Nantes textile show

 I enjoyed a pleasant city break in Nantes, France, this week - for my long-planned visit to the Pour L'Amour du Fil textile craft show.  Nantes turned out to be a very pleasant, low-key city; very walkable, lots of green spaces and waterways, a huge chateau, many interesting shops (including fabric shops and knitting shops) and the people were polite and friendly (which may sound like an odd thing to say, but I still remember the disdain for English tourists encountered in Calais and Paris back in the 80s and 90s).  Not much English was spoken, but I was amazed to find French vocabulary from my school days materialising from the dim recesses of my brain.  I thought I had forgotten most of my French, or at least replaced it with Japanese, but things were coming out of my mouth that I didn't even know I still remembered.  Perhaps it was being immersed in the language and hearing it all around me. Although I did say 'yes' in Japanese several times by accident before hastily changing to 'oui'.

The show itself was good, about 125 stands plus around 20 small exhibition spaces.  It was quite crowded on the first morning, and the line to get in was immensely long but only took about 30 minutes to get through.  Inside the show was equally crowded, with women 2 or 3 deep at the popular stands, but my experience over many years of politely worming to the front of crowded dollshouse show stands stood me in good stead. I was pleased to almost immediately come across Mother's Dream, all the way from Tokyo - they must have to sell a lot of kits to recoup their airfare!  I bought another one of their applique bag kits. My impression is that it's a great show for quilters, probably more than half the stands were quilting related, plus several dressmaking stands (of patterns, or fabric, or childrens patterns etc) and also several bagmaking stands (supplies, patterns, kits).  The next biggest category would be embroidery, but probably only a half-dozen were for cross-stitch.  Then several crochet stands (heavy emphasis on amigarumi), some knitting stands, an antique textile dealer, someone demonstrating bobbin lace, and a few gapfillers like two stands selling dressy silk scarves or snoods, and a few others selling textile related jewellery.  It was quite enjoyable to see so many new-to-me traders, and an aesthetic different from what I see at the Festival of Quilts.  I had bought a ticket for two-day entry, but after three hours I felt I had visited all the stands that interested me, and as I wasn't doing any workshops, I didn't feel the need to return.

The exhibition spaces weren't huge but showcased some really lovely work, with a wide range of styles - from Amish quilts from a private collection, embroidery on quilts, textile art, to modern bojagi.  I took more photos than this but I won't fill the blog up with them.

Shopping haul: I loved the vintage cross-stitch designs of Des Histoires de Broder, but actually ended up purchasing a pattern book and the cutest buttons from Atelier Bonheur du jour.

I loved this sample of theirs, so with the pattern book and buttons I should hopefully be able to make something similar.

I didn't buy much fabric, but loved this pack of fat eighths of Japanese fabric from a Boro stall, and a pack of fat quarters that looked vintage French style to me but actually came from a shop in Barcelona.  I picked up the two ribbons, the sewing book and the magnet at shops in Nantes city centre.

These cute pins for decorating pincushions were from the show.

This is my Japanese bag kit, plus some cute continuous zip and some nice colours of cotton webbing from the show.

The vintage spool is from the show, but the vintage ribbon and adorable lace baby cap are from an antique shop in Nantes.

These junk journal-style notebooks are from a stationery shop in Nantes.

I took a cross-stitch project with me to work on in the evenings, the next house in my Houses of Britain SAL.  At home I have been stitching on the little house from CrossStitcher magazine.

Before I left, I sewed the hems of my woven tablerunner and it's on the table now.  The fabric did not full very much, probably due to the nylon content in the sock yarn.  It looks nice, with the different pattern areas adding interest.  I'm enjoying the weaving but am starting to feel like you only need so many towels, coasters, mats and table runners, lol.

I got in a bit of 3D printing before I went.  Makerworld, the free file site, has tons of free designs for craft tools.  I printed one of these cloth tape measure roll-up devices and it turned out so well that I immediately printed another.  They tidy the tape and turn them into retractable tapes instead of just a tangled mess. I also printed a clever folding zipper pull jig to help with putting zip pulls onto continuous zipper tape.  Still really enjoying using my printed workstation for cross stitch, which keeps everything to hand - no more playing 'hunt the scissors'. DH has been printing various model soldier files although he's still not satisfied with the quality - some of them are fine but not to the standard of purchased models.  That's more to do with the designs and the nature of printing in a filament printer, than to do with the printer itself.

