Porto pics, and some WIPs

 I've been through my Porto pics now, unfortunately all the outdoor ones are pretty uniformly grey and wet, lol. After weeding out duplicates and duds, there are still 647 photos.  So here are just a few.

The riverside district, looking towards the doubledecker bridge

View over the river Douro, from the bridge

Inside one of the Taylor's port warehouses

The knitting shop

DH's yarn in his favourite colour

Inside the Livraria Lello, which bills itself as the 

most beautiful bookstore in the world

The Grande Museu Das Casinhas De Bonecas dollshouse museum foyer, 

looking towards the exhibit hall

One of the houses on exhibit, in Brazilian style

The absolutely stunning Arabian ballroom, inside the

Palácio da Bolsa

These are the Christmas socks now finished, knitted in yarn I bought in Salzburg and finished off on the trip to Porto. They are vanilla socks but the primary challenge with self striping yarn is ending up with two socks that match - and I feel I did fairly well on this pair.

I've added a green border and have started on the final outer border for my Gail Pan embroidered blocks quilt - this pic is taken under artificial light so the colours look a bit off.

I've started a kit for a little appliqued basket that I bought at Mother's Dream quilt shop in Tokyo  (Reiko Kato).  It is a lot tinier than I expected, the basket itself will only be 5.5" long so the applique is quite fiddly.

I finished sewing the binding on the final quilt which was the pink doiley quilt.  It's a bit narrow on my bed. The scallops look nice apart from the 'valley' between them hasn't come out as neatly as it would have done with bias binding.  I've slept under it for a few nights now, it has a nice weight to it due to the doileys.

I've been toiling away on the second baptist fan quilting job which is the Fat Cat Dresden Quilt, I'm getting near the end of it now.

Before we went to Porto, I made my first project with the woven plaid cloth that I created on my little loom.  It's just a simple tray, but it was still a bit heartstopping to cut into the weaving.  It did not instantly fall apart and in fact behaved fairly well, with only a couple of the grey strands wanting to pop free.

I finished the cross stitch towel border on one end of the towel I bought in Prague, and have started on the opposite end now.

When I was at the retreat, several of my tablemates had a tool box converted from a small jewellery case available on Amazon, so I ordered one as well.  You can remove internal sections to your preference - I just ripped out the lefthand ring storage section, and moved the right hand partitions, then blinged it up a bit with scrapbook paper.

I've started a new weaving project using some cotton yarn from my old machine knitting stash - this will be three small mats in a houndstooth pattern.

I refolded all the quilts that had been relaxing on the guest bed, planning to put them back into their storage cupboards.  As you can see, the pile is higher than the door knobs. I realised as I refolded them all, that there are a few that I don't really want that could be donated or gifted.  There are also several decent vintage or antique quilts, which could be sold.  And there are several frankenstein rescues that I don't need to keep either, although I'm not sure what to do with them.  They were unloved vintage tops, many with severe problems, that I rescued from thrift stores on trips to America in the late 90s/early 00s.  I dealt with their issues as much as I could, sometimes resetting the blocks or adding modern borders, then turned them into quilts that I machine quilted (not very well) on my old domestic machine frame set up.  So they aren't suitable for donation to charities or charity shops as they would probably fall apart if machine washed (and I remember at least one of them, the dyes were running when it got wet). I don't really think they are suitable for sale either as the original workmanship wasn't great and my dodgy machine quilting has not helped, lol. Anyway, by removing all of the above, it reduced the stack to a much more manageable dimension.  I need to stop defaulting to making Queen-size bed quilts and try to re-train into making wallhangings.  Or maybe even minis.

Winter visit to Porto

 We like to go away together during the winter months, normally to get some winter sun and warmer temperatures than the typically grey and cold UK.  This year we tried Porto, in Portugal, famous for being the home of port wine.  We had checked that typical temperatures were 13-15C so we weren't expecting it to be as warm as previous destinations such as Malta and Cyprus.  However, we hadn't realised that Portugal is typically quite wet in the winter.  Also, this year, it has been battered by several severe storms that have caused flooding and much disruption.  When we saw the forecast for the week was 100% rain for the entire week, and 9-13C, it was a bit depressing but at least we knew in advance and could pack all our British winter clothes to stay warm and dry.

