Our speaker last night was Susie Finlayson, who was very much involved in the making of the Great Tapestry of Scotland. You can read about when I went to see it, and see lots of photos here. Susie told us that it was her Mum who signed up originally to work on the Tapestry (despite not being a stitcher!), then one day she phoned Susie and suggested that she should go along and give a hand ....... of course Susie (despite being a grown up) did what her Mum said! She started by tracing the designs and sorting out the wools needed, then posting off the packs to the stitchers. But she gradually got drawn in and ended up stitching too. Since then, she has developed a new career, teaching stitching workshops, and now, along with some other stitchers, has formed Yarns Ecosse - do click on the link to see the beautiful kits that they have produced. Although they aren't yet selling them online, Susie said that if there is one you would like to email them, and hopefully they will be able help. It was a very enjoyable evening, as Susie is a natural story teller, who had us in fits of laughter
so, now on to the sewing. At the weekend, I quilted eight of the stitcheries, and made start to the ninth
I bought this magazine on Saturday
and was very interested in this little item on numbered pins ........ until I got to the end and saw the price!!
when I told Malcolm about the price, he said what I was thinking, that I could make my own. So I got out this set of pins, which had been free with a magazine, and a little block of post-it arrows, which are only sticky on the point
I simply wrapped the post-its round the pins and wrote the numbers on (hi-tech stuff!!)
and here is one in action
next I looked out this tin, which had previously had lemon-flavoured salt in it
it looked a bit boring, so I added some washi tape
so here are my numbered pins, which probably cost me about 10p to make
having made the pins, I then got on with the rest of the blocks with the birdie fabric. This was my first random layout which I wasn't happy with. I fetched Malcolm from the garage, where he was playing with bits of wood, to have a look. He stated the obvious, that there was too much purple at the top, but didn't have a suggestion for a better layout
so after a lot of rearranging (and perhaps a naughty word or two) I arrived at a layout I liked
and it didn't take long to stitch it all together
so all that is leftover is a little pile of scraps, and three strips from the jelly roll ....... I wonder what I can do with them
to finish - we are in the middle of the campaign for the elections for the Scottish Parliament. Election day is the 5th of May, when we will choose a new set of numpties/idiots/useless chookies/MSPs. I was going to strike through the first descriptions, but they apply to most of our politicians. So when this election pamphlet arrived this morning, I had a chuckle ....... would you trust a politician called Cunning ......... I can just hear his opponents saying "cunning by name, cunning by nature"!