Hats off to travel agents

 This has been a heavy travel planning week, which became a bit confusing because I've been making bookings for four different countries/trips at the same time. I don't know how travel agents can keep dozens of clients straight and manage all their bookings with accuracy and efficiency, but then I suppose they have a lot of software systems and research databases to call upon.  I'm off to Nantes on Monday for my long-planned visit to the Pour L'amour du fils needlework show - I was booked to go during COVID which got abandoned due to the first lockdown, then every year since I've had hotel reservations but ended up going to Japan or New Zealand or somewhere else.  But this year I am definitely going so have been finalising bookings for that.  I've also been finalising a trip in 2027 to China for three weeks, working through my own researched itinerary in conjunction with a China tour company for a private tour (not a group) which is affordable there because local prices are fairly low.  At the same time, every couple of days I have been booking my train journeys one by one for Norway this August, which can be booked 115 days ahead which happens to fall into these past few weeks.  And also a few tours etc.  And communications are ramping up for my trip to St Kitts with a quilting group at the end of May, plus I had my travel clinic appointment to see if I need any jabs (I don't) and have been doing a bit of shopping for the expected too-hot-for-me weather.  First world problems I know, but it is taking a lot of brain power and now I am wondering if it is the demands of planning and research which will start limiting my travels before my physical capabilities give out!  I suppose that's why people use travel agents, but I've never had much luck with them myself.

I washed my Double Wedding Ring quilt and it didn't explode or fall apart. The 80/20 wadding contracted into a nice vintage look.  So it just needs pressing and binding now.  I've not done anything more on the Vintage Linens quilt, we've had a bit of nice weather this week (up to 18C and even 22C one day) so I've been relaxing out in the garden and been on a bit of a reading jag.  I did start stitching on a little house chart from CrossStitcher magazine.

I finished weaving the Sock Wool tablerunner, which is adapted from a pattern from Little Looms magazine.  This photo is fresh off the loom before I washed it to full the yarn a little, and I will be sewing folded hems at each end (so there won't be any fringe).  My tension got a bit tighter towards the end, so the pattern band at that end is a bit shallower but I'm hoping it won't be obvious once it dries.

I glued together the 3D printed dollshouse furniture from last week, and gave it a nice wood colour with some alcohol ink markers in accordance with online advice.  Then a spray of satin varnish.  The Chesterfield chair I painted to look more like leather.  They look decent, and not obviously plastic.

Meanwhile I did a six hour print of this interesting chair which has a 'wooden' spindle frame and printed upholstery, it printed pretty cleanly.  I still need to paint it.

I also designed and printed some ridged roof panels to improve the look of the 1:24 caravan roof.  I've started designing some of the internal furnishings for future 3D printing as well.

But the print I'm happiest about this week is my own design for a Cross-stitch workstation.  I designed this using the Maker Lab desk organiser generator, to my own specifications.  I added holders for marker pens, needle packets, scissors, threader, seam ripper, a tray for floss, and even a removable tray for cut thread ends.  It turned out really well and has really tidied up my work table in the living room, replacing various other makeshift solutions.  It just seems so magic that you can imagine something, draw it out, and then the machine-of-the-future just prints it for you.  Although it did take 9 hours to print. It's not even that expensive.  This used about a third of a roll of filament, so maybe cost £4.25 to print, plus the cost of the electricity of course.  I am feeling a mild urge to design and print organisers for all the things, and all the drawers.

Easter weekend

 We have a four day weekend for Easter here in the UK - something that used to be a much anticipated holiday but now as a retired person, Friday seemed much like any other day, lol.  DH went down to see his parents so I got to do some uninterrupted crafting which was nice.

The 3D printer continues to be run every day.  This week I've been trying out furniture files, starting with some free ones for chairs.  I tried out these three files - it was a mixed bag.  The chair on the right seems larger than 1:12 and was quite chunky.  The chair at the back, which looked lovely, is poorly designed and the side struts have been falling off because they aren't connected properly in the design.  The chair on the left printed beautifully but is smaller than 1:12 scale.

So I made the left chair a bit bigger and printed it again, I think it will be ok with some bun feet added.  I paid £1.41 for the nice Arts and Crafts style dining table on the left in the photo below (not glued together yet).  Then I adapted the file to make a smaller version with a round table (also not glued together yet, on the right in the photo).  I printed a free file for the little end table, then adapted the file to make two smaller but taller occasional tables.  Then I bought a chair file for .44p to match the dining table (not glued together, leaning against the round table).  The first one printed fine, so I printed 8 more (6 for around the table and a couple of spares just in case).  I printed all of these in brown PLA filament but they will need overpainting to look more like wood.