It was a nice week.  It's a very easy destination, the majority of people spoke English, signage is often bilingual, people were friendly, transport was cheap, and for UK prices we could get far superior meals to what we could get at home.  The old town itself, while picturesque, is a bit rough around the edges.  It is a UNESCO world heritage site but a lot of the old centre is dilapidated, or even derelict and abandoned, there are loads of construction sites (many of which don't look like they've been worked on for years) to navigate around, and many buildings are heavily covered in graffiti at ground level.  But there are some stunning historical sites to visit from the 18th and 19thC times of prosperity, and many amazing churches dating to much earlier.  As well as exploring the old town and visiting one of the port warehouses and attending a fado concert, we rode the bus out along the Douro river to the fishing port of Matosinhos for a lovely fresh fish lunch one day, and another day we rode the train to the neighbouring city of Braga.  That happened to be the day that Storm Marta hit, so the weather was particularly bad but Braga was lovely, with wide avenues and lovely squares lined with handsome period buildings.

I haven't downloaded the photos off my phone yet, so sorry, no pics this week.

I didn't find much in the way of craft shops. In Braga I found a couple of fabric stores mainly aimed at dressmakers, and a sort of indoor market that had some cheap craft supplies.  I didn't buy anything craft wise apart from some Portugal themed fabric and a knitting bag made in the same fabric, from a home linens store.  I was tempted by all the colourful ceramic reproduction tiles, referencing the many tiled houses in the old town, but didn't buy. DH found me a nice knitting shop not far from our hotel, called Ovelha Negra, which had a good assortment ranging from Portuguese yarns through to Rowan, Lettlopi, Opel and even some American brands.  I picked up some neon yellow Spanish 100% wool  called Mota, as DH admired the colour, so I will knit him a hat (and possibly fingerless gloves if there is enough left over.  

I did come across a dollshouse museum called O Grande Museu Das Casinhas De Bonecas, spotting their brochure in the tourist info (and not knowing about it in advance, as accused by DH), so we visited that as well.  They are fairly new, having only been open two years, and were delighted that we were visiting, I got the impression they are struggling to get publicity.  The museum was in a converted garage workshop, so quite a good size and well lit, a big white space.  The many houses are in plexiglas boxes for easy viewing.  They are specialising in houses that were sold for play, by big manufacturers such as Real Good Toys, Duracraft, DeAgostini etc. so it is not a destination for miniature collectors.  They are buying used houses or receiving donations, which they then renovate in their workshop and furnish with mostly cheap imported furniture. I enjoyed seeing the houses that looked like Portuguese or Brazilian houses, plus they had some of the Chinese kits that I have built, and also the Real Good porch kit that I built and converted to fit on my Canadian house.  They also had large collections of porcelain dolls, of the quality that came in part-work magazines, which aren't really my thing. But the hospitality was warm and included a hot drink, so we enjoyed the visit.

I was working on my Christmas striped socks and finished the second one near the end of the holiday, I just need to do the kitchener stitch to close the toe.  I also took a cross stitch magazine kit and did a little on it. I still need to sort out my goodies from the cross stitch retreat last weekend.

On retreat

 I was away this weekend at a two day cross stitching retreat up in Sheffield, the same one I attended a year ago.  The ladies I sat with last year have all stayed in touch on WhatsApp so it was like meeting up with friends.  They and most of the other attendees are serious stitchers, buying all the things and tools and enough charts and kits to keep them going for 200 years.  I remember being like that when I was younger, lol.  Now I am fully aware that I already have enough projects in waiting at home to keep me going for at least a few decades, so my shopping impulses are much milder.  I'm also just a dilettante with cross stitch, I enjoy dabbling at it but I'm not particularly good and I'm very slow.  Still fun to be away and with like minded people, and to see what everyone is working on.  I was working on my hand towel cross stitched border, and I took along a few other small kits that I've started such as the Houses of Great Britain series.  I've come home with lots of goodies: table gifts, a few patterns, a few free things off the swaps table. 

