Sunshine and flowers

No sewing posts to show you yet as the new sewing room is still not finished !!!! The cupboard door and drawer handles are being attached as I type so, fingers crossed, it will not be too much longer before I can settle down to some stitching:)

 We were in France at the beginning of the month so I took advantage of the guaranteed sunshine to have a go at some sun printing.

The specially treated fabric is left out in the sun for up to 20 minutes. The recommendations advise that the fabric and items for the print are placed under glass to keep everything flat, a glass baking dish was the best that I could come up with!

After 20 minutes in the sun this is what the fabric looked like.

When the fabric is rinsed the dye washes out and you are left with an image like this.

When I get my sewing room back you will see what I did with these prints!

When (yet another!) commitment to work on the new room was missed (the 5th in a row!) the OH and I decided to treat ourselves to a day out at Dumfries House, something we had been promising ourselves for months.

The house was the subject of much press comment several years ago when it was purchased by a consortium headed by the Prince of Wales for an eye-watering amount of £millions. On the day that we visited the house and gardens looked magnificent, so it wasn't difficult to imagine how that money was spent.

The gardens were a glorious riot of colour, aren't these magnificent?

Beautiful and productive, the vegetable garden was in peak production mode!

and even the greenhouse was stuffed to bursting with an abundance of flowers.

Lunch in the cafe wasn't too shabby either :)

If you are ever in the area, Dumfries House is definitely worth a visit. To see the interior of the house you need to take a guided tour, which normally isn't my bag, but our guide for the tour was excellent and the house and the furniture particularly was so stunning that the tour flew by.

So, that is all that is New to Me this month, if you have tried anything New to You too in July I would love it if you linked up a post to the New to Me link party.

As always the link party will remain open until the end of the month and it doesn't matter whether the attempt at something new was successful or not, it is all about celebrating the trying here :)

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter