I'm melting...

...and not from a bucket of water either - the UK is in the middle of a heatwave. It's been in the low 30s since Friday (around 90 degrees F) and very sunny. I can't cope with heat at all, so I am feeling  stressed and uncomfortable.  My part of the office is not air conditioned either so it was not fun today at work. And I haven't been sleeping well  even with a fan going.  At least with this old house, there are some rooms that stay cool (unlike our previous super-insulated new build which turned into an oven) so I may camp in one of the downstairs rooms until the weather breaks. My sewing room isn't too bad either so I've put in some hours working down there over the weekend. Apparently we are going to have an unusually hot summer which I feel depressed about but I expect some people are skipping around with glee at the prospect of a 'real' summer.

Last weekend I made another Pumpkin Basket, this one in Japanese fabrics as a gift for my m-i-l for her birthday in the autumn.

Then I made one more so that I could use the Tilly brooches I made a few weeks ago.  This is still the Pumpkin Basket pattern but I omitted the darts in the top to make it more of a bucket shape.

After the basket production line was tidied away, I got out my Indigo Bear's Paw UFO quilt.  According to the date on the project bag, I started this in 1998 so it's coming up to its 20th anniversary which apparently is either China or Platinum, lol.  After doing some arithmetic (shudder) and a fair bit of measuring, I added inner spacer borders then applied the sawtooth edging (in progress picture).  So now I just need to sew on the plain white outer borders and it's ready to join the waiting-for-quilting queue. I love this crisp white and blue. But I would like to quilt it with a hanging diamond grid which I can't do on my home machine frame, so it would have to be a walking foot job which will just be incredibly tedious to execute.

This week I also finished what I think is the 25th and final block of my 25 block hand applique quilt so after I finish the Bear's Paw top, then I can start trimming my 25 blocks to size. I appliqued the lattice with the 'freezer paper on top' method which I have to say I didn't like at all, it felt like the paper was really in the way and made it hard to get smooth curves.  Usually I draw around templates for needleturn applique but for such an intricate shape I thought I would try a different method. I gave up on it after I'd done the outer and inner edges and went back to my usual mark and turn process for the insides of the ovals.

Today I finished my Portsmouth Beanie hat from the Spring 2017 issue of Interweave knits, I just need to weave in the ends.  It fits really well but obviously in this weather is not something I will be wearing for a while!

I've done a bit more work in my second bobbin lace snowflake ornament, and I've ordered some hexagonal edging patterns from Irene Tomlinson for my next Bucks Point lace project.

And that's about it for crafting this week.  Hope you are managing to stay cool!