The handstitching of quilting binding continued this week - I finished off the poison green checkered Dresden quilt, and have almost finished the final pink doiley scalloped quilt.  Meanwhile I have done a bit more work on the Gail Pan embroidered blocks quilt.  I did sash the blocks in the end, but with a subtle half-inch wide strip, just enough to give the eye somewhere to rest. Then I started pulling out possible border fabrics from my stash, trying out a lot of possibilities.  I think I have settled on this reproduction print and I'm probably going to insert a second narrow sashing of green just to give some definition. The colours aren't showing well in this photo taken in artificial light.

I finished up the final little American Country panel oval basket that I was working on last week.

I have a plastic tub of these little containers now, made up from the two panels I bought in Tokyo.  They are all cute and all seem like they should be useful, and yet I have not as yet been using many of them.  I may need to go to another craft fair in the future and unload some of my production.

On small dollshouse kits this week, I made up an old club project for a hatbox and shopping bags in printed cardstock.

I also found my notes, and shaped formers, from a class I took at Hove dollshouse week back in 1995, to make fabric covered containers.  I had always meant to get back to this and make some more, and like so many things, 'one day' never came.  So I had a go at making a few containers, which involves cutting pieces of thin cardstock to fit the wooden shapes, covering those in fabric, and assembling the liner and outer using the wooden shape as a temporary former.  It sounds simple but in fact I found it difficult to get a neat result.  I tried a little oval box, a rectangular casket and an open box. Also you need fabric with a very small print to be in scale, and I don't have so much of that type of print.  Needs more practice I think.

The next kit in the queue (my basket of small projects is almost empty now!) is a kit for making a dollshouse rug using bunka trim, from Little Trimmings.  Bunka is a Japanese? braided cord that can be teased out into a curly spiral of thread.  When glued down to a flat surface, it looks like carpet texture.  I've prepared the base, and coloured in the pattern with pencil crayons to help prevent white showing through, and prepared the pieces of bunka.  So now it will be lots of fiddly gluing, going to take a while I think.

I saw another retirement clock - I'm not going to get this one but it made me smile:

Memories of South Korea

 Some time ago online, I randomly came across an artist's installation project called The Cherry Blossom Project. The artist was Sara Cook, author of a book on the Korean textile art of Bojagi, and she was inviting participants to sew strings of traditional Korean 'mandus' (dumplings) in Korean silk organza which will be hung as a mass installation in late May at the Phoenix Arts Space in Brighton.  The reason I decided to pay to sign up was for the opportunity to try stitching with this interesting fabric.

I had seen the  wonderful stiff and gauzy silk organza in the many traditional costume tailoring shops in Korea, and I had worn a polyester version when I rented a traditional hanbok costume to do the tourist visit to one of the Royal Palaces.  It felt crisp and cool against the skin, even on the warm day, and surprisingly not scratchy.  I only saw it on rolls in tailor shops, I didn't see anything that looked aimed at the domestic sewist but I wasn't really looking then. This is the fabric used to make the pieced Bojagi patchwork which looks like stained glass when held up to the light.  When I got home, I bought a book and then found out that it is very difficult and expensive to buy the authentic silk organza from the UK.  

me posing in a cheesy way at the rental shop's photo corner 

in my tourist hanbok costume.  The jacket is made in polyester organza.

My kit arrived, with five pieces of starched Korean silk organza, which Sara had dyed with natural colours in shades of pink.  Apparently she has been trying out different dyes so there will be subtle colour differences across the installation.  The instructions showed how to fold in a quarter-inch seam allowance  - the fabric instantly holds a crisp crease just by marking it with a bone folder.  I thought the organza would fray more, but perhaps the starch is preventing that and I had no issues.  The crisp organza has a real 'spring' to it, so the dumplings hold their shape like little firm marshmallows - when you pat them down, they spring back up into shape. It was easy to stitch with a whip stitch, folding the squares on the diagonal to create the dumpling shape.  After stitching the five graduated sizes, I strung them on the provided cord and took photos.  Then I boxed the string up and posted it back to the artist. I look forward to seeing photos of the finished installation.  And if I ever go back to South Korea, I will make efforts to acquire some of this wonderful translucent fabric.

