RIP little travel iron

 I went to one more retreat this weekend, at a conference centre to the south of Birmingham.  It started from noon on Friday and after I got set up and did some cutting out, I plugged in my little travel iron that I've had for almost my entire quilting career.  It didn't get hot.  The hotel kindly supplied a replacement fuse - iron still not working.  This little iron may well predate my adult son, so I felt surprisingly sad about its demise.  I had to buy one of the new little palm-sander-shaped ones from the pop up vendor Black Country Fabrics which feels weird to hold but works perfectly fine. I suppose you can't expect things to last forever but still.

I managed to travel to this retreat on my own steam, via train and taxi, after DH drove me to the station before his work started.  I accomplished this by loading my little Featherweight in its case, and all my fabric and tools, into an enormous old blue suitcase - then strapped my seat back support onto the front with bungee cords.  The few clothes I was taking went into a soft bag on top.  Altogether it was enormously heavy, and I spent the journey holding my breath that the wheels didn't break or fall off.  I could barely managed to heft it up the 12 inches or so in and out of the trains but the real killer was having to lift it into the boot of the taxi.  The driver must have had a camera and seen the grimacing and near disaster as it teetered on the edge of the boot, because he actually came and helped me get it out at the hotel. I'm not sure I should try to transport that kind of weight again, it's not good for my back either.

At the retreat I was working some more on my Winter Village quilt using my little Featherweight, which once again attracted many admiring visitors. I pieced four big houses, three little houses, and cut out block packs for another big/little set of houses.

I took one of the new folding cutting mats I got from Amazon and it actually worked quite well.  The join is imperceptible as you cut across it but it does tend to cause one thread to be left uncut.  And as the join is in the middle, which is where you tend to want to cut, this was happening a lot until I retrained to cut to one side of the mat instead. But overall it felt good to cut on and travelled really well in the suitcase. It's also got a non-slip underneath and gripped the table really securely.

 For a break from making houses, I made the Quilted Hamper by Beth Studley using the pattern I bought at FOQ and fabric cut from a bridesmaid dress worn by my sister in law to my wedding.  She isn't a dress person so gave the dress back to my m-i-l, who recently returned it to me.  It was Laura Ashley and had a full skirt so lots of cotton fabric to use.  The colour is more true in the daylight picture above than in the evening pictures below. The hamper is a lot smaller than I expected, it looks big in the pattern picture.  As usual with Beth's patterns, there is a fair bit of hand sewing and fiddly binding to get through but the end result is cute.

The conference room was nice and spacious and fairly well lit.  There were about 25 of us plus two organisers.  It was quite pleasant, very low key with no organised events apart from a few informal workshops.  I did one workshop to make a folding fabric basket, taken from this Spencer Ogg video and quite a clever idea. The venue was an old Victorian mansion now converted with outbuildings into a modern conference venue. The rooms were comfortable and the food was good with lots of gluten free offerings.

Before I left for the retreat, I finished off a pair of fingerless gloves for my son's girlfriend.  She is fairly small, so I got my son to measure her hand and knit one ladies small glove and sent it off to her, then we discussed the fit via Skype.  Then I knit a full pair with slightly looser fingers and sent those off, and she is very happy with them.  The pattern is the standard gloves from Ann Budd's book, and she sent me this picture of her wearing one.

I also finished quilting the antique hourglass top, quilt number 12. 

After a bit of repair work to close some seams that had burst or were fraying, it went into the bathtub for a very gentle soak in imported Orvis soap.  After an hour or so, the water had turned light brown.  Some gentle rinses, a bit of draining, then some patting down with towels and I was able to lay it out in the living room to dry.

That's when I realised that what I thought was just a random assortment of hourglass blocks, was actually a carefully planned scrap quilt.  The centre block was the clue.

Once I saw that, I realised that all the red hourglass blocks in the quilt were each the centre of a block.  Each block is made in identical or similar scrap fabrics but because there is no sashing, the effect is rather lost.

So someone put a lot of effort into designing this quilt layout in 1875, even though they made a terrible mess of the construction.  I hope they are happy that it has at long last been made into a quilt.  After a few days of drying, the Hobbs Heirloom wadding has shrunk to give a lovely crinkly vintage look.

While it was drying, I loaded quilt number 13, the Spindrift BOM quilt, onto the frame.  Really it could benefit from custom quilting around all the different blocks but I don't like it enough to put in that kind of effort.  So instead I have purchased a panto that looks a bit like cresting waves to use on it.  It was a fun quilt to make but the end result is fairly masculine.

Do you remember that quick workshop I took at FOQ to sew a clothesline basket, and I made that little saucer?  Afterwards I ordered some clothesline of my own, and this week I finally got round to having a go.  It came out fairly well surprisingly and feels firm.  It's a good size - I've put my spectacles in for scale.  It's not technically difficult to construct but physically I found it quite hard on my hands - you have to pull tightly on the clothesline that you are feeding in while forcing the previously ziz-zagged layers down with the other hand so they will feed past the needle okay.  You start with the flat base then bring up the vertical sides.  I have enough clothesline to make a second one so I'll probably make one for my sister in law for christmas.

I've got two more days to clear up my machine knitting room (which currently has 200 magazines spread across the floor arranged into 'year' piles) before my new Jack H2 Walking Foot industrial beast machine arrives on Wednesday.  I went ahead and ordered it to get it in before the Christmas period and as I had accumulated most of the cost by selling off MK stuff.  I told the dealer that it's got to go up two flights of stairs and he was like 'yes yes we do this all the time' but perhaps he isn't picturing our long staircases due to Victorian ceiling heights with dog leg landings but he'll find out soon.  Apparently these machines are so heavy with their built in table that two men struggle to get them upstairs.  Let's hope they are strong  and nimble. I'm still dithering over selling my remaining standard gauge Brother 881 machine.  I'm not using it, there is no reason to keep it, and yet it is such a good machine and was my favourite back in the day. I suppose I could give it a reprieve and revisit in six months.  As long as I can make room for the industrial by Wednesday.