Bugs,Love and a Biscornu.

Hello,

I hope everyone has had a good time lately. We have been busy going to different places and end of year wind-ups. Not long until Christmas now. Last week I bought a metre and a half of light blue tulle to make a throw-over to cover food during summer. Although they can be used all year round. I made a few of these a few years back for Laura and Chris. While I was at Chris's home earlier on in the year she brought hers out to cover our dinner. I told her it was nice where did she get it from. I had made it she said, the memory came back very slowly!!! On Chris and Laura's I had for the weights some little metal dutch windmills. I found these in a craft shop and now I wished I had bought the whole jar full because I have never seen them again. I decided to machine embroider some ladybirds . I was running very low on Black thread and managed to finish the four lots of ladybirds with about 30cm of thread left on the spool.

For the weights on the corners I went to my button collection and used some lovely bright yellow daisy buttons with pink centres. I sewed these on with beading thread. I had saved these buttons of a shirt that Lucy had when she was about 4 years old. Twelve years later they have been put to very good use.

For this months stitching challenge the theme was "Love". I had downloaded this pattern from Andrea's blog sometime ago. The pattern is on her posting dated September 4Th 2009.I added a little of the detail from the main pattern in the corner blocks. I used some of the fat quarter that Paula had given to me in a bag swap. I can't wait to see what Anita has come up with. I have really enjoyed these challenges and the great part is we are both using up items we have on hand in our sewing rooms.

Last Friday was my last sewing day for the year. Six of us meet at our local neighbourhood centre and get together to sew talk and eat once a month. Most of us took hand sewing on Friday. Ladies were putting together quilts or doing some stitchery. We went out for lunch which is customary on our last day. We give Sue our tutor a present and card. Sue has been returning the favour with some wonderful gifts over the last couple of years. Last year we all received a beautiful machine embroidered bookmark. This year Sue has been into cross stitch. Cross stitch on her embroidery machine that is. Sue hates hand sewing and can think of nothing worse. This year we all received a Biscornu. For those of you who have never heard of this a biscornu is a 8 sided embroidered pin cushion. It is a French word meaning "that which has an irregular form,with projections." Sue did several different designs in different colours.
The pattern is on both sides of the biscornu. A check on the net will find many patterns to make them as well as instructions. I have finished sewing my gift for the Secret Santa Honeypot Swap and will be posting it of today. When it gets to its new home I will show some photo's. I just love doing these swaps especially at Christmas time.

Happy days.

Bev C