119 kits later...

The final 120th kit for the Japanese dollshouse is now on my worktable ready to be opened.  It's hard to believe I've been building this house for a year and a half now. The final kit is for the ryokan's sign.  I still have one stone lantern to put together and paint but I'm waiting until I work on the garden to assemble and paint that. I did a big clean up and hoover in the workshop because there was grey dust everywhere left over from all the sanding I had to do on the resin roof shingles I was cutting to size.

This week I put together kits for three ceiling light fixtures which were three variations on the same theme and even included  tiny wooden lightbulbs, and the kit for the final television set.  I struggled with the rabbit ears antenna for the TV as the tiny wooden half-sphere they are meant to fit into split in half, so the antenna didn't turn out as well as the first two TVs but it looks ok.  I hung the three ceiling fixtures and am fairly pleased with them. I'm slightly concerned they may be hanging too low but then I'm 5'6" and found I was either the same height or taller than a lot of the Japanese people on the trains so it's probably fine.

The TV set above is the one I made this week.

I finished putting together the four knitted toy animals from the kit with Let's Knit magazine.  They were tricky to sew up and don't look exactly like the pictures but they are still cute. They aren't suitable for a very young child due to the bead eyes and multiple sewn-on parts.  Although I'm tempted to keep the red squirrel which reminds me of the ones we've seen on our two summer holidays in Cumbria.

DH got a new toy for his birthday which is a static grass applicator, a cool gadget for creating realistic grassy turf for his models.  There is a hopper of grass and it uses an electrical charge to basically stand the grass strands vertically into a glue base.  He's never had one before because they aren't particularly cheap so a birthday seemed a good time to get one.

I was quite impressed with his initial samples so I asked him to have a go at the lawn around my dollshouse shed that I built a few years ago.  I used green sawdust flock pressed into glue to simulate lawn but have never been very happy with it. These are the BEFORE pictures:

And these are some AFTER pictures with static grass applied, don't they look so much better? Great job!!

I will definitely enroll his help for any bits of lawn I want for my Japanese garden when I build it.

After seeing the antique Baltimore Album quilts at the Festival of Quilts, I reluctantly decided it was time to stop procrastinating and start hand quilting my 25-block applique quilt.  I pulled out the giant Q-snap-type frame and set it up in the living room, and dug out my copy of The Essential Quilter  by Barbara Chainey to remind myself how to hand quilt. It's not something I've ever been very good at and usually instead I do basic machine quilting on my quilts.  But the applique quilt isn't really suitable for machine quilting and I don't want to spoil it (although my hand quilting is nothing to write home about either).  So I've made a start, and it's only going to take me about three million years to finish it. My underneath finger is already getting torn up, I've tried all the thimbles I've got but can't get on with any of them on the underneath side so I'm using the stick on pads which never last very long.

Before I cluttered up the living room with the quilt frame, I pinned my One Block Wonder quilt to the floor with T-pins and squared up the frame before basting down the hexagon panel in preparation for appliqueing it on the machine.  The applique is done now and the borders are all on.  It appears to be hanging fairly flat so result, although I have spotted one dodgy hexagon where I accidentally twisted one of the wedges, so I will have to unpick that and fix it. I also want to experiment with floating a few more spare hexagons into the borders to break them up

Another week

Can't think of a headline today :)  It feels like a week where we were putting things back to where they should be.  I went out in the garden for a few hours yesterday morning before it got hot, and hacked back armful after armful of rampant growth and spent flowers, not to mention pulling up loads of weeds. It had all become very out of control after all the rain.

And we draped the study in plastic drop cloths and had a go at the ceiling.  A couple of coats of damp barrier paint hid the stain then we experimented with hiding the damp barrier paint with spot coats of emulsion.  Three coats later and it seems to have worked, so we don't have to paint the whole ceiling - whew!

I've also re-stuck down the ensuite vinyl floor that we had to pull up for the leak, and sealed around the edge with silicone.  It doesn't look as good as it used to but it's acceptable. So the only thing still remaining from the leak which needs remedying is the wallpaper that fell down above the bookshelves.  The wall still hasn't dried out fully so we will wait to do that.

I tried a free machine knit mitten pattern after finding it mentioned on Facebook.  I worked a sample just in 4-ply acrylic yarn to see how the pattern worked.  It's made from an outer mitten (the stripes) and an inner liner mitten worked on a tighter tension so it's a bit smaller.  You push the liner into the outer mitten and end up with two layers which I think would be quite warm in wool. The one I saw on Facebook had been worked in a fair isle pattern in sock yarn and looked really nice.  It's not exactly quick to knit as you have to do the manual increases by lifting 12 stitches across by one, many times.

I've now knit all the components for the four toy animals kit that I started last week, and I've started assembling them.  They are tricky to sew up attractively as they are so small and the directions are pretty skimpy.

I haven't done anything on the Japanese dollshouse this week but I did find an odd little thimble at an antiques fair we went to at Lamport Hall today.  It's got a tiny bell inside the pavilion and I thought it might work in my Japanese garden.  The bottom part isn't exactly Japanese but I can disguise the base.

