Charity Shop Shopping

I found the perfect book yesterday in the charity shop to read to Tomas on Christmas Day as part of his book advent.

He loves the story of the Christmas Day Truce of 1914, how the soldiers from both sides played football and shared rations. It's beautifully written and illustrated and will become one of our treasured books.

Not bad for £1!

Hexie Love

Thank you for all your lovely comments on my recent swap makes, I sometimes forget to take photos in my rush to send them off so it was great to be able to share them with you. It's also nice to know that the simple things in life, like den building under the table, will always be the best way to spend a rainy day!

Today I decided that a bit of charity shop shopping was in order to see if I could find any bits and pieces for my up coming swaps. I always like to look at the curtains and fabrics as you never know what you might find, some days you are lucky and others there isn't much to see.

Today was one of those lucky days as I found this fabulous hexie quilt. 

I love hexie's and I would love to make a quilt one day, but in the mean time I can admire and enjoy the love, time and patience that went into to making this one. 

Wouldn't you love to know it's history? 

The thought that someone somewhere sat and took all those different fabrics from curtains, bed linens and clothes paper pieced them into hexagons and then hand stitched them all together with teeny tiny stitches is incredible.

I"m not sure of it's age but it has two diamond jubilee badges sewn onto the centre hexie of a lilac pretty flower.

The fabrics are varied in colour and type 

and have that wonderful aged appearance that you  wouldn't get with new fabrics. 

Although it needs a little repair here and there I think it's amazing!

I love the randomness of it, 

which is unusual for me because I love a bit of order and symmetry to most things!

It's a lightweight quilt and has been backed onto what looks like an old bed sheet with a little wadding inside

It will need a wash first and I would have like to have taken some photos outside but it's just too, too wet and soggy outside so this masterpiece will be packed away until the weather improves and then it will be mended and used, which is the only thing that you should do with something so beautiful, I just wish I could say it was all my own work. Maybe one day I will.  

So how much did I pay for this stunning piece of hand crafted work....

the princely sum of £7.99

A bargain right????

The perfect day...

After a wet and windy weekend this morning turned out to be the perfect day for washing my fabrics ready for dressmaking group on Wednesday.

The fabric is folded

Then submerged.

 And rolled

 And then repeated for the next fabric.

 I found out from Jean that this roses is an older fabric as it's only 36" wide and the way to test if it is cotton is  to find a loose thread and try to break it, if it's hard to break then it's cotton and if it breaks easily then it's probably a mixed fabric. (I hope I have that right???)

 I picked this fabric up at the charity shop last year and I'm hoping to make this top from it.

 Today was also the perfect day to try out my bargain washing line, my old one broke and as much as I like shopping I didn't want to spend nearly £90 on a new one so Paul found this one on ebay for £4.99. Bargain!!!!

The day didn't stay sunny for long but I did manage to get the fabrics dry and now they just need ironing. 

March Monthly Make

Hi everyone I seem to have had a little blip on the blogging front these past two weeks and I kept finding the longer I left it the less I had to say, (for those of you that know me you'll find that hard to understand!!) but now I'm back and I have some photo's to show you of one of my March Monthly Makes.

We have this lovely old leaded light window in the hall which only has a small narrow space to put anything as the front door opens on to it.

 The window has been hidden behind plastic boxes full of books for the past few months whislt we refurbished the kitchen and I have been on the hunt for a small bookcase to fill the space but because of the size I couldn't find anything to fit. I looked into having a pine bookcase made and the quote was around £250 and I wasn't even sure I wanted pine anyhow!!

As I drove past one of our local charity shop recently I saw this dark wood bookcase that I thought might just fit, so in I went and measured up and yes! it was the perfect size. I ummed and ahhed for a few days as I wasn't sure if I could transform it, but then I thought why not have a go and see what it turns out like!!

So here it is in its just bought from the charity shop state....

And here it is after a lick of paint

 (well a coat of undercoat/primer and several coats of Fired Earths VERDIGRIS)

I initally had the idea of papering the back panels with some Cath Kidston papers as I saw that someone on Ebay sold it by the metre but then I remebered that I had seen a magazine at the Co-Op which had some free vintage/shabby chic papers with it and so I bought it and used those to make a patchwork effect.

 Here it is in its new home full of the kids books, I can't believe how well the bigger books just slotted in! 

Now I just need some pretty lovely knick- knacks on the top and It will be perfect!!!

I can feel another trip to the charity shop coming on!!!