On my mind...at last it's ready to post!

Today I'm joining in with the feature at Rhonda's blog 'On my mind...'  For a few weeks now I've been making a gift for a ' Handmade Kris Kringle'. I showed a photo of the project on this blog just after I started and have been stitching away ever since. Some of my plans for retirement were to try new things but also I wanted to 'revisit' some craft activities that I used to enjoy but haven't done for ages. One of these was English paper piecing where I originally started in patchwork in the 1970s. It all 'fell into place' when a friend drafted up a page of 'long hexagons' for me and I decided to make a Christmas table runner for the Kris Kringle project...later amended to a table centre rather than the much longer runner! lol I used scraps of Christmas fabrics I already had but many of my fabrics had too much green in them as the theme was 'Red and white'. I still had a reasonable number of different fabrics to use and there were just some little patches of green.

At the beginning

It's been one big learning experience in these last 2 weeks or so. Firstly my eyesight is different since I last did paper piecing about 9 years ago. Since I had an eye operation in 2009, I have become very long sighted instead of short sighted and I now just wear reading glasses with a magnification of 2.5. I've had to experiment with finding the best way to hold my work so that I can both see it and be comfortable with stitching in that position. I used to hold my work about 30cm away or rest it on a table...now I have to work with the fabric on my lap...and this small project has enabled me to get used to that position. It hasn't always been easy to change the habit of a lifetime.

With some of the Christmassy items I've already got out of storage

And secondly, it is about 24 years since I've handquilted anything and boy! haven't I got out of the 'rhythm' of that! But the 8 star shapes I quilted were good practice and I felt the 'stirrings' of interest and the good memories of how relaxing a bit of hand quilting can be.

So after lunch I'm heading off the the post office to send the table centre to Renae in Croydon South, Victoria. And now I can turn my crafting attention to something else... :-)