This week has just been lots of hand sewing binding down, and sewing hanging sleeves onto the two wallhangings.  I started with the little Crib Quilts American Country panel that I had quilted with clamshells. The map of 'Quilt Town' includes the Crib Quilts shop in Tokyo, which made me wonder if it was a real map of their neighbourhood.  But when DH helped me compare it to Google Maps, there isn't much correlation apart from the railroad tracks.

Next was the New Zealand 'Turning Twenties' quilt.  Not a thing of beauty due to all the busy fabrics featuring NZ motifs, but it brings back lots of memories of my 2024 trip.  DH prefers the back of it, which is less busy as I was using up all the big leftover pieces.  

Next was the digital panel of tea pots. I had found when quilting this that the panel is not square on, but actually a little skewed.  This, combined with there being a lower density of quilting in the lower section where the drawers are, is making it hang quite badly with a big bulge at the bottom.  I tried steaming it flatter which helped but gravity is against me.  So I think I am going to have to stitch in a rod or batten at the bottom to correct the bulge.

Currently I am sewing binding onto the ugly poison green checkered Dresden quilt. The final quilt will be the pink doiley quilt.  I remembered, after trimming it last weekend during the virtual retreat, that I had planned to add interest to the plain sides by scalloping them.  But I had only cut straight of grain binding strips when preparing the quilt, and I didn't have any more of the pink background fabric (the usual recommendation is to use bias binding for binding curves as it lies flatter).  I experimented with a sample, and found that if I kept the scallop pretty shallow, and consciously sewed fullness into the straight grain binding strips, then they could work.  So I cut both sides into scallops and sewed the binding on.  Sadly I forgot the trick where you clip into the corner and pull the edge straight to sew the binding across where two scallops join, so I made a mess of all the corners.  So I had to unpick both sides and do it over again.  It should be ok now.

Once I had all the binding on, I used the last part of the virtual retreat time to make a Japanese-style rice pouch bag - this was a project that came, along with the fabric, when I was a member of the Tilda Club.  It is enhanced with some hand embroidery here and there.  I may give this to my niece when she visits the UK.

I reorganised my Japanese fabric stash, which had become a bit chaotic.  I feel guilty about how much I bought on my last few trips, that I haven't used up much of yet.  I did pull out the remnants of the American Country panels 22 and 23, and made up a final couple of pouches to use them up.  This zip pouch, and an oval basket that I am still working on.

I took my new hobby of junk journalling on the road this weekend, trying out a session at a local church where you can hire a table to yourself to work on.  There were only a couple of other ladies there, doing scrapbook layouts, but they were quite friendly.  I cut out a digital journal kit that I had printed at home, and worked on a few master board collages.  I might do it again, I think the next session is in a few months.

I've started researching a possible trip to China for 2027, but it sounds quite intimidating.  Language and cultural hurdles aside, apparently it is a very difficult country for gluten allergies. I read that they don't even have a word for gluten in mandarin, and that it is very difficult to explain your needs because allergy awareness is low.  Lots of stories online of coeliac tourists really struggling to find things to eat, in a country where soy sauce (which contains gluten) is used in so many sauces and marinades, and so many things are deep fried in wheat batter, and even in supermarkets the food labelling for ingredients is apparently not great.  Coupling that with my inability to tolerate temperature extremes, which means I can really only visit in April or October, and the potential for altitude sickness in some locations. But it does sound like an amazing place to visit, so many stunning natural wonders and ancient historical sites.  It's also quite an affordable country to travel in.  So we'll see.  I'm building up a list of possible destinations for a first-time visit and how long people recommend to see each one.  There are of course organised tours but their itineraries are so whirlwind that it could be quite frustrating.  

Community?

 This weekend I am taking part, for the second year, in the 2026 virtual retreat for the Quilters Guild of the British Isles.  It's quite a big event, apparently they have 533 registrations, so at £50 a ticket, it is hopefully quite a moneymaker for the guild.  It's a mixed programme, ranging from quilt history through to charity quilting initiatives, with profiles of artists, a presentation from Schmetz needles and more. So quite a variety.  Only one 'make' this year, which was arty one-inch cube boxes which didn't appeal to me so I didn't do that one.  I've spent most of the day working through my five quilts waiting for binding while listening.  For the first half of the day, I was feeling good about the sense of community: having some company in my sewing room; finding out more about the UK quilting scene; learning about what other quilters are doing and how they do it, some social contact, seeing glimpses of people's work in the background.  Quilting can be quite a solitary hobby.  

