatable!) this particular Dorset button was made whilst we were sailing from Tallinn to St Petersburg on the ferry!(I checked and it was and I blogged about it here)

These buttons were purchased in markets in Riga, France, Tynemouth and Yorkshire respectively and instantly evoke happy memories of lovely days out and enjoyable rummaging at craft stalls and Flea Markets.

These yellow and red buttons, however, evoke a person rather than a place as they were in a box of buttons inherited from my mum when she passed away last year. The box was marked "buttons for baby cardigans" as my mum was a great knitter up until the day she went into hospital, and her speed at producing jumpers and cardigans for her great-grandchildren was an amazement to me. So, these particular buttons have a special resonance.

As I am sure most of you do, spare buttons for clothes purchases are added to my button tin and kept even when the original garment has long since been discarded. This button, from a jacket long since given away, is from that pile of buttons that will surely come in useful one day :) One button is rarely needed though, but this one has finally found a use!

Of course it would hardly be right to ignore those lovely buttons that arrived in the post in the middle of the craziest time the world has seen for a long time. These sweet buttons will remind me of the inspiration for my Memory Keeper and my fellow Endeavourer who took the time to put the button sheet together and send it off across the world to me. Thanks Gwen!

Head on over to The Endeavourers blog to see the amazing pieces that the rest of the Endeavourers have produced for this challenge.

Button Brooch

March is a busy month in our household with 3 family birthdays, St Patrick's Day and Mother's Day all coming one after the other. So in an effort to get ahead of the game I have been busy making some button brooches that will cover some if not all of the upcoming occasions. One of the family birthdays is my husband's and he definitely wouldn't thank me for a brooch :) Fortunately his iPod packed up a few weeks ago so he will be easy to shop for this year.

I came across some button brooches in a magazine a while ago but decided to add my own twist to them by adding some charms and beads to the mix. The first button brooch I made was joined together with wire and looked like this.

I was very pleased with how it turned out but decided that the wire was a bit fiddly so looked for an easier way to join the buttons and create a loop for the jump rings. When I came across some narrow ribbon I knew I had found the answer.

To make this I used

In addition to the supplies shown you will need all-purpose glue to attach the brooch back to the back of the large button and Fray Check for the ribbon ends.

Leaving a 2" tail at the end sew the buttons together passing the ribbon through the 2 large jump rings before going back through the buttonhole. Bring both ends of the ribbon back through the buttonholes to the front of the buttons on either side of the jump rings. If your buttons have 4 holes you can choose whether to sew the buttons together in a X through 4 holes or just through 2 holes, depending upon the width of your ribbon.

Tie a small knot in the ribbon and secure with a dab of glue

Attach one of the small jump rings to the loop of your charm and then attach the small jump ring to one of the large jump rings threaded through your ribbon.

Thread your beads onto the headpin and create a loop at the top of the pin by bending the wire over your ring-nose pliers by 90degrees twice. Attach this to the second small jump ring and then to the second large jump ring on your button brooch.

Tie a bow in your ribbon and add another dab of glue to secure. Add a dab of Fray check to each end of the ribbon.

Turn the brooch over and secure the brooch back to the back of the large button with glue.  Leave to dry and that is it!

Once you start you may find like me there will be no stopping you

And you will start digging around in your button box for the perfect button for a St Patrick's Day button brooch

or even a Quilt Bee button brooch!

I knew I would find a use for these scissors one day!

So that is Mother's Day and St Patrick's Day sorted only family birthdays left to go.

Linking up to Sunday Showcase

 

Sneak peeks

Although I have been busy ticking off projects this weekend, I have very little that I can actually show at this time, so instead I will content myself with sharing some sneak peeks!

We visited a local Vintage and Collectors fair at the weekend, where I picked up some (as it turned out essential!) sewing supplies.

I can never resist a button bargain and at 20p for the packet, they were definitely a bargain!

I had a vague idea of using the vintage buckles in a handbag and as it turned out they were used much quicker than I thought they would be.

