I'm cold?

 Suddenly it feels like Autumn is not that far off - it's getting quite cool in the evenings and I even had to put a cardi and slippers on last night - which felt really weird after weeks of being too hot.  In a way, we feel cheated out of summer, after having to hide indoors for several weeks because of the extreme heat.. And suddenly it's almost over. It's getting darker earlier as well. I think we only used our garden sofas once this summer, all the rest of the time it was either too hot or too windy or too wet...

Enough moaning about the weather.  After I finished the seventh frame quilt, I partially disassembled the broken roller and re-glued the end insert with Araldite. I also applied a lock-nut which should help hold the spindle in place.  I don't really remember how I built the roller ends in the first place - past-me should have kept better notes.  So now I'm on quilt 8 (Tilda Wreath quilt) and so far the repair seems to be holding, thank goodness.

In keeping with the flower theme, I chose a flower panto.  I haven't used this one before and it's more complex, so I had to have a few practice runs with no thread to get used to the rhythm of it. I want to do a good job because I am keeping this quilt for myself.

I've been measuring up and graphing out a drawing of the attic room to see if I can fit a Handiquilter into it.  It's not looking good.  A 10' frame would fit in fine lengthwise, with room to walk around the ends.  But width-wide, the limited headroom due to the slanting ceiling is a real issue. I think it would be really tight and I would only be able to work from one side at a time - but if the frame was on casters then I could move it when I want to work on the opposite side.  I need to do more measuring.

I'm busy sewing binding on to the Cottage scrap quilt because the Project Linus rep is coming to collect my four donation quilts next week. I've also made a start on month 15 of the Australian BOM but had barely scratched the surface when month 16 showed up in the post. I'm definitely not keeping up any more. Oh well.  It will become a winter project I guess.

I put up onto my design wall 36 of the 40 squares in the Tilda Chic Escape layer cake that I bought at FOQ.  Disappointingly, they don't look that good all together - I think I will need to reduce the collection to just a couple of colourways.  I love most of the fabrics, but the layercake has unfortunately separated several peacocks from their heads, leaving a not very useful square with an enormous tail on it.  I had a look online for patterns for big print fabric, and I'm thinking of something similar to Arcadia by Mountain Peek Creations.  I've ordered some border fabric and a contrast solid from Cotton Patch in preparation.  The same day, Doughty's announced a flash sale on their extra-wide quilt backing which brought it down to about £4.20 a metre so I ordered two backs-worth of those as well for some of the quilt tops that are waiting to go on the frame.

Just for something fun, or so I thought, I decided to put together a folding wallet from the ByAnnie 'Necessories' pattern I bought at FOQ. I'm sure it was partly (mostly) me, but I became confused several times by how the instructions were worded, and went wrong each time.  There are only a few diagrams, and no clear photos of the wallet in the pattern apart from the cover photo.  I had to look at their website to work out what was meant a couple of times.  One particular paragraph was so misleading that I actually emailed them and received a form letter thanking me (by the wrong first name) and stating they are correcting the wording for future printing and will publish a correction on their errata page (they haven't yet, I just checked).  Do they not beta-test these patterns? Anyway, I got there in the end.  I only used some cheap Aldi fabric for this sample, but I'm going to re-make it as a sewing wallet now that I understand how it goes together.

My decluttering effort this week was to go through my clothes and weed out a big bag of things that don't fit me any more, or work clothes that I just don't wear in retired life, and I took them all to the charity shop.

My online Japanese conversations continue.  I think I'm learning more about English than I am about Japanese, from the questions the learners are asking me.  Did you know that we change the pronunciation of  the word 'the' depending on whether it is followed by a vowel or not?  'Theee apple', but 'tha dog'.  I didn't know that until a Japanese lady asked me.  When I tried it out, I realised I always do that, and so does DH. And another lady asked me whether dinner is always the evening meal, or sometimes the lunch meal - which is a very complex question here in the UK.  I referred her to an online article which quotes a north/south and also a class divide, on whether the evening meal is 'dinner', 'tea', or (a minority) 'supper'.  I tend to call it supper more often, because I grew up in Canada.  But my working class m-i-l will also use 'dinner' to refer to the midday meal, especially on a Sunday.  It makes me glad I'm not having to learn English!