However, in the second half the day, possibly because I was growing tired, I started to feel a bit depressed.  I think it's partly imposter syndrome from seeing all the amazing things people are producing, and how productive they are, and they have the energy to make quilts with a million tiny pieces, and they are putting things in shows and holding exhibitions and taking part in guild challenges etc.  And partly it is the relentless focus in the UK on design, contemporary abstracts, quilt art etc. which I don't relate to at all as I come more from the American design tradition.  It doesn't appeal to me to do, for example, a series on leaves - one woman was collecting leaves in the garden, photocopying them, using design software to extract graphic elements from the photocopies, then creating needlework of elements of the leaves in a variety of styles from boro to applique to crayon art, hand dyed interfacing etc etc.  So no actual product at the end of it, just lots of samples.  That sort of art/design activity is very admired in the UK - it's not for me.   But it does make me feel like I'm just pottering away, making bed quilts I don't need and not often stretching myself.  So  exposure to the community today has been a bit of a double-edged sword.

But as one woman said earlier in the day, and the internet says it is a quote from Katherine Hepburn: “If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.”  Quilting, and crafting in general, has always been as much about protecting and improving my mental health as it has been about producing anything, or being artistic.  There's another full day of programme tomorrow, hopefully after a night's sleep I will be refreshed and feeling more positive.

So today I was tackling the three bed quilts, large wallhanging and small wallhanging all waiting to be bound. Two of them were already pressed and trimmed.  I pressed and trimmed the other three, and made hanging sleeves for  both of the wallhangings.  Then there was just lots of machining on binding.  I've done four of them, one more bed size quilt to tackle tomorrow.  Now I need to do all the meters of  handsewing to finish the bindings - I can't manage stitching binding down on the machine, I never get a tidy result.

I finished quilting the baptist fan design on the Checkered Dresden Fan quilt - this is a picture before I washed it - and it was one of the quilts I sewed binding on to, today.  I'm definitely getting better at the stitching, in person you can see an improvement towards the end compared to the beginning.  I'm not entirely happy with how big the fan is compared to traditional handquilting, that's a function of the rulers I'm using, but the design has good coverage and a nice texture. The quilt is huge, and I don't know what I'm going to do with it. It's too big to donate to Quilts for Care Leavers or Project Linus.  I've now loaded  the Fat Cat Ruler Dresden Plate quilt onto the frame, ready for it to get the baptist fan treatment as well.

I also finished weaving the almost three meter strip of sock wool woven cloth.  My ball of weft yarn ran out just a little short of the end of the warp.  Since taking these photos, I have hand-fulled the weaving in the sink which has given it a softer, fuzzier texture and closed up the weaving.  The plan is to cut it up and use it to sew some small items.  My niece is coming to the UK  in a few months so I plan to make her a few things with it as gifts.

Continuing to whittle down my stash of mini kits.  I attempted a wheelbarrow of cardboard which I think was another old club project, but it was just too crude and a bit out of scale, so I ended up throwing it out.  The next one out of the basket was a Pat Cutforth Cancer Research kit to cover a cardboard trunk with faux leather - but where was the trunk?  After looking through my cupboards, I eventually located the cardboard trunk in a collection of boxes and mini baskets.  The faux leather had become rather brittle with age, and the cardboard trunk was a somewhat crude base to work on, but it turned out alright in the end.  It doesn't really fully close nor fully open, so would have to be displayed as it is.

It's been a bit of a running joke in this house since I retired, that I have trouble remembering what day of the week it is - since I don't have the framework of a working week/weekend any longer.  I saw a clock on Facebook for elderly people that says the day of the week, and joked about it to DH.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realised it would actually be useful.  So I have bought one - embarrassingly it is marketed as a clock for dementia sufferers.  I'm not that far gone.  But I'm appreciating being able to easily see the date and date of the week at a glance.  I probably don't need to be told that it's afternoon or early evening or whatever - not yet anyway.

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!