If you wait long enough then you don't have to do it

 This week I tackled some of the glory holes in my sewing room that I mentioned in the previous post.  For example, I had about 15 big plastic sacks containing either fabric collections, WIPs or planned projects - none of which were well labelled, everything was jumbled together and it was all in a relatively inaccessible corner cupboard.  I dragged it all out bag by bag to evaluate.  The fabric collections were pretty easy - I printed A4 labels to slip into the bags to identify them.  The purchased kits were similarly labelled.  Planned projects were more of a minefield, and I made some decisions.  I am no longer going to make the Piece O'Cake designs 'Aunt Millie's Garden' applique quilt that I've been collecting red fabrics for over 10 or more years - I've done my one enormous needleturn applique quilt and I think now that I don't want to make another.  So all those red fabrics got re-homed.  The big lengths of yardage I bought for two Stack N Whack quilts around 1998 went into the backings pile - it's been years since my Stack N Whack phase and I don't even like those fabrics much any more.  I put for recycling the massive binder of handouts from my first ever sampler quilt c. 1994, I don't even have that quilt now and there are much better sources for accurate block patterns nowadays should I ever want to make another.  So now I have a corner cupboard with well-labelled distinct project bags and I have updated my quilt queue list accordingly - it felt good to cross off some ancient unwanted projects.  I made new labelled bags for the four or five newer project accumulations that were on the floor in boxes or trays and cleared them off the floor.  I put away the massive block holder I made for the Australian BOM because those blocks are all sewn into sashed rows now.  I have pulled out the teetering tower of 'FQs waiting to be put away' which was constantly falling over, and have put them on my ironing surface so that I really will put them away (I haven't yet though).  It's a start, there is still of stuff that would benefit from being sorted out.

I finished the dresden plates for the corners of the Australian BOM and sewed them into the corners.  I can't do much more without finding a replacement fabric for the inner and outer border.  The drab tonal that came with the kit doesn't appeal to me at all.  I've spent quite a while searching online and got DH to take me to the local quilt shop, but I haven't found anything that goes with these faded sugary pastels.  Next time we go to check on the caravan, we will stop into Bramble Patch in Daventry which is a much bigger quilt shop with a lot more fabric, hopefully I can find something there.

At the sewing retreat, I pieced two small panels of Tilda squares for the Tilda Club Sewing tool organiser that arrived recently.  I carefully pieced the panels so that the fabrics featuring ladies all had their heads facing upwards.  This week I sewed on the contrast fabrics and cut out the pouch shapes.  Did I sew the contrast fabric onto the side of the panel so that the heads would face upwards? No I did not.  I don't feel like piecing and quilting more panels so I am just going to live with upside down ladies. There are some sideways ladies on the back panel but at least they are hidden.

An acquaintance was celebrating her diamond wedding anniversary, and I made her a card on my Brother Scan'n'Cut using one of the downloadable projects and a printed paper I got in the Colemans closing down sale.

I went to a Lace Day where I finished off the first Bruges Lace flower from the Sutton book. It's okay but not great: I had some tension issues both with my passives and with the filling (too many twists) and made a mess of some of the sewings (I hate sewings).  I've made a start on Flower 2 which is fairly similar to 1, hopefully it will come out better.

And I finished the cross stitch bookmark which I started during caravan holidays this summer and only worked on occasionally because I found the narrow band physically hard to hold - I posted earlier the crude frame I made to stretch it out.  Plus I found the counting hard.  So some of my cross stitches are not well formed.  But overall I'm pleased with the effect, the colours are quite striking. The kit came with blue felt to finish off the back, and the tassel.

We're allowed to reveal our recent test bag makes now - this is a pattern by Mrs H designs for her upcoming bag retreat.  It was a straightforward sew once the beta bugs were identified in the pattern - one of those has resulted in my handle being much too long so I need to shorten it.  The fabric is fun - I got it in Nippori fabric town in Tokyo on our 2019 trip.  I wasn't planning to visit Nippori this time but now I feel like I want to get more cute bag fabric. And it was a joy to use my new industrial on this - on the final top stitching around the upper edge, it chomped through multiple layers even where almost half an inch thick (where the strap tabs are in the seam) without even changing sound, no straining whatsoever. I'm still keeping my fingers well away from the needle.

I'm enjoying making bags but have a new issue of an ever-growing collection which I don't actually use.  I haven't carried a handbag for decades apart from the occasional business trip or funeral.  Everything goes in my fairly smart Mia Tui backpack which is much better for my back.  I prefer to sew organisers or tote bags because I might at least use those.  But I'm learning a lot from sewing bags even though I don't use them much. People will probably think 'why don't you sell them?' but in my experience selling handmades is a total PITB, people barely want to pay the cost of materials much less labour, and if you are selling it then you feel like it has to be perfect which mine rarely are, and I would worry about how they will stand up in use etc.  I sometimes give them as gifts, such as to my m-i-l who appreciates them.

I tried out one of the UK Quilt Guild's new virtual lecture series today: a talk by American quilter Lori Dickman on speedy solutions for cutting and organising your scrap stash - tickets were £8.  It took the form of a Zoom call with almost 300 participants. They made the strange decision to open the room 30 minutes early, resulting in a constant arrival of people many of whom were having problems with their camera, or their mike, or both, and telling their husband all about it without muting, we heard one husband reading out their wifi password, somebody else was listening to the radio or TV...I gave up and turned everyone down until the speaker arrived. Being American (sorry to Americans) we had the inevitable 15 minutes of self-promotion of her website, books and courses before getting to the actual talk.  Very much like Bonnie Hunter's scrap system so I don't know who came up with it first, or perhaps minds just think alike.  It's funny what different ideas people have about what constitutes a scrap.  Lori will cut out anything leftover from a project including cutting squares as big as 12.5 inches - if I had that much fabric left then it would get folded and stored in my FQ collection.  Unlike me, she actually uses all her cut out squares for projects which is what her books are about.  One suggestion she made which I had never thought of was to use our collection of speciality rulers to cut scraps: cut out hexies, Dresden plate segments, tumblers etc.  I might actually use those whereas I rarely seem to use my scrappy squares. Food for thought.  She sorts and stores her squares by size, but tries to organise them into darks, mediums and lights within each size box.  I've been storing mine by size and colour and hadn't worried about value apart from keeping very lights separate.  If you quilt - do you keep your scraps? How do you organise them?  Do you use them?