Shopping opportunities

DH kindly drove me over to the Duxford quilt show yesterday, always a nice show for shopping opportunities. It was a cold day and not a lot warmer inside the show, but luckily, as I had been before, I knew to keep my legwarmers and winter coat on while I was shopping. I had a fun couple of hours looking around and seeing what was on offer. There are also some exhibits of quilts to look at (not competitive, but collections by artisans or by groups on display).

I was looking for border fabric for my 30s sampler quilt but despite carefully perusing every fabric vendor, I didn't see any 30s fabrics at all.  Apparently they are completely out of style and I have become a dinosaur clinging to decades-old fabric trends.  Oh well. I eventually found, on the very last stall I came to, some retro-feeling fabrics from Moda and settled for those.  Not exactly what I had in mind but they will be fine I think. The dotted solid will be an inner border and the stripe will be the outer.  Once I got them home I kind of wished I had reversed the quantities so I could do it the other way around, but too late now.

Earlier in the week I hand-appliqued the handles for four little basket blocks while watching TV, and today stitched them together to create block number six.

While at the show I also picked up a few colours of solid greens for this same project as my stash was a bit skimpy on those, some more machine needles and some more Bosal interfacing to replace what I used on the bagmaking, and a few little gifts and stocking stuffers.  On the way home we stopped at Maple Street Dollshouses to see their new quarters in a smaller building along the courtyard from their former home.  They had a nice box of 50p and £1 kits to dig around in, lots of Phoenix kits and bits and bobs.  I was looking for anything that might fit in the Japanese dollshouse but it's such a funny scale (1:20) that there wasn't much.  I got a cheap set of 'copper' bowls that be dirtied up for the kitchen, and a small metal grille that looked kitchen-y.  Also a bag of broken thin flagstones to use for a crazy stone path in the Japanese garden I will eventually make.  DH picked up a bit of terrain material for his hobby of making military scenes with miniature soldiers.

I've done a bit more bobbin lace than usual this week because I've been enjoying using my finished Ansel Camera Bag.  It's turned out really well and I love having everything to hand in a designated place, no more rooting around in a bag trying to find things.  Plus I used to have two smaller bags and what I was looking for never seemed to be in the bag I was looking in.  Now everything is in one place.  I added an inner clasp to keep the sides pulled in under the lid. The strap is adjustable so it can be a shoulder bag if I am also carrying a lace pillow bag, or it can be shortened more like a handbag.

This week on the Japanese dollshouse I stopped procrastinating and made the tatami mats for the final tatami room.  I think there are a couple more mats coming up for one of the balconies but this is the last room with a full tatami floor.  Ironically I am finally getting better at making the ruddy things.

Now I'm going to sweep up some of the furniture kits I skipped over, like this low table.

And I spent some time working out what kind of base I wanted to put the house on, so yesterday DH took me to B&Q where I bought some half sheets of MDF and had them cut to size.   The house will sit on the rear half (where the unpainted bit is), while the front half will lift away to allow the house to open up.  The front half is going to have a small Japanese garden on it (hopefully).  I've put two coats of primer on the MDF and two coats of a neutral grey satin paint. Once that dries I will glue the house on and heave a sigh of relief.  I've been paranoid that the increasing weight would make the decidedly shaky modular structure fracture apart when I am lifting it or moving it around. And the secondhand £5 table is so warped that the house isn't sitting on a flat surface.  Now the house will have a nice stable base to protect it and prevent any flexing. I am probably going to retain the warped table after the build as additional display space, so I sized the base to the width of the table which makes it just a bit wider than the house.  I decided I am not going to put anything to the rear of the house, but I will put a small porch over the side kitchen door so I left some extra room on that side.

Adventures in bagmaking

I've always felt a bit fascinated with bagmaking, and handmade bags, despite the fact that I can't actually carry one myself - partly because of back issues that demand a balanced load in a knapsack with two straps, and partly because I feel insecure unless I head out the door with a huge amount of 'just in case' items (like knitting and a book) that don't tend to fit into a smaller handbag.  But I like the idea of making bags and indeed have made several in the past as an amateur even though I seldom use them.