The smallest of the three I bought was the perfect fit as a slider on an adjustable strap, which was just waiting for supplies to be delivered for finishing. Serendipity indeed :)

Having signed up for The Littlest Thistle's Everything but the Kitchen Sink SAL and not made any attempt to tackle the first block, when she posted the details of the second block recently I thought I had better have a go. Katy gave instructions on how to design a paper-pieced block in Word, which was definitely something I had never even known was possible. The SAL block is for mugs hanging from a mug rack, and I did manage to produce a pattern that vaguely resembles hanging mugs. I haven't gotten around to actually piecing the block yet as I was so taken with the possibilities of producing a pattern in Word that I had to have another go.

The theme for January's month's block in the Star of Africa Bee is shoes and I have had an idea in the back of my head for a while of what I would like to do, but until now not the capacity to actually do it. However, here is a sneak peek of my very first Word generated paper-piecing pattern.

Paper-piecing and zips I must be mad!

Thanks Katy for putting me right on the numbering :)

Finally here is another sneak peek of an exciting upcoming project that I have been working on with the lovely UKMUMINUSA.

I think I have teased you enough for now. Hopefully all will be revealed in the not-too distant future!

Linking up to Let's Get Acquainted Monday Link-Up, which this week is at Weekend Doings.

Buttons, Blocks and Bows

On my recent visit North I managed to have a rummage around in my mum's button box. There were buttons in there that had belonged to her mum. So with a bit of encouragement on my part I "acquired" some of them to add to my own button stash :)

They came in very handy when I had a go at making some Origami Fabric Flower brooches from Knotted Cotton. I was lucky enough to be the recipient of a kit for three flower brooches from the lovely Catherine, but they were so quick to make that I whipped up another one in no time.

If you are looking for a really quick, last-minute make these definitely fit the bill. You can find Knotted Cotton's tutorial here.

This month sees the final blocks of the Sunday Morning Quilts Bee and this month's colour is pink. I discovered that pink is not a colour that features heavily in either my stash or scraps, so all I can say is thank goodness for fabric swaps!

This was the first Bee I ever joined and it seems like ages since I nervously put together my first blocks, although it was only 6 months. Round 2 kicks off next month when we are making blocks for specific quilts from the book. As my book is still somewhere in storage I will need to get a move on and find the box soon.

The first Bee request for Round 2 is for low-value fabrics, which I have discovered I do not possess, so some fabric shopping will be called for in the New Year sales!

In the meantime I am planning to get some last-minute sewing done before my son comes home and reclaims his room :)

Hope you are all having a relaxed run-up to the Big Day, or if not that you are at least enjoying some festive spirit!

Market temptations

As you know by now there is nothing I like more than wandering around a market. If that market happens to be in France on a sunny day, well that is even better!

So you can guess where I headed to on our recent trip to France on Monday Market Day. Whilst the fruit and veg are always bountiful and the seafood stall is guaranteed to leave my wallet a bit lighter, there are other equally tempting stalls to be found there.

Oh to have green fingers!

So lovely!

I am sure you can work out why this is my favourite stall of them all! As well as all the ribbons you can see, this stall has boxes and boxes of button cards for sale. Naturally I succumbed :)

Just perfect for more button necklaces, don't you think?

Tomorrow it is my stop on the Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop, so I hope you will get a chance to stop off and check out my English Paper Piecing project. See you then!

Bits and Pieces

We have been on a road trip, driving from Riga to SW France and back so I have a lot of catching up to do. Although most of our trip was on the main roads we did take a couple of detours to have a break from service station food!

Our route took us through Poland, Germany and France and here are some examples of the places we have been.

Check out the patterns on that German town house, do you think a quilter might live there? If not, they definitely should.

Naturally I took some sewing along with me. My day on the Travelling Pic Stitch Blog Hop is fast approaching so I needed to get in some English Paper Piecing practice. Basting is easy but I discovered that bumpy roads and careful sewing are not a good mix. Still it is nice after a long day on the road to have this little pile to show for it.

They should keep me busy for a few more days.

As a break from the stitching I also took along some buttons to have a go at making a necklace in the August issue of Beads and Beyond. The necklace design was based upon the eye of a peacock feather but I adapted it slightly as I had found some Mondrian-inspired buttons that I wanted to use.

The necklace is really simple to make as the buttons are threaded and then knotted onto the cord. This pink necklace was my first attempt and not bad even if I do say so myself :) I found when wearing it though that the buttons were rather too big as they tended to fall forward rather than lie flat. So I had another go with smaller buttons.

This is a much better size. I think too, because the large buttons are flat rather than with a lip like the black buttons above that makes it lie flatter too.