I also designed and printed a couple of small signs for the outside of our front door, to assist in our never-ending struggle to have delivery people actually ring the doorbell rather than knocking inaudibly then fleeing the property, leaving our parcel to be stolen from the front step.

Before I did all the furniture, I bumbled my way through 3D designing a copy of a Japanese lidded wooden tub that I photographed in several old Japanese house kitchens.  It came out fairly well so I printed two of them.

Then I painted up the jars and half-jars, and the tub.  I was trying to make the jars look like old ceramic jars like I saw in the museums.

When they were dry, I installed them in various places inside and outside the kitchen of my Japanese 1950s ryokan inn.

The other thing I 3D printed this week was some eyes for my Mandalorian foundling.  They could have come out with a smoother finish but from a distance they look fine.

I finished the backstitching on the thatched cottage from the Houses of Britain SAL so I'm halfway now as this was house 7 out of 14.

I cut up some more vintage linens for blocks for my Vintage Linens wallhanging and decided not to use a couple of others.  So I probably have all my raw material now, I just need to work on how to assemble it into a collaged top.  And I've continued weaving the middle of the table runner on my little loom.

I finished the baptist fan quilting on my Double Wedding Ring.  While not perfect, the quilting has flattened out and improved the wonky piecing.  After I took this photo, I ran the quilt through a rinse cycle to wash out the starch I used in piecing and to shrink the 80/20 Hobbs wadding for a softer more vintage look, it's currently drying.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Today we had an outing over to Foxton Locks, a Victorian complex of a series of ten canal locks consisting of two staircases of five locks each, carrying the Leicester line of the Grand Union Canal up a steep hill in Leicestershire, about three miles west of Market Harborough. They are named after the nearby village of Foxton.  Very picturesque, and quite busy with people out enjoying the long weekend.  There was also a floating craft market of vendors trading from about 15 narrowboats moored along one leg of the canal, very colourful with various examples of canal art traditional painting.  The lower part of the locks is impossibly twee, like something out of a cross stitch heritage design, with the old lock keepers cottage and an old inn, and various bridges and moored boats.  We had a fairly mediocre lunch in the inn then visited the Canal Museum which tells the story of the adjacent ruins of the Victorian engineering marvel that was the Foxton Inclined Plane: basically a giant elevator that carried canal boats up the hill so they didn't have to queue to go through the locks.  A nice morning out.  All my photos came out rather grey as it was overcast, in real life it was nicer.

The lurgy

 Apparently I have lost all my commuter immunities, now that I live in a low-contact home bubble, because I went down with a dreadful cold following my trip to London.  Wednesday was a complete write off, Thursday not a lot better.  I'm feeling more energetic today although still bunged up.  At least I had our brilliant new telly to watch, which is still a marvel to behold.  And I kept busy with cross stitch (in between naps) so have almost finished the next house in my Houses of Britain SAL.  This is house 7 of 14 and I still need to do the backstitching that will add the detail.

I also used some of the time for learning more about how to use our new toy, the 3D printer. The manufacturer (Bambu) has a free online academy set of courses to work through, and I've also been watching Youtube videos on how to use a free 3D design software called Tinkercad.  Meanwhile the printer has been running most of every day as I try out various files for my Japanese dollshouse.  I have agreed joint custody of the printer with DH, he gets it on weekends and potentially evenings if he had something ready to send to print after work.  I get it during his work day.

[here follows several photos of 3D printing - if this is boring for you, skip ahead]

My first attempt was a 1:12 scale Japanese style table, which I printed at 60% to make it 1:20 scale.  It came out great but a little tall, more coffee table height than Japanese sitting-on-the-floor height.  I laboriously worked out how to cut 2mm off of the height in Bambu Studio and printed two more shorter ones.  Then with much more labour, I eventually managed to contract the length to make it into an end table, and printed four of those.

The next attempt was to take what was described as a 'thumb size teapot with lid' and attempt to print it to 1:20.  The first attempt was too big (plus I promptly dropped the lid on the floor and lost it forever), it's the one on the right.  Then I scaled it down further to get a better size on the left but the .4mm printer nozzle was leaving blobs. So I had to learn how to change the hot end nozzle to the .2mm instead.  That produced much better quality teapots.  So I printed more of those, and then found a 1:12 scale crockery set that had handle-less cups that looked Japanese, and printed a bunch of those plus some food bowls and small plates.

