A sewing week

 I haven't touched the dollshouse project this week as I have spent a lot of my time sewing, and then I was away Friday-Sunday for a sewing retreat.

I spent most of a couple of days sewing up another bag test, this time for a medium-sized handbag with strap. I can't show that one (it turned out fine though), but I can now show the tote bag I tested a few weeks ago since that pattern has since been released. It's a straightforward box-corner tote with mesh pockets inside.  I used some of the vinyl I bought from Manmade Fabrics at the October retreat, which sewed up beautifully on my new industrial machine.

My eyesight is distinctly middleaged nowadays, but I did notice on this week's test bag that my seams looked a bit fuzzy like chenille.  Finding and putting on my 3.5x magnification readers revealed that every stitch puncture had forced out a little tuft of fabric thread or stabiliser.  So that seemed a bit odd, so I took the needle out of the industrial for the first time and had a look at it with the same magnifiers - size 26!!!!  you could probably sew leather boots with a needle that thick.  I have swapped it for a considerably smaller needle which is behaving much better.  I had sort of vaguely thought that the dealer had left the machine all set up ready for me to sew with, it had never occurred to me to check the needle he had put in.  Or perhaps left in, if that is the needle the factory installed.

I finished the little cross stitched pincushion  I was working on last week.  It's cute but probably not incredibly useful. Nice to finish something small in cross stitch though instead of the larger projects that drag on for years. I had the little pair of vintage scissors in my stash, I don't remember where I got them.

At the sewing retreat, I spent Friday working through Months 19 and 20 of the Australian BOM - which was basically cutting sashing strips and stitching them to all the blocks, and then cutting the in-between patches that join the blocks together.  It needed a lot of concentration as there are multiple sashing colours and block sizes, and being a kit meant I only had just enough fabric and hardly any left over so I didn't want to make a mistake. So it was a good thing to do at the retreat - apart from a large stream of admirers who caught sight of the embroidered blocks and wanted to see them, and then brought their friends to see them, who brought their friends etc.  None of them had ever seen anything like the style of this design and were amazed that it was all done by hand and not by a fancy embroidery machine (oh, and there was a group of about 10 ladies who had all brought their £15,000 sewing/ embroidery  machines for a class so about £150,000 in one corner of the room which made it look like the NASA control room for shuttle launches).  Two of  the admirers were so enamoured that they are going to sign up for the BOM as well because it's still available.  I pieced the centre of the quilt and the borders but didn't join them together yet as I want to find a substitute fabric for the rather dull one in the kit. Also I haven't finished my Dresden plates yet which will go in the corners. It's so wonderful to have this project finally turning into a quilt and not just a pile of untrimmed embroidered blocks.

Friday night I sewed a quick cover for my Featherweight as I had completely failed to find the nice patchwork cover I made for it several years ago, despite combing through my sewing room twice (although I found lots of other glory holes - that room definitely needs a tidy up).  My Featherweight was once again much more popular than me amongst the retreatees, many people came to coo over it and tell me how their mother/grandmother/auntie etc. used to have one and how they are worth £600 now in America. Many threats were made about disappearing the machine off to a new home but disappointingly noone offered me £600 for it.

Saturday morning I sewed together some simple patchwork panels cut from a Tilda 'Hometown' charm pack for a tool caddy but couldn't go any further because I need more supplies.  That left me with the Edyta Sitar Winter Village blocks that I have worked on at a few retreats.  While cute, they are a bit tedious because each house takes about three times longer to cut out all the squares and rectangles in the listed sizes than to actually sew.  I got bored with that pretty quickly and decided to turn the remainder of the Tilda charm pack into pinwheels with the help of some linen-print tonals I bought from the on-site supplier. I don't know what I'll do with them, but I have more Tilda fabric I could sash them with. I was able to make 16 x 8inch pinwheels.

I also bought some one-metre cuts of tone-on -tone solids in pretty colours because it was only £5 a metre and they will be useful for lots of things.

Then it was back to the House blocks.  I laid them out on the floor of an adjacent conference room on both Saturday and Sunday to choose fabric for subsequent blocks, and was able to finish  as far as 21 of the 23 houses, and to cut block kits for the remaining two houses.  And that is in both the large size blocks and the miniature house blocks I am also making. So 42 out of 46 houses done.

The designer used the mini blocks for a separate wall quilt but I would kind of like to work them into the main quilt somehow, perhaps as a border.  The main quilt itself isn't very big, so there is room to add the little houses on as a border.  I'll have to have a play on my design wall.

I took my usual two travel knitting projects with me to the hotel to work on in the evenings - the Paducah lace shawl and the Lace scarf.  It was the final weekend of the new year's sumo tournament in Tokyo so I was watching the matches on my tablet while I was knitting. Exciting to think I will be there myself soon, and I'm hoping to get a ticket for the May tournament in Tokyo as well as touring around the sumo district.

I don't think I said that I finally finished the Elden Ring video game a few days before Christmas.  228 hours of gameplay following a 100% walkthrough as my guide.  Although the last 20 or so hours were just switching up my build and grinding levels trying to beat the gimmicky final boss fight which was an annoying finish to an otherwise excellent gaming experience. It's an unbelievably huge game, I never would have found several of the areas on my own without the walkthrough to help me.  It kept me busy from March until December and was something I could share with my son (although he 'finished' the game in about 45 hours - so he missed a lot of the optional areas).  So I don't regret the time spent although I can't help thinking what else I could have done in 228 hours.  That's like 9.5 days, or almost 20 if you only count waking hours.  I've now moved on to another souls-like game called 'Prey' which is set in a space station devastated by an alien invasion but it's not nearly as good and the visuals are quite monotonous apart from the occasional space vista out the windows.

I have been spending some time since Christmas trying to rescue a quilt I made for my son maybe 12 years ago.  He uses it a lot and had taken it to his new apartment, but mentioned that it had some loose threads and maybe I should take a look at it.  When I got my hands on it, I was amazed to see almost the entire back of the quilt covered in big loops of thread detached from the quilting.  At first I thought perhaps he had just popped a few stitches with use, but it's the entire quilt. I think what has happened is that the Bottom Line polyester thread I used in the bobbin, which is a very strong thread, has just sawn through the top cotton thread on all the broader parts of the motif where the stitches were a bit longer.  I normally use King Tut as my top thread, which is a high quality thread, but I can't remember what I used on this particular quilt.  It's rather alarming, as I quilt all my quilts on the frame with Bottom Line in the bobbin, it's recommended because it's a fine thread and you get more on the bobbin and it beds into the stitches well.  I haven't noticed anything like this happening on any of my other quilts but then none of them have had the hard use and washes that my son's quilt has received.  So I'm trying to unpick the existing all-over quilting design to remove all the loops, and then I will re-quilt it at the sitdown machine.  It's quite a pain to do, the hanging loops are obviously easy but then the stitches get smaller into the points of the design motif and those have remained firm and are hard to unpick. It's going to be a long job I think.