A citation

This week I renewed my subscription to Ancestry, to help me with part of the work I need to do this autumn for my Open University course on family history.

When I logged on last night I saw that since I was last there, Ancestry have made available the British Army service records from World War I. I started rummaging and searching and without really noticing I lost a whole evening reading the records of my ancestors who had fought in the war.

By far the best document I found was this citation for a DCM, or Distinguished Conduct Medal, awarded to my Great Grandfather in 1920.

My Great Grandfather was awarded the medal:

"For gallantry and devotion to duty. He served at Ypres from June to December 1915, on the Somme from July to September 1916, at Nieuport in August and September 1917, during the operations at Passchendaele from September to December 1917, during the enemy offensive and our subsequent advance in 1918."

That reads like my old school history textbooks. He fought in every major offensive of World War I. And amazingly, despite two separate injuries (one of which was a 'gunshot wound to the head') he returned to the front again and again, survived the war, and lived on to be an old man, dying in the mid 1970s just a year or two after I was born. The things he must have seen and experienced don't bear thinking about.

I looked up from my computer screen at nearly half past midnight and saw that the date was November 11th. I told C and O about my finds when we got up this morning, and as we walked to school we tried to imagine how Ray Renwick felt this time ninety one years ago. Very, very thankful I think.

As are we all.

Another mat - but towelling, not linen

So it turns out that this week is all about mats, not really about appliqué after all. I've made my third mat in three sessions of sewing this week.


This time, there was recycling going on. I've made a bath mat, using the pattern from Amanda Blake Soule's Handmade Home, a pillowcase saved from my childhood and some cheapo hand towels from IKEA (and being IKEA, the handtowels are a bizarre, Swedish size - long and thin - not good for a hand towel, but perfect for transforming into a bath mat). G and the children all refused to entertain the idea of using this marvellously retro pillowcase as a pillowcase, so I figured they can see it when they step out of the bath each day instead.


I love the Handmade Home book. This is the second project I've made from it, and there are so many more that I want to try. When I spread my mat out to photograph it, I realised that I've ended up using very similar colours to the one in the book.


Let's just hope that my family embrace the wonderful hand-crafted, repurposed, retro nature of the bath mat with the same enthusiasm as Amanda's family do hers. I live in hope.

This week's thing: appliqué on linen

My sewing machine has been busy since everybody else went back to school and work. On Monday, I cut up an old IKEA linen curtain that Miss Moss Stitch had given me over the summer (the gift wasn't as strange as the fact that I squealed with excitement when she gave it to me; her boyfriend gave mine a knowing and sympathetic look as I stroked the fabric).

With most of it I made another hallway mat. Inspired by the recent Scrap Buster Month at Sew Mama Sew, I quickly, and not too carefully, appliquéd a selection of pink and red scraps onto the linen, and then lined and backed it with flannel to make it stick to the carpet. I like the cheerful reds and pinks, and the easy going, not-too-neat, nature of the mat. Although I'm now thinking I should probably have given it a quick iron after I washed it. Certainly before I photographed it.

Then with two small pieces of the leftover linen, I made a drinks mat for my Mum. She has had her operation, and is walking again, but still in hospital. The recovery for hip replacements is long, and I am sure she will be drinking many cups of tea as she does plenty of knitting and takes things easy for the next couple of months.

This time I wanted a crisper, less rumpled look to the mat so I used bondaweb to fuse the appliqué onto the linen, and also the label onto the mug, before zigzagging around the edges. I like the way bondaweb appliqué ends up looking so well finished and just a little bit stiff. Which is exactly what you want for things like this.

I put leftover quilt batting in the middle and another piece of linen on the back. I made some bias tape to finish around the edge and did some outlining of the mug in running stitch. I'm still massively into embroidery and will embroider anything if it sits still for long enough.

The mat will be delivered in person tomorrow, when I go up to Oxford for the day to see how Mum and Dad are getting along. Rumour has it the hospital may even let her come home tomorrow. In which case, I shall make her a well deserved cup of tea.

That was half term

So that was half term. For a whole week we planned to be as lazy as possible, and do as little as possible. But now I am at the end of it, I see that we managed to fit an awful lot in.