My daughter-in-law admired these buttons when I bought them, so with her birthday coming up next month I think they may just find themselves heading her way!

Now I am off to catch up on all the happenings in Blog land that I have missed :)

Linking up to TNT Thursday

A jumble of June projects

I am beginning to like putting together a Mosaic at the end of each month, when I think I haven't actually finished much in a month it is a pleasant surprise to find that, actually, I have been busier than I thought!

The makes this month are a motley selection, and probably a good indication of my "butterfly" tendencies of flitting from one project to another :)

Lots of little projects have fitted in with the travelling we have been doing recently, so portable projects like the crochet flowers and Dorset buttons have fitted the bill. I am most pleased with finishing the Campervan doorstop as it has been many months in the making, it is just a pity that the reason for making it, for youngest son's flat at University, has now disappeared with his graduation a couple of weeks ago! Still, a finish is a finish.

We have no travel plans for the next few weeks, so I am hoping to get stuck into some bigger projects and maybe even finish off the NY Beauty QAL blocks that are haunting the cupboard!

If you have missed any posts in the Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop check out the great tutorials here This week's posts in the Blog Hop will be from:

July 3

Di from Willowbeck Designs

Jennifer from Knotted Thread

July 5

Sarah from Sarah Lou

Catherine from Knotted Cotton

 

I have seen sneak peeks of a couple of the projects being lined up and can't wait to see them revealed in all their glory. My post for the Blog Hop is due at the end of the month so I need to get cracking on my post and project for that too, so the NYB blocks might not see the light of day after all :)

Linking up to Fresh Sewing Day

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Russian sights and Dorset buttons

The city of St Petersburg has been on our list of places to visit for many years and with it being so much closer since we have been in Riga, it seemed like an obvious place to go. Holding us back though was the need to send off our passports for anything up to 3 weeks, what if something happened at home and we needed to get back quickly? So when we discovered recently that a Russian ferry line were running visa-free cruises to St Petersburg from Tallinn, we hot-footed it to their offices to book up. The ship leaves Tallinn in the evening and arrives early morning in St Petersburg, leaving in the evening the same day so we would have a whole day to enjoy the delights of St Petersburg before heading on to Helsinki, the next port of call and getting another ferry back to Tallinn. It sounds like a lot of travelling for a day, but the trips to and fro from St Petersburg were both overnight sailings and the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn only takes a couple of hours, so it wasn't as much as it sounds. We found out later that we could have booked a 72-hour stay in St Petersburg, still visa-free, so would have done that had we known.

St Petersburg was all that we imagined it to be and more! We were lucky that the weather was glorious for the day of our visit, so the city was seen at its' best.

This is another view of the Church of the Spilled Blood, look at the colours in those towers, aren't they spectacular? On the day we visited the Church was not open to the public, and as it is just as fabulous inside as out, we have a ready-made reason to return!

These children were dancing outside of the Church and having a great time.

We went on a river cruise, which had a Russian commentary and as we don't speak Russian, we had plenty of time to enjoy the views and bask in the sunshine!

We were lucky enough to catch a military parade in front of the Hermitage too. We didn't have time either to take a tour of the Hermitage, but as the guide told us on our morning tour of the City that it would take 3 years to view all of the exhibits, we didn't feel so bad about not having the time! Another reason to return.

Don't they look smart? They sounded good too.

With overnight crossings both ways I had plenty of time to try out a kit that I had bought on my last trip to London. The kit was for Dorset buttons, which I think I had read about a long time ago but had never come across a kit for before.

They were surprisingly quick and simple to do, once I had got the hang of it. The large red ones are from the kit. The first one I made is the lower of the two, and then I went out and bought some more brass rings and thread to make the smaller ones. To make them you just wrap the ring in blanket stitches, turn the rim of the stitches to the inside then wrap the ring several times and stitch alternate spokes to create the centres. More instructions can be found here I used pearl cotton for the green and purple buttons, but you could use stranded cotton as well. They are an ideal project for travelling as they require very little in the way of equipment.

We are off to Edinburgh next for our youngest son's graduation, so I have been toying with the idea of English paper pieced hexagons for my Star of Africa Bee block, sounds like the perfect project for travelling!


Hope the weather in Edinburgh is as good as it was in St Petersburg :)