Buttoned up

Time for another Endeavourers reveal. This quarter rather than all of us working to the same theme Janine and Catherine switched things up a bit. Each of us had to send something to inspire this quarter's piece to a partner, whose name was drawn from the proverbial hat.

My fellow Endeavourer, Gwen, who blogs at Textile Ranger, sent me this glorious array of buttons! What a great jumping off point for several flights of fancy :)

Penny Rugs, Suffolk puffs, Medallion quilts were all considered and discarded.

This is what I eventually created. I am calling it a "Memory Keeper" as every single element of it invokes a memory for me of a place, person or time, just in the same way rifling through my mother's and grandmother's collections of buttons recalled the outfits they were from or the uses they were intended for.

The base fabric for my Memory Keeper is pale yellow linen purchased on our last trip to the linen factory in Lithuania before we moved back to the UK. The pocket fabric is from an early Imperial Collection line by Robert Kaufman and it was the first quilting cotton that I ever purchased! As you can see it formed the centrepiece for the cushion, made at an evening class, that was my first ever patchwork project too.

This clay button was the subject of a very early blog post and, I think, the first ever link party that I linked up to!

This modern Dorset button harks back to an earlier age when buttons were handmade and beautiful in their own right. If my memory serves me well (always debatable!) this particular Dorset button was made whilst we were sailing from Tallinn to St Petersburg on the ferry!(I checked and it was and I blogged about it here)

These buttons were purchased in markets in Riga, France, Tynemouth and Yorkshire respectively and instantly evoke happy memories of lovely days out and enjoyable rummaging at craft stalls and Flea Markets.

These yellow and red buttons, however, evoke a person rather than a place as they were in a box of buttons inherited from my mum when she passed away last year. The box was marked "buttons for baby cardigans" as my mum was a great knitter up until the day she went into hospital, and her speed at producing jumpers and cardigans for her great-grandchildren was an amazement to me. So, these particular buttons have a special resonance.

As I am sure most of you do, spare buttons for clothes purchases are added to my button tin and kept even when the original garment has long since been discarded. This button, from a jacket long since given away, is from that pile of buttons that will surely come in useful one day :) One button is rarely needed though, but this one has finally found a use!

Of course it would hardly be right to ignore those lovely buttons that arrived in the post in the middle of the craziest time the world has seen for a long time. These sweet buttons will remind me of the inspiration for my Memory Keeper and my fellow Endeavourer who took the time to put the button sheet together and send it off across the world to me. Thanks Gwen!

Head on over to The Endeavourers blog to see the amazing pieces that the rest of the Endeavourers have produced for this challenge.

A jumble of June projects

I am beginning to like putting together a Mosaic at the end of each month, when I think I haven't actually finished much in a month it is a pleasant surprise to find that, actually, I have been busier than I thought!

The makes this month are a motley selection, and probably a good indication of my "butterfly" tendencies of flitting from one project to another :)

Lots of little projects have fitted in with the travelling we have been doing recently, so portable projects like the crochet flowers and Dorset buttons have fitted the bill. I am most pleased with finishing the Campervan doorstop as it has been many months in the making, it is just a pity that the reason for making it, for youngest son's flat at University, has now disappeared with his graduation a couple of weeks ago! Still, a finish is a finish.

We have no travel plans for the next few weeks, so I am hoping to get stuck into some bigger projects and maybe even finish off the NY Beauty QAL blocks that are haunting the cupboard!

If you have missed any posts in the Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop check out the great tutorials here This week's posts in the Blog Hop will be from:

July 3

Di from Willowbeck Designs

Jennifer from Knotted Thread

July 5

Sarah from Sarah Lou

Catherine from Knotted Cotton

 

I have seen sneak peeks of a couple of the projects being lined up and can't wait to see them revealed in all their glory. My post for the Blog Hop is due at the end of the month so I need to get cracking on my post and project for that too, so the NYB blocks might not see the light of day after all :)

Linking up to Fresh Sewing Day

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Russian sights and Dorset buttons

The city of St Petersburg has been on our list of places to visit for many years and with it being so much closer since we have been in Riga, it seemed like an obvious place to go. Holding us back though was the need to send off our passports for anything up to 3 weeks, what if something happened at home and we needed to get back quickly? So when we discovered recently that a Russian ferry line were running visa-free cruises to St Petersburg from Tallinn, we hot-footed it to their offices to book up. The ship leaves Tallinn in the evening and arrives early morning in St Petersburg, leaving in the evening the same day so we would have a whole day to enjoy the delights of St Petersburg before heading on to Helsinki, the next port of call and getting another ferry back to Tallinn. It sounds like a lot of travelling for a day, but the trips to and fro from St Petersburg were both overnight sailings and the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn only takes a couple of hours, so it wasn't as much as it sounds. We found out later that we could have booked a 72-hour stay in St Petersburg, still visa-free, so would have done that had we known.

St Petersburg was all that we imagined it to be and more! We were lucky that the weather was glorious for the day of our visit, so the city was seen at its' best.

This is another view of the Church of the Spilled Blood, look at the colours in those towers, aren't they spectacular? On the day we visited the Church was not open to the public, and as it is just as fabulous inside as out, we have a ready-made reason to return!

These children were dancing outside of the Church and having a great time.

We went on a river cruise, which had a Russian commentary and as we don't speak Russian, we had plenty of time to enjoy the views and bask in the sunshine!

We were lucky enough to catch a military parade in front of the Hermitage too. We didn't have time either to take a tour of the Hermitage, but as the guide told us on our morning tour of the City that it would take 3 years to view all of the exhibits, we didn't feel so bad about not having the time! Another reason to return.

Don't they look smart? They sounded good too.

With overnight crossings both ways I had plenty of time to try out a kit that I had bought on my last trip to London. The kit was for Dorset buttons, which I think I had read about a long time ago but had never come across a kit for before.

They were surprisingly quick and simple to do, once I had got the hang of it. The large red ones are from the kit. The first one I made is the lower of the two, and then I went out and bought some more brass rings and thread to make the smaller ones. To make them you just wrap the ring in blanket stitches, turn the rim of the stitches to the inside then wrap the ring several times and stitch alternate spokes to create the centres. More instructions can be found here I used pearl cotton for the green and purple buttons, but you could use stranded cotton as well. They are an ideal project for travelling as they require very little in the way of equipment.

We are off to Edinburgh next for our youngest son's graduation, so I have been toying with the idea of English paper pieced hexagons for my Star of Africa Bee block, sounds like the perfect project for travelling!


Hope the weather in Edinburgh is as good as it was in St Petersburg :)