Sewing is good for the soul

 I took myself by the scruff of the neck this morning, and made an appt. with the bank to renew my ISA, did some other necessary online paperwork and thus ticked a few admin items from my mental list.

This is what I am working on in the evening.  I bought this kit from the Spring Malvern Quilt Festival.  They give you a photo for guidance, but I am just using simple embroidery stitches and some of my large stash (all neatly wound on cards, and in numerical order) of DMC embroidery floss. Stitches used running stitch, backstitch, chain stitch, lazy daisy and satin stitch.

This lovely Devon Village x-stitch is so nearly finished  perhaps half an hour's sewing on it - tiny little stitches missed as there are only one or two of that colour.  The lovely cottages and church are a compilation of buildings across Dartmoor, various villages.  I found a frame in the charity shop today which should fit it.  

Also in the same Unfinished Dartmoor x-stitch folder - which I deliberately put on the kitchen table to get ACTION - is this Mary Hickmott x-stitch of Widecombe-in-the-moor - the beautiful church is known as the Cathedral of the Moor.  One of my g. (g.?) aunts was the schoolmistress there in Victorian times.   (There we go, just wasted 20 minutes trying to find her . . . back to that later.  The surname Smerdon springs to mind).

It will be a long business - just a couple of stitches in a particular colour, then change to a couple of stitches of another, and so on .  Certainly needs concentration.

Finally, I spent about 2 hours this morning doing the first "rough copy" of a pattern I had traced on greaseproof paper around  a little dress of Rosie's.  I pinned it and cut it out, and then went to sew it, only to find that the stretchy material (a 50p dress from a charity shop) didn't want to play ball and I had to ditch it totally.

This is where I got with tracing the right size (2 yrs) from a purchased pattern.  I watched two You Tube videos (how to cut out a pattern) and this said unless you were making the biggest size or not intending to re-use the pattern, then trace around the lines for the size you wanted.  This I did.  I can see from this photo I need to flatten the copies and repin flatter.  The fabric is some I got from the stash giveaway at my patchwork class last week.

We have a lovely new sewing shop in town.  It opened on Saturday.  I've not been in yet, but have looked through the window . . .

Their ethos is, I believe, recycling fabrics, sewing accoutrements, books etc, make-do-and-mend etc.  They offer dress making classes, but not at a price I can afford.  It's free on You Tube . . .

Right, back to my sewing - it has really cheered me up.