Today has been the most glorious of days – warm and sunny, with a gentle breeze to dry the not one, not two but three loads of washing I have drying on the line after the recent succession of rainy days. But then spring is often like this here in England – two days forward and then a step back again – tomorrow we are promised several degrees cooler and rain too.
These alternating days of rain and sunshine are great for the garden though, and it seems that almost every vase I own is stuffed full of flowers (that’s just two of them above) from my patch whilst the Engineer has successfully raised more geraniums than he can count!
And while the Engineer has been thriftily raising geraniums from cuttings, I have been recycling one of my favourite fabrics yet again, a lovely pink check fabric from Susie Watson which I thought was very expensive around 10 years ago at what now seems to be a very reasonable £25 per metre!
One of the things I love about fabric is that you can reuse it almost as many times as you want – although successive projects do tend to diminish in size as the amount of useable fabric reduces. This fabric has lasted so well though – on the left above you can see it in its original incarnation as a blind for my kitchen window in Devon. Then, when I moved house it became a second (smaller) blind, again for my kitchen window, as well as part of a tablecloth.
Now I have only a much smaller portion left, but it’s still making an appearance from time to time in some of my projects. Last month I used it to line a peg bag project for the May Magazine and this month I used it both for the handles and to decorate what I have named “the prettiest tote!” a new pattern for the Bustle & Sew Magazine ….
And even now I still have some pieces left! I used a lovely vintage floral fabric for the bag exterior from a seller (buttonwoodcrafts) I found on eBay and the pattern will be in the June Bustle & Sew Magazine that’s published on Thursday along with five more projects…
Along with the tote bag, I think my favourite project is the Lily Pond hoop. I particularly enjoyed scattering sparkling seed beads across the work to represent bubbles in the water – taking me back a few years to when Freddie had Grandma Daycare and we’d head off to the local garden centre to see the fish!
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