Tutorial on how to shorten trousers/jeans.

I have added a tutorial page to my blog today. My first tutorial is a great quick way to shorten trousers. Do let me know if it is useful (or not!).

 

Why I love where I live.

Yesterday was a lovely sunny day on the North Essex coast. We live in a small coastal town called Walton-On-The-Naze. My husband and I decided to go for a walk out on the Naze to Hamford Water. This is an area designated as a National Nature Reserve consisting of tidal creeks, mudflats, salt marshes and beach. It takes us about twenty minutes to walk out to the beach there. We wanted to beachcomb for some driftwood to use in a future project. We found lots of it, many pieces too big to carry home, which is a shame as they would look great in the garden! Anyway we soon noticed the local seal colony were very active in the water. It was clearly a good day for fishing as the local fishing boat was going up and down and there were also a couple of men fishing off the beach. The seals were clearly fishing too as they kept appearing popping up and then going under again. Unfortunately they are too far out to get a decent photo and they don’t stay up long. This was the best I could manage. The cranes in the background are the port of Felixstowe. (The photo is zoomed right in.) Once we had enough wood we went for a long walk out along the shore to the marshy part where the seabirds nest. We saw lots of oystercatchers and I managed to get quite close to take this photo. I love their very long beaks! Once we had taken some photos we walked all the way back home round the beach as the tide was out. We had been out for 3 hours!! It is a great place to live and I feel very lucky to live minutes away from such brilliant sights.

It was another lovely sunset the other night and I took these photos from the bedroom window. The first one was at dusk ,when the river had a lovely red glow over it. Then I took another one once the sun had set. Now you can see why I love it here. Its so beautiful and I can look out at the changes on the Hamford Backwaters from my bedroom window. Every morning I open the curtains and spend several minutes just looking at what is happening out there.

As well as enjoying the local nature I have been creating new designs for the website and they will be going on soon. There are some larger designs and some seaside things plus a very cute Westie for dog lovers and a children’s cat design – quite a varied mixture to come.

 

Be Careful When Submitting Articles to Some Craft Magazines

Reblogged from sewingmad:

There has been much discussion on various forums recently about submitting articles to craft magazines.  It appears that those magazines within the All Craft Media umbrella are falling short on their promises to the originators of articles.  It saddens me greatly when I hear of hard working honest individuals are treated so badly by ‘the big boys’ of the industry.  I wonder if they realise the implications of their action to not pay, let alone not return items made for the magazines.  

Read more… 540 more words

This is something that makes me very angry as I know how hard crafters work.

 

New football Embroidery collection

It’s May already so I have been busy with the website. We have a new collection of football inspired designs. They include a Union Jack, though could be stitched without.We also have this pretty birdcage design. It would look lovely on a cushion or any home decor item. There is a cute snail design too. Our free designs this month are a football and an apple tree. I am now busy working on some larger designs with a sunset background. I also plan to add more items with a seaside theme as nautical seems popular at the moment!

We had a lovely weekend with our eldest daughter and grandchildren. While feeding the ducks with them I took a photo of a duck on the riverbank, which was actually someone’s back garden. She had 13 ducklings! They were a long way off but the photo came out quite well.

The river is just below the slope. I was very envious of the garden as they had a very pretty bridge over the river across to an orchard!

Isn’t that beautiful? What a lovely place to live!

We have had so much rain here there are lots of flood warnings on our local radio and the 2 main roads to our little town are closed because they are impassible! I had to drive through a very deep stretch of flooded road the other day to go to the supermarket. It was not a nice experience so I am now staying put for a few days and hoping it improves.

 

Now is the time to ‘Fly The Flag’.

If you live in the U.K. then this really is the year to celebrate with Union Jack designs, what with the Diamond Jubilee celebrations and of course the Olympics happening here. We have two Union Jack machine embroidery designs now available for sale to download from our website. One is this heart shaped design 

and the other is a rectangular flag shape.

Adding to our insect collection we also have a pretty lacy butterfly. It looks lovely done with metallic thread for the gold parts. We have also updated our website with a search facility which will make finding what you want much easier.

Our weekend when the kite surfers came to North Essex was disappointingly cold, so the photos I hoped to get were few as it was so cold we couldn’t stay long on the beach at Clacton. I did get some, but as the day was very grey, and the pro surfers didn’t go out as conditions were not good enough for them, they are not great. But anyway these are some of the photos I did take.

You can see from them what a cold, grey day it was. Such a shame!

 

Happy Easter and it’s our birthday.

April has arrived and Embroidery Crazy has been online for a year now. The time has gone so quickly. Our April free machine embroidery designs are now ready to download so if you have an embroidery machine head over to our website. http://www.embroiderycrazy.co.uk/shop/specials/

There is an Easter design perfect for card making and this very sweet little elephant which would be great for any makes for spring new arrivals.

To celebrate our first birthday, registered users of the website have a 20 percent discount this month, so if you have not already registered now is the time to do so and we will send you the special code needed to get the discount.

It has been wonderfully warm for a couple of weeks on the East Anglian coast, amazing for March in the UK. We have had people on our beach, normally empty at this time of year! The photo was taken last weekend. However April arrived and the temperatures have gone back down to normal – it’s currently 10 degrees here at midday. But the sun is out so it’s not unpleasant for our school Easter holidays. We have the National Kite Surfing championships taking place in nearby Clacton-On-Sea next weekend so I hope to take some great photographs! I shall post any decent ones. Meanwhile have a very Happy Easter whatever you are up to.

