Secrets are out......

How quickly Christmas goes! After all the secret phone calls, shopping sneaked into the house and general preparation it is over in a twinkling. It was worth though.
My wonderful family bowled me over with a new sewing machine, I am particularly impressed with DH who masterminded and executed the whole thing. It is a Bernina 240 he knew this was the one as he had seen me drooling over it when I bought my embellisher. It amused me that in the manual it is not called a sewing "machine" but a sewing "computer". It has 99 instead of 27 stitches and three alphabets. I have had one little play and we are friends already.

It was my son's 40th Birthday on Boxing Day and I can now reveal what was keeping me quiet in the run up to Christmas. I have wanted to make him something for some time, having made the hussif for my daughter.
He likes things celtic and medieval so I decided on a presentation box and based it on the reliquaries in the V&A

As per usual I forgot to photograph all the stages, these are the embellishments for the lid and the panels which I made on Romeo vanishing fabric.

This is the front of the box

and the back

and the side which are both the same

I completely forgot to photograph it after I had put the feet on it, I'll have to go visit and do it at some later date. The body of the box is made up of a sandwich of velvet(inside), pelmet vilene, cloth which was painted, stitched and foiled, a layer of printed chiffon(of an old skirt) stitched with metallic threads, a layer of black net veiling, and then the stitched panels on top.
I am happy to report that he liked it.