Arches and 100 Stitches

All the sewing in the last few days has begun to reap rewards, at last I've got my TextileChallenge August Arch for Carole finished and here it is. Carole likes garden related themes, this may not be a garden but it does have flowers and is vastly different from my first attempt at the August Arch (see below).

Its a background of machine embellished wool tops with more tops for the tree. The stone wall is painted and heated tyvek and the whole arch was then handstitched. The arch is again an embellished background this time chiffon over a cheap floorcloth and handstitched to resemble stone blocks. I hope she likes it. Now I did say Carole likes garden themes and this second arch was in fact my first attempt for her. I had intended it to be a garden but somehow my muse stepped in and it became a piece of the Pembrokeshire coastline. It's a bit like though not identical to Barafundle Bay on the Stackpole Estate nearby to where we stayed. It must have stuck in my mind but now its out I expect I can get on with other things. Does anyone else have these sort of problems? You know where you start out intending to make one thing and it somehow ends up completely different without any conscious effort from yourself.

I left my sewing stuff behind when we went on holiday, much to my disgust. I had intended to catch up with the 100 Stitches 200 Days Challenge on Stitchinfingers but this had to wait until I got home. Naturally they were even further ahead now and I was even further behind!!

I've only uploaded just a sample of those I've caught up with. If you are interested you can see them all on my Flicr account. All in all I've caught up with 9 days, so 9 down,8 to go then I'm up to date.

I've spent a very interesting morning with a fellow EG member who is organising table 'decorations' for our 30th Anniversary next year. I say 'decorations' as they aren't the normal flowers or candle type. I'm under secrecy not to let on what I'm doing but they look very interesting. Enough of the teasing now.

I have two other challenges to catch up with, gosh I seem to be well behind on almost everything these days. TIF and my CQ Journal Pages had to go on the back burner but now I'm bringing them forward. Not sure what I'm going to do for TIF I'm sure my muse won't desert me for long. And just to complicate matters I've signed up to do the second round of Kate North's ALQS but this time the art quilts rather than the traditional. I must need my head examining.