• A trip to the new, local ice-cream parlour. They had bubble gum flavour ice cream which the children thought was amazing. G and I were boring grown ups and stuck to raspberry ripple and cappuccino flavours.
• A sunny couple of hours at the local city farm.
• A very exciting visit to Oxford to see my brother and his family, and meet the new cousin. I was very greedy and cuddled the baby for more than my fair share I think.
• A trip to the shops to spend birthday money.
• Plenty of good food and lazy meals.
• A trip to Kew Gardens with friends on the mildest, sunniest October day I can remember.

And tomorrow the children go back to school and my attention will turn back to sewing. I have a list of things to sew that is raging out of control. I'm going to come back at the end of this week and show you what I've been making.

The sewing will be a good distraction for me from my mother's adventures this coming week. I made her a 'no more sticks' badge to wear after her operation. She is wearing it already, which I think is an excellent illustration of her determination to get rid of the sticks at the soonest opportunity. Go Lady Hip!

It's autumn now

London has such a mild climate. With this year's long, sunny September it seemed as if every last drop was being eked out of summer and autumn was never going to come. I love autumn the best of all the seasons, and this year it has arrived with us in London very gently and subtly - over the last week. Just in time for the clocks to go back on Sunday.

Here's how I know that it is now autumn.

• The leaves are just beginning to change colour and drop. I need to start sweeping the back yard.
• It is cool enough in the mornings to wear my pashmina and a woollen hat (but no coat yet).

• My veg box had the first of this year's parsnips in it this week.
• The autumn germs have arrived in our house - and we've run out of sore throat sweets.
• The light from the bright autumn sunshine, streaming through the windows onto my knitting, is just beautiful.

My weekend in numbers

Wow - what a weekend.

• candles blown out - 17
• sandwiches made - about 42
• balloons blown up - 12
• balloons later popped - 12
• exciting middle of the night text messages recieved - 2
• new nephews born - 1
• bottles of cider drunk - 1 large one
• tombstone cakes baked and iced - 1
• cupcakes baked and iced - 16
• amount of chocolate consumed by my children - I just dread to think
• times we sang Happy Birthday - 2
• party bags given out - 11
• black bin bags filled with paper plates, wrapping paper and half eaten biscuits - 3
• hugs and kisses - loads
  

The Year of the Cushion

2009 has been the Year of the Cushion here. I've been sewing cushions for loved ones all year, and getting steadily better at it the more I do. I started with this orange and blue log-cabin one for G, back in the spring.

Because every man needs a log cabin cushion with a watery-fruity theme, no?

And then I made a summery, flowery one for my Mum's birthday which I blogged about here. That one was all about using the vintage French doily I bought in the summer and my love of suffolk puffs.

And this week I've made two more. These ones are also embroidered, which just seems to me the perfect meeting of two crafts which I enjoy doing. I don't know why I didn't think of doing this before.

The pink one is for O's 7th birthday - just a week away now - and the blue one is for a dear friend who has recently moved to the other end of the country to start a new life with her man. Both a birthday and the beginning of a new family life seemed to warrant some labelling of the cushions.

For O's cushion I used some fabric from two of her all time favourite skirts which she really can't fit into any more - no matter how much she tries. Both skirts - a Boden strawberry patterned one, and an H&M pink, paisley one - were very faded. But this meant that both fabrics are also beautifully soft and I think will hold memories for O for years to come. I cut around one of the gathered pockets in the H&M skirt and used that piece as one of the panels. I just know that when O is given the cushion that little, tiny pocket will immediately be filled with secret, random 7-year old treasures like marbles, Barbie shoes, stickers, go-gos and hair bobbles.

My friend Janine's cushion is embroidered with all the names of her new, enlarged family. And I sneaked in a teeny-tiny satin-stitched heart as well. Because I'm sentimental like that.

For each cushion I pieced the top, then pressed it and embroidered it, and finally sewed the back pieces onto the top to finish the cushion cover. Using, as always, the envelope back method from Sew It Up, which has revolutionised cushion cover construction for me.

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Each of these cushions was made - from start to embroidered, photographed finish - in a day. Which is very pleasing. The family had better watch out - I may have just discovered a quick and easy, handmade answer to presents.