Dithering

 This week seems to have passed by in a blur of post-trip laundry and paperwork, peripheral involvement in my f-i-l being in hospital with a broken hip (he's doing ok), hacking back the weed bonanza in the garden while trying to keep up with tying in / supporting all the spring growth, ferrying stuff back to our caravan in the storage yard to get it ready for the summer, and getting ready for my next trip abroad coming up in another week.

I have been working in the evenings on the French needlepoint, and am stitching the final top strip.  Still not loving it but hoping it will look better made up into a cushion.

But mostly I've been dithering about the quilt project for the quilting trip I am going on to St Kitts in a week.  The group project is an exclusive design by the UK teacher for a wallhanging of five blocks, featuring motifs associated with the islands including a version of their flag.  We've already been provided with templates and some brief instructions for fabric requirements and block size, with the idea that we may choose to pre-cut our blocks and sashing.  We've been told that there will be minimal equipment available for the classes apart from a cutting mat and rotary cutter (and presumably an iron as they haven't said to bring one), and that we need to bring all our own tools and supplies to be able to fuse the block designs and hand piece the blocks and sashing.  There is a quite a lot of time allotted for working on the wallhanging, about 25 hours over several days.

So I started out thinking I would just print out the templates (we've been warned that there are no printing facilities at the destination so we need to print everything at home) and precut my blocks and sashing in my own sewing room rather than trying to do it in class on a borrowed mat.  But some of the fused blocks have a lot of pieces to trace and cut, like the hibiscus flower, and I realised it would just be so much easier to just run my Steam-a-Seam fusible web sheets through the printer and print the templates directly rather than doing all that tracing.  And then I was thinking how much nicer it would be to cut out the appliques comfortably in front of the telly at my leisure with good light, so I did that.  And since I had them cut out, it seemed easier to just fuse them at home so I don't have to queue up to use a dubious hotel iron in the class.  And that meant I had to generate some layout diagrams for placing the applique - at which point I'm thinking "this is really hard, how are we going to do this in class?"  so it seemed easier to do the fusing here and then not have to take so much marking and tracing equipment with me.  And before I know it, I've got 2/3rds of the blocks finished and now I'm worried I will get in trouble for doing too much pre-work, or that I've done the blocks wrong compared to what the teacher has planned.  I suppose there is a chance the teacher will come with pre-traced vinyl overlays for laying out the applique, and clever work-arounds for constructing the project with minimal equipment.  I know I'm overthinking all of this.  I need to stop the busy-brain and just get everything ready so I can pack the project, but I really don't want to have to take a bunch of equipment that I just have to bring home again - I only want to take one suitcase. And I didn't have the right green compared to the sample we've been shown, so I tried to emergency order some more green from one supplier this week who turned out to be out of stock.  Nobody else had that same fabric, so I ordered some solid green instead which came today but I'm not sure it's the right green either - so hard to compare to an image on a monitor screen.  Bleah.  So in general I am feeling a bit stressed about the trip but of course am getting no sympathy 'oh you poor dear having to go the Caribbean....', lol.

I can calm my nerves with some alcohol: my order of Pineau de Charente showed up - this is a fortified dessert wine that the gite owners introduced us to last week which is a speciality of their region in France.  I quite liked it, so ordered a couple of bottles when I got home. Nice for a pre-dinner apertif.

I haven't really been doing any other crafts this week apart from 3D printing a folding tablet stand to hold my knitting chart magnet board.  I did order some embroidery floss and 25-count waste canvas in preparation for stitching the French monograms from the book I bought last week.  I'm going to the Big Stitch event in June so that will be one of the projects I take with me.