 

Happy Springtime – machine embroidery for March

We have had some lovely weather in East Anglia this week and it is starting to feel like Spring is well on the way. Many of the spring flowers are appearing early so I have posted the lovely spring picture above to wish everyone Happy Springtime. We have just made the free machine embroidery designs for March available for dowmload on the website. There is a pretty bluebell design and this cherries design  which would brighten up any kitchen or other home items. There are also four more new designs. This Easter one  is perfect for making a card. I also like this Spring design which would also make a pretty card or look really good on home decor items.

A new addition to our ‘crazy’ range is this very cute turtle.  He would be a hit with any child.

There is also a lizard which would look good on clothing. It is a single colour so quick to stitch.

This week I have been learning how to do free motion quilting on the old Bernina I got as a bargain at a car boot sale. It is really easy to do using the Bernina and I made a pretty tea cosy for our teapot. Today I shall be using my new skill to make a present for my youngest daughter who has a birthday very soon. I’m looking forward to our family get together next weekend.

 

Early Spring – time to get busy

Spring is definitely on the way here. We are expected to hit 16 degrees in East Anglia today, exceptional for mid February in the UK. I really need to get out and tidy our garden this afternoon. There are lots of spring bulbs flowering, which is lovely, they will look much better after I have pruned away all the winter dead stuff!

To have a break from sewing I went for a walk out on our Backwaters yesterday. I took lots of photos, I am putting my favourites on here.

Firstly we have a lonely boat, which I took as I liked the light around it. I startled some ducks on the creek behind me and caught them flying off.

I really like this photo of upturned rowing boats, not sure why, maybe because they look abandoned!The tide was out and walking along the riverbank I saw lots of seabirds. There was a large flock of barnacle geese but they were too far away to get a decent photo as I hadn’t got my telephoto lens. I did get close enough to these smaller birds which were digging all along the shore. They are called black tailed godwits! Quite an impressive name I thought. They use their long beaks to dig for food.

Further along towards the town I come to Walton Mere. This is an area of salt marshes which gets completely covered in water when the tide is in. Many years ago it was used as a boating lake. It is a haven for wildlife, especially seabirds. Okay its not very pretty, but the reason I have included it is because the family who own it want to drain the land and put a supermarket, old people’s home and town houses on it!!! I think it is a terrible idea to destroy a large wildlife habitat.

If you like birds we have several bird machine embroidery designs on our website. I have the seagull on a fleece jacket, it looks great.

 

Lots of new designs and a sick cat.

We have been very busy creating lots of new machine embroidery designs for the website and these are now available. There is a range of things including some more ‘crazy’ animals, some sports designs and a couple of decorative designs. I love this gorgeous wolf . He would look great stitched on a jacket. This sporty design is ideal on a gift for any sport mad person. Check out the website for what else is new.

We have had a very stressful few days due to our lovely cat Cajun being seriously ill. It all started with him needing a dental extraction on Monday, for which cats have to be anaesthetised. That went fine. On Tuesday morning at home he seemed much brighter and was eating a bit. We had no inkling of the drama to come!

Mid afternoon we suddenly noticed he was struggling to breathe. Very quickly it became apparent that he was seriously ill so we rushed him to our vets – a 20 minute drive away. By the time we got there he was so distressed they had to put him in an oxygen tent. Our lovely vet then stayed 2 hours past her working time fighting to get him stabilised as he had pneumonia. Mid evening we had a call to say he needed to be transferred to the veterinary hospital for overnight care and could we take him. We were warned he could die on the way! That was a very stressful journey but we made it safely. After a night there he was somewhat better by morning, thankfully, so we took him back to our vet for day care.

Yesterday evening as he was much better and stable we were allowed to bring him home. They don’t know why he suddenly got so ill, he had been peacefully sleeping on our bed most of the day. He is an elderly cat so it could be due to the anaesthetic. An x-ray would possibly help find a cause but we don’t want to put him under again!! He is on antibiotics and diuretics which will hopefully get him back to health.

He is such a part of our family it was awful to think we were losing him so suddenly. He is very happy to be home again. We are a lot poorer but he is worth every penny.

After that sad story here is a photo of what we can see from our bedroom window at the moment – very calming.

 

Snowy beach and a free snow design

Well the promised snow has arrived in North Essex in bucket loads overnight. So I walked over to the beach with my camera this morning and took some photos of our snowy beach.

Yes, all that white is the sand covered in a blanket of snow! The beach huts didn’t look quite right -

Wintry beach huts

I spotted this poor little Sanderling trying to find food in the tiny bit of sand left not covered in snow. Walton seafront looks like this.

Walton-On-The-Naze in the snow

Looks a bit chilly? Yes it’s freezing! It was quite windy so the snow has piled up in drifts making it hard to walk along. Good job I wore my lovely fur-lined snow boots.

Don’t forget those of you who are machine embroiderers to download February’s free machine embroidery designs from our website. http://www.embroiderycrazy.co.uk/shop/specials/ There is a very topical penguin. It would look great on a child’s jacket, hat or scarf. We also have a pretty lacy dragonfly design. The first of our new ‘Crazy’ designs are also available to buy. We will be adding to these so they will form collections when we have enough. Coming shortly in new designs is a fox, a tattoo rose, and some more sporty designs.

If you are in snowy UK, or indeed any other snowy country,  stay warm and safe!