But I feel like I have moved up into the semi-professional bagmaking leagues with this Ansel camera pattern that I linked last week.  Unlike my previous homemade bags which were stiffened with quilted wadding and/or whatever interfacing I had lying around, the Sew Sweetness bags are highly structured with both the lining and the outer fabric concealing much internal scaffolding.  The result is a bag that not only stands up by itself but also has a very polished look with no drooping or wrinkles.  The outer shell (of lightweight home dec fabric with sewing motifs) is stiffened with single-sided fusible Bosal foam, which I fused to a layer of Vilene medium woven interfacing already applied to the wrong side of the external fabric to prevent any wrinkles happening from the Bosal (a problem that I had read about online).  The bottom panel of the external bag is further stiffened with an insert of Vilene 71F pelmet fusible interfacing. The lining fabrics (quiltweight cotton) are also stiffened with the Vilene and are sandwiched with cheap fabric to create pockets in which are inserted half-inch thick foam pieces for padding (because it is intended as a camera bag).  The straps are four layers folded into themselves of quilt weight cotton stiffened with the Vilene.

I was a bit concerned about my sewing machine (a Janome 6500P workhorse that must be at least 15 years old) sewing through all the layers, especially where two exterior panels were sandwiching a double-folded strap, but using a 90/14 quilting needle and stitching slowly, it didn't hesitate.  The only problem I did have was that the stitch tension through the thick layers wasn't always great, resulting in a sort of 'ladder' effect on the right side in some cases, but some re-stitching in certain areas improved that. I had read online that the Bosal manufacturers do not recommend steam or any moisture when using their fusible products which I feel restricted me from getting a really crisp press, but it's looking pretty good so far.

This is the inner liner structure, with several custom pockets I added to hold lacemaking items like my lace glasses in their case, and my folding portable lamp. I ran out of the blue fabric so used some pink Tilda fabric from my stash for the remaining pockets. The foam padding will protect the lamp and glasses and other items from any knocks.

And this is the outer shell so far (it's not finished yet) which has turned out fairly well. I've decorated my straps with some ribbon featuring buttons, which I bought online from Wool Warehouse. You can see the side straps with the metal rectangle rings that will take the shoulder strap later on.

You can see how the sides are gaping a little which I also noticed in the pictures of the pattern sample.  I don't want my smaller-than-camera-parts lace items falling out so I need to come up with some arrangement to close the gap - perhaps a velcro flap or an inner tie?

So I'm fairly pleased with how it's going, although it is taking a fair while to put together and isn't a cheap project.  On top of the fabric required, Bosal goes for about £10-£12 a packet over here and I used almost all of one packet plus I had to buy 2m of the Vilene (which I've used a lot of), and the metal brackets and a slider buckle, and I bought a 60" piece of the half-inch upholstery foam online (the smallest amount it came in).  I already had the plastic snap buckle things in my stash, cut off from an old knapsack. But the finished bag should be something I will use for years and will  be great for taking my stuff to lace days and courses.

Earlier in the week I did some work on my Japanese dollshouse.  I've now added the little internal roofs above each sliding door, and the shoe stones in front of them, and the sliding shoji window on the back wall. For some reason the sand supplied to go around the shoe stones was not only a completely different colour from the sand they supplied for the first floor shoe stones, but was also a white glitter which looked completely unrealistic.  So I mixed up some of my own sand using some bird sand and some white sand I had in my stash.  It still doesn't match the first floor but at least they are a matching pair and aren't reflective.

I'm still knitting on both shawls.  On the Itineris Shawl, I realised that I was going to run out of yarn if I kept blindly following the pattern.  So I stopped short on the increases and am now knitting up a side strip with only 20 stitches cast on instead of the pattern's 30 stitches.  I'm now down to a tennis-ball of yarn so it is still possible I will run out.  I don't want to have to buy an entire new cake just to finish up so if the worst happens I may need to unravel some of the side strip and start with 10 or 15 stitches, or perhaps dig around in my stash to see if I have something else that would tone in.

Today we did the garden tidy up that the rain prevented last weekend.  Although the plants don't seem to have read the gardening book.  So while the book is recommending things like 'cut off the faded lavender stalks', the lavender appears to think it is still summer and is flowering away with a second flush of flowers. I'm mulching around plants that still have loads of flowers on them  and even the strawberries are still cropping. Perhaps everything is making up for the time lost during the long hot drought over the summer.  I'll have to have a secondary tidy up in another month when perhaps things will have finally died back.  I'd already planted up some tulip pots a few weeks ago and now I've put some winter flowering pansies into another pot.  There are a few more pots with begonias still flowering in them that I haven't the heart to empty, I guess they will keep going until we have the first really heavy frost.

