Luck and Loop

My vintage finds

I've been investing a bit of time in my toy making project and on a recent day out stumbled across a shop which was a treasure trove of  lovely vintage bits and bobs. I found a pretty embroidered runner and matching tea cosy, old crochet cotton reel, a wooden bobbin and a beautiful duck egg blue needle packet. Too pretty to leave in the shop, they all came home with me.

My little boy happily put on a dinosaur show (a couple of dinosaurs always come out with us) in the changing room, whilst I searched through small boxes and draws and watched to see what the dinos were up to from the corner of my eye.

The runner makes a very attractive backdrop for my Kate Rabbit, I think. I will be visiting that shop again to see what else I can find and maybe I'll take a couple of dinosaurs with me again for company...

 

Something a bit more hoopy

Embroidery is something I've recently discovered again, this little hoop is something I've been working on for a short while inbetween my crocheting pursuits.

I once went through a phase of creating small pictures of boats using scraps of fabrics, buttons and thread.  They were simple but quite sweet.

I had planned to keep this hoop composition quite restrained, but decided it needed a fancy border to frame the elephant in his rainy garden. 

So far i've used  mix of  tana lawn liberty prints, felt, embroidery thread and appletons crewel wool. I discovered the crewel wool at a local craft shop and fell in love with the colours. I like the contrast of the different threads,  the super silky embroidery thread and matt, muted colour crewel wools. I'm thinking about adding some butons to the picture too, but haven't decided yet...