Whitehaven.

It was a lovely day so we have been to Whitehaven.

It has had a transformation over the last few years and the walk alongside the marina is lovely. It is the start of the C2C cycle route which traditionally starts with dipping your toes in this water(Irish Sea) before cycling east until you can dip your toe into the North Sea.

I love the fishy bike park and the sea knots and seats with backs shaped like whales' tails or are they anchors?
The children like the little silver fish set into the pavement.
The main shopping street has a series of wonderful pebble mosaics set into the ground, showing the history of Whitehaven.

Quiet but busy!

Just realised how long it is since I put anything up!
I have been busy playing with my new toy, a Bernina Artista 200e!!!! I find that the best way to get acquainted with a new machine is to use it and keep looking up how to do stuff as you go. The first few things were garment sewing where I didn't have to concentrate on anything but the basics and then progressed to quilting, embroidery and free motion work.

These butterflies are to be added to a quilt but I think I might do some more to hang in the conservatory. They are made of painted and stitched cotton and sandwiched with batting and backing so that hopefully they can be applied to be 3D. They are supposed to be Red Admiral and Painted Lady butterflies which appear frequently in the garden.

Embellisher and machine embroidery

Having fun playing around with the use of the embellisher as a canvas on which to apply other techniques. This is a digitised machine embroidery design stitched out onto a piece of Timtex that has been previously "embellished". I used a sticky stabiliser with a window cut into it to hold the Timtex and floated some tearaway stabiliser beneath.

My Bernina stitched out on it with no problems at all. I thought the thickness and the bumps of the applied threads might affect it but no problems.

This is fun :o)