Disasters in baking

Inspired by a free Craftsy video on gluten-free baking that I dipped into last week, I tried out an American recipe for gluten free oatmeal chocolate chip cookies last night.  I'm not much of a baker and the whole experience reminded me why that is.  I had to buy a range of esoteric 'flours' to make up the recommended gluten free mix.  The estimated preparation time of 25 minutes stretched to almost an hour and trashed the kitchen.  My carefully arranged dough balls all melted in the oven and merged into one giant chocolate chip pancake that was falling off the edges of the tray and burning in the bottom of the oven. At the given cooking time of 10 minutes my pizza was still molten, but five minutes later it was overcooked.  Sigh.  The result is a tupperware full of toffee-coloured chocolate chip flavoured granola.  So not a success.  Investigating online, it appears that I should have had the oven hotter, have chilled the dough, have used extra baking powder as UK powder is apparently weaker than US powder, and possibly cut down the butter.  I'm not a chemist, I just wanted some cookies :(

I was going to do some garden tidying today but luckily it's raining so I don't have to.  Instead I did some work on my Japanese dollshouse this morning.  This week I have put together some kits which make up a little toilet room in the corner of the second landing, containing a tiny sink and a Japanese squat toilet which you can barely see now it's installed. I added a towel hanging from a jump ring.

On the sewing front, I assembled block 5 of the 30s Sampler quilt that I showed cut out last week.  I'm planning to sew a padded storage bag for carrying my lace making supplies in, so I have purchased the Ansel camera bag pattern from Sew Sweetness bags.  I've cut out most of the pieces for the medium size but I'm waiting for some interfacing that I ordered online to arrive in the post.  I'm going to use Bosal foam for stiffening so I was researching tips online for working with it.  There seems to be a wide spectrum of opinion between "this stuff is a miracle that's transformed my bagmaking" right through to "this stuff is awful and it ruined my bag with wrinkles".  I think I might play it safe and not fuse the Bosal to my outer fabric directly which is where the wrinkles seem to be a risk.  I'm going to add some extra pockets inside to hold my lacemaking supplies like my light and my glasses case.

I've moved on to the next room on my Christmas cross stitch now.  We've invited the in-laws for Christmas so I'm going to be having a working Christmas rather than a relaxing one, but it's our turn to have them.  Our favourite Christmas holidays are the ones where we can just chill out for several days of crafting and hobbies, relaxing, watching films and eating/drinking lots.  Having guests means having to wear proper clothes instead of pyjamas, constantly planning/cooking meals and cleaning up, not being able to watch any TV we like, having to all sit in one room and make polite chitchat for most of each day (the in-laws think it is peculiar to have people vanishing off to sit by themselves in another room alone) and not really being able to go anywhere much as they have mobility issues and the weather's not great. My m-i-l loves 'having all the family together' like that but I just find it exhausting after a few days. It makes me realise how much my life depends on my regular craftmaking for relaxation and mindfulness. At least I can knit while I'm sitting with them.

I've left my bobbin lace pillow set up on its stand all week and have done some lacemaking while watching YouTube videos a few evenings.  Yesterday I went out to a local group for a few hours and today my lace friends are coming over so I'm getting more done on bobbin lace this week than usual.  I haven't gone back to the Floral sample I started on the course yet, I'm working to progress the previous hexagonal edging with a view to finishing it before I move on.  I don't want too many outstanding lace projects because a) I forget how to do them and b) it ties up all my 'good' bobbins so subsequent projects have to use the less desirable ones  (my teacher on the course picked up one of my secondhand bobbins and the spangle of beads fell off in her hand because the ancient wire had deteriorated).

Evening knitting this week, as well as working on the ongoing edging and on the commuter shawl, was also knitting up a free kit for a Raccoon key ring charm that came with a knitting magazine recently.  I thought it was cute although I'm not sure what I will do with it. Perhaps DS's girlfriend might like it.

Winter is coming

We spent some time winterising the garden today, although the afternoon sunshine seemed to mock us later on.  But there have already been a few light frosts so it won't be too much longer before we will be glad we tidied up.  So we've scrubbed out the various bird baths and fountains and moved the smaller ones into the shed, added the smaller garden ornaments, and carried in the garden furniture as well.  The shed is now very full.  I haven't done much to the plants yet, I'll wait until the frost starts killing off the bedding, but I did earth up the fuschias for protection just in case. We also moved the hibiscus off the patio and tucked it next to a southwest-facing wall for winter protection. In a strange seasonal time parallel, I'm looking at booking a cottage for a week next summer before all the good ones get booked up.  DH is a bit boggled, he can't think that far ahead.

