Keeping busy

 I mentioned last week that I had finished the knitted cat.  Here are some photos.  DS and girlfriend love it.  I think I will knit a second one for myself because it just looks so cat-like, really amazing pattern.

I also mentioned that I had put together a sliding lid cartonnage box that was a free workshop online several months ago.  I used some small pieces of special Singer sewing machine fabric that a friend gave to me some time ago, which has been waiting for the right project. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  It still amazes me that you can take some cardboard, glue and fabric and turn out a decorative functional box.

This week I finished quilting the Di Ford Giggleswick Mill quilt.   I'm so happy that I could quilt this on my Simply Sixteen using rulers, it would have been a complete pain to try to do at a sitdown machine and wouldn't have turned out nearly as well because I'm not much good at free motion quilting. I'm also pleased that this only had to wait about four years for quilting, my backlog is finally going down.  It's a really nice pattern, with the broderie perse and the great reproduction historical print in the border.  My quilting went alright, nothing too embarrassing although the border quilting got a bit haphazard.

With that off the frame, I could load on the Australian Vintage Needlework BOM that saw me through COVID lockdowns.  To begin with, I am floating the top and stabilising it by quilting around the frames.  There are so many embellishments on the blocks that I didn't dare try to load the top onto the rollers the normal way.  Looking at all the detail and embroidery on this quilt, I can't believe I actually did it.  Amazing what can be accomplished when you are locked in your house with most of normal daily life activities suspended.

As a reward for tidying up my sewing room last week, I have pulled out one of the Japanese kits I bought at Sakura Horiki in Tokyo for making a fabric picture of colourful birds (by pushing fabrics into slits in foam). I'll be working on that this week.

And I've been doing some cross stitching, working on my dollshouse, gardening etc.  I also hauled my largish collection of vintage and antique needlework magazines downstairs and typed out an index in preparation for trying to downsize them.  The oldest are some 19th Godey Lady books and it goes right up to  a stack of McCalls' Needlework & Crafts from the 70s and 80s. In fact I'm a little surprised by how much I have, yet another collection that held my interest for several years. I just loved looking at black and white ads from the war years, or reading Victorian knitting instructions for obscure knitted items.  And I used to pour over McCall's issues from the library when I was a pre-teen, bedazzled by all the craft projects and wanting to make all the things.