Then I tried my first design attempt in Tinkercad, a simple wall shelf.  This took me probably over an hour but printed ok.  Then I watched some more videos to improve, and had a go at designing a small lacquer tea tray in two colours with cut-out handles.  I printed a prototype, tweaked it a bit to enlarge the handle openings and reduce the base thickness, and then printed several of them to use in my Japanese inn.  I was incredibly proud of these, and not something I could have made very well from scratch. I gave them a coat of Satin varnish for a bit of lacquer gloss.

Then I could make up tea sets:

And put one teaset in each of the balcony sitting areas of the Japanese inn.

Looking through the photos I took in Japan, I found some pics of large storage jars from museum displays.  It's basically a flower vase shape, so I found a flower vase file, took it into Tinkercad and added handles and a lid, and printed it at a suitable height for a large jar.

That worked fairly well so I tried reducing it to 75% to print a small version.  The first one printed perfectly.  The next half dozen kept failing halfway through, leaving me with a lot of 'spaghetti' extruded filament and some interesting half jar shapes that look like big bowls.  Eventually I worked out that the shape needed more support, so bodged in an internal support in Tinkercad and enlarged it back to 80%, and was able to print two more.  I'm going to paint them to look like ceramic (hopefully) but so far have only primed them.

I went through more Japanese photos and then looked for free files online, to print some sushi platters. While I am loving the semi-instant gratification and the ability to instantly scale things to size, this print started to fail as well when one of the platters (foreground) detached from the print bed.  Luckily our printer has the capability to pause, tell it to ignore the failed object, and to continue to print the remaining platters which all turned out fine.

Then I printed two little red boxes which I will age to look like a lacquer box I took a photo of in a museum.

At the moment, I am experimenting with printing 'baby yoda eyes' for my knitted doll, trying to achieve something that looks cute rather than creepy.

Meanwhile DH has been attempting to print far more complex items, starting with a model German soldier that had a lot of sticky-out bits that needed extra supports printed.  He's having more issues, trying to refine the models for better quality and less intrusive support fixtures, without yet knowing what parameters to adjust.  More spaghetti prints.  But we are both learning and it's more fun than not.

I've been pottering away on the 1:24 Caravan kit.  The modifications look a bit crude but ok I think, although there are a couple of odd bulges in the wood pieces I soaked to bend them to the new round shape.  But it's supposed to look like an old caravan, anyway.  The kit was to make this boxy caravan with a roof opening:

But I've given it a rounded nose and a side opening instead:

Before I fell ill, I installed the new thread guide on my longarm and got back to quilting.  I'm doing yet another Baptist Fan, this time on my wonky Double Wedding Ring quilt.  The Baptist Fan pattern is very forgiving at smoothing out most irregularities while at the same time holding everything together evenly.  I'm about halfway through the quilting now (this photo is just the first row) and apart from a few areas of fullness, most of the quilt is looking much less wonky now which is pleasing.

I have corresponded with the dealer about the engineer visit, carefully as they are the only dealer and it wouldn't do me any good in the long run to fall out with them.  I'm being billed for one hour, which is less time than she spent here so I'm just going to pay it.  I've also got the machine booked in for an overdue general service in a few months, we will drive it down to the main dealer for them to do.

Last weekend I started on a project to use up the last remaining larger pieces of my handwoven cloth.  In Japan I had picked up a pattern for a fabric box with a clasp frame top.  I had just enough cloth to cut out the body piece, and I created a lid by piecing together three other pieces.  I used fusible fleece for the stabiliser - I think the shape would have benefited from something a little stiffer as the metal frame is heavy but I was worried about the fabric becoming too thick to fit into the frame when I was already using a thick handwoven cloth.  It was a bit of a job to force the cloth into the frame as it was, but got there in the end.  It's a useful size.  I've never seen these frames in the UK, the lip is horizontal for the lid, but vertical for the box base.

When I started feeling a bit better, I got back to the tablerunner that I am weaving, it has an interesting split pattern (from Little Looms magazine) which took concentration to warp correctly.  I've going to weave the middle plain then repeat the pattern in reverse at the other end.

Some happy mail thanks to a bit of enablement from my online cross stitch group: these colourful trays from Poppekins, a UK designer, with a sewing theme.  And a coaster.