It feels like I got more done this week on crafts, mainly because I have lightened up on the time commitment I'm putting into learning Japanese.  I'm still trying to do a bit of Japanese every day but I'm no longer trying to churn through the chapters in a couple of weeks each. I've also paused the Skype lessons since they were stressing me out because I am so rubbish at speaking.

So I worked on the staircase for the Japanese dollshouse and managed to get it painted, varnished, assembled and installed this week.  It just needs the bannister rail added around the landing, which I am currently working on.

During TV knitting, I am still working on the lace edging for the 10-stitch triangle shawl, after some early problems and a lot of reversing, I have now got into the rhythm of it.  I think it is going to ruffle slightly, probably because the book says the edging naturally wants to be a shallow curve, but blocking may help flatten it.

I've also been working on my Christmas House cross-stitch in the evenings.  The whole piece  certainly won't be done for this christmas, but I'm almost finished the christmas kitchen (the room on the right in the picture).

I haven't done any more bobbin lace since the course last weekend, partly because I was waiting for a secondhand pillow stand to arrive.   I wanted a stand because it was doing my back in to hunch over a big pillow resting on a table. Not many people make these stands anymore, so when I saw one on Preloved for £5, I snapped it up.  I also wanted one that would take my existing pillows, because some of them are designed to only fit a specific pillow that is fitted with a bracket underneath.  However, when the stand arrived, it quickly became clear why it was sold.  It was nicely made but extremely wobbly, perhaps a home effort by a skilled handyman?  I spent some time analysing why it was wobbling, and then applied a variety of solutions which have improved it quite a lot. 

• The legs weren't quite even so I've padded a few with adhesive felt to level it.
• the central post had no sideways bracing. I've duct-taped on a couple of shelf brackets, also with adhesive felt on their bottoms to protect the floor.
•  the extendable support wasn't clamping tightly into the lower part of the post. I've drilled a second hole higher up and added a second fixing which has made it more stable.
• the bolts holding the stand together couldn't be sufficiently tightened. I've replaced all but one with proper bolts that can be tightened securely with a spanner.
• the thinner extendable part of the post was twisting under the weight of the lace pillow and bobbins.  I've braced it on either side with a batten held on with two more bolts.

So it's not pretty, but it's a lot more useable now.  It only wobbles slightly now at the top, which is mostly mitigated by sitting up to the pillow with it butting against my chest. I think if I could replace the final bolt on the pivoting head to one that could be tightened more securely, it would help as well.  But it's a wing nut so that you can adjust the pivot, so I would have to look for a bolt that fits a wingnut.  It's fine for now.

So now hopefully I will get a bit more lace made!

I pieced together block 4 of the 30s Sampler Quilt and cut out block 5. I can't remember if I blogged that I had covered a large scrap of cardboard with some flannel for laying out each block as I cut it?  Then I can just carry it to the sewing machine without disarranging anything.  I really need to choose a border fabric to ensure that the fabrics I am picking for blocks will all go with the border.  I don't have anything suitable in my stash so will need to go shopping.  It's fun to work with such scrappy blocks and use up some of my 30s bits and pieces.

It's Halloween at the end of the month so some of my quilted hangings and dollshouse bits are having their moment in the sun.  I also got out my Lego haunted house and put it on display in the hallway.

Craftsy.com is having a week where you can watch all their videos for free, through until next Friday 12th October.  I watched a good class with Sara Lawson on interfacing for structure in bags, but couldn't really find anything else I wanted to watch.  There's something about the Craftsy format I find really tedious. I know they've got to reach the common denominator, but I often find the pace really slow and the content repetitious.  Especially when they tell you that you need to sew the seam from A to B, then you've got to sit there while they actually do it on camera even when it's a really long seam.  In fact I find some classes improved if set to double speed, particularly the really slow speakers.  When you eliminate all of that, and the constant reminders about how to use Craftsy, and the chapter headings etc., some of the classes probably boil down to about 90 minutes tops of actual useful information which isn't much for £30 or £35 at the normal price.  I started to watch another bag making class about sewing storage caddies but had to turn it off when the teacher recommended you to use your rotary cutter to cut foamcore board with !!!  She should know better if she works with fabric and shouldn't be recommending anything so damaging to students.