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.