Airing of the quilts

 The UK has been in a prolonged cold snap, and even where we live, it has been dropping down to minus 2C on a few days  - we even had a dusting of snow which lasted a few days.

 It just makes going outside very unattractive (so no garden tidying) and even the cold basement is not appealing (so not much sewing or dollshousing), and in general I feel a bit sluggish.

I did however stir myself to empty out the attic quilt cupboards for the c. biennial airing of the quilts.  The quickest route to the spare bedroom is to dump all the quilts down the stairwell first, and then start carrying them along the hall to spread them out on the spare bed to relax flat for a few weeks. DH helped me spread them all out and only asked once how many I have.

The answer probably is 'too many', and I am guiltily conscious that this isn't even all of them - there are three more in the quilting queue, and at least three downstairs waiting for binding, plus the ones we are using on beds etc.  Yes I have given quilts away to DS, and to Project Linus, and have sold a few. But basically my output vastly exceeds my needs.  Which makes me feel conflicted, but then nobody tells a painter that they can't paint any more paintings because they have too many already. Making quilts is a process of creativity and artistic expression as well.

I'm almost finished the Baptist Fan quilting on the frame, I just have one more partial row to do.  I have once again run into the issue of the ruler balancing on the row of attachment pins, but I've rolled the quilt as far forward as possible which is helping.  Meanwhile in the sewing room, I pulled out the big bag of vintage embroideries that I collected several years ago after seeing some quilts online made from vintage linens.  I put them through the washing machine (no colour runs thankfully) and ironed them all in preparation for starting the project. First I'm thinking I am going to sash the Gail Pan embroidered blocks quilt, and am waiting for a delivery of a Tilda solid that I hope is going to work. It would be good to get that all finished before taking over the sewing room for the vintage linen quilt.

I did finish the Japanese decorated fan kit that I was working on, it's so colourful with so many Japanese motifs.  A lot of fiddly work but I'm pleased with the outcome. It's a nice souvenir of Japan.

I finished the Christmas sampler I was stitching. By chance I found an old frame in a skip that was just the right size, which I sprayed grey and then applied some crackling medium, before painting white over that.  It makes a nice 'frosted' setting for the stitching. Very festive.

I've done a few bits of papercraft this week.  I followed a video tutorial to make a small journal out of four business envelopes - which I tea-dyed and then ran through my little embossing machine. It has a single signature of mixed pages from my natural dyed stash.

I also made a desk organiser from another video tutorial, along with a loaded pocket of tags.

I've started cross stitching a border for the handtowel that I bought in Salzburg.  It's been a bit of a rocky start, trying to work out where to start in the chart repeat, and where to start on the towel border.  Initially I started at a good spot in the repeat, a few inches from the edge of the towel. But that just looked stupid floating in mid-air, so then I had to stitch backward in the chart until I met the edge of the towel. I also have to be conscious that the wrong side of the towel will be visible, so I'm having to try to keep all the reverse lines either horizontal or vertical - no travelling diagonally to get to the next stitch.

Hope you are either keeping warm, or cool, depending where you live!