I've done a fair bit of work on the One Block Wonder hexagon quilt this week, trying to get some borders on it.  I started out by measuring the centre and consulting a chart of bed sizes to see what size quilt I might make, but I soon found that wider borders just didn't look right.  I'm adding about a 12-inch border but will probably cut it down after quilting.  Adding the borders is quite tricky as the centre has to be appliqued onto the borders yet at the same time the 'ocean' horizon in the border has to stay in line with the horizon of the printed panel, the horizontal clouds had to stay parallel to the hexagons, there are no straight lines around the hexagon centre, and I want the transition to the beach fabric to be fairly blurred without a hard stop.  I've been doing a combination of applique and basting as I go along, and have got as far as seaming the top and bottom on, and then adding the two side pieces which are so far only seamed at the top.  I need to spread it out flat on the floor before I pin the hexagons to the side panels to a) try to keep it all flat and b) try to end up with a squarish quilt instead of a polygon. I had to do some invisible joins to get the top and bottom pieces wide enough.

This shows the top and bottom strips to which

I've appliqued the panel, but the top border needs trimming down.

This shows it on the bed, with side pieces roughly pinned in place. It's wider than it needs to be and not quite as long as it should be for this 60"x80" queen size mattress, but it looks better than I thought it would

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Summer / not summer

The weather continues to be bizarre and I actually broke out my autumn coat and lightweight hat  for a few of my walks to the station this week, as well as the umbrella for the drizzle.  It continues unsettled but has at least warmed up somewhat to 21 degrees C today. It seems strange to feel a bit chilly in the evenings.  Still, I am much happier with this weather than I was when it was so hot.

I had an extra day off this week and used it to applique the hexagons around my central panel for my One Block Wonder quilt.  As there is a hard horizon line where the ocean meets the sky, I had to be very careful to keep the hexagons parallel/perpendicular to that line.  I pinned the panel to the carpet and then did a lot of careful measuring with rulers before pinning the hexagons around the edge. I had previously pressed under the raw edges 1/4inch and held them down with Roxanne's Basting Glue.

I appliqued the hexagon frame using a small blanket stitch on the sewing machine and invisible thread.  Then I started sewing on all the side rows (not pressed yet in this picture).  It's come out a lot smaller now that it's all seamed together, I think this may end up only being a single size, or lap quilt even.

This week I have been sweeping up some of the final kits for the Japanese dollshouse.   I put together six little lanterns, painted to look oxidised, then hung them on the corners of the roof where they look very cute, like earrings.

I put together eight little armrests, and distributed them amongst three rooms of the house.

For the room above, I also made a second set of low chairs with cushions.

Still to come are three light fixtures, a TV, a stone lantern and a sign.  And of course the garden.  We visited a rather tatty garden centre complex near Barton Le Clay today and I picked up quite a nice Japanese style stone lantern and a little curved bridge, perfect for a japanese garden, from a range called 'Miniature World'  intended to accessorise resin fairy garden houses they were also selling.

On the knitting side, I've been distracted by a 'free' kit to knit four little miniature animals which came with Let's Knit magazine.

And the autumnal weather prompted me to retrieve my hibernating cross-stitch Christmas house project, to make some progress on stitching the final attic room.

We checked the moisture readings on our damaged wall and ceiling yesterday. Two and a half months after the leak happened, the wall is still reading fairly damp but the ceiling seems to have dried out at last. So we can at least redecorate the ceiling.  But I think we will have to paint the whole ceiling because we won't be able to match the aged existing paint, so that will mean clearing out the entire  room and lots of drop cloths to protect the books and floor. Sigh.

job (in)security

I've been pretty happy in my new career since graduating from the initial tough training regime to working on a customer team 2.5 years ago.  That's something of a record for me, and it's mainly down to a) a very easygoing pleasant male manager and b) I've become accustomed to my colleague's little quirks and they to mine.  However, as seems inevitable in the modern working world. the organisation has decided to change everything in yet another attempt to increase efficiency. Somehow these reorganisations are always billed as the best thing since sliced bread and yet somehow things never seem to be any obviously better.

So sometime this autumn, my team (and all the teams in the office) will be broken up and recombined into larger teams.  There are no redundancies thankfully, but my manager has already jumped ship and is moving to a different job in the building, so I will definitely be getting a new manager and new colleagues.  There are a limited number of managers and I would say at least 50% of them are terrible, so the odds are not looking good.  I feel very sad because life was ticking along pleasantly and now it looks like it will get stressful again. I hate this kind of mandated change and it always takes me several months to settle down and become accustomed to my new circumstances. I joked to DH that if I really hate it, I could always retire early and live off of him.  He looked scared.

I've decided to sign up for the next level of Japanese after all.  I realised this summer that after the first few weeks of relief after my course finished, I was kind of missing it. I think somehow studying Japanese has become another hobby for me.  Not one I am every going to be any good at, but nonetheless one that is sort of enjoyable (when it isn't incredibly frustrating).  The new level starts in October and runs through until March but only once a week which hopefully will be easier.

Matching the theme of change, the knitting shop in Leicester, Knit One, is closing down its bricks and mortar shop to move online.  They've been running a 20% sale for some weeks and I managed to stay strong, but this week it has dropped to 40% off and my resolve crumbled.  A lunchtime visit ensued.

Even at 40% off, Rowan Felted Tweed is too expensive to knit a sweater out of, but I got two balls to knit a hat.  Two more cakes of the Stylecraft Batik Swirls because I enjoyed knitting my shawl a while ago out of that, and a ball of bamboo sock yarn.  Some Zing double points, and a bunch of bag hardware for sewing bags.

This week I turned the little cross stitch kit I finished last week into a needlecase, inspired by one I found online and using some sunflower fabric I happened to have.  I'm fairly pleased with it, it's cute.  I added some ribbon and buttons, and a tatted butterfly from my stash.

The Japanese dollshouse roof of doom is finished at long last.  Before I painted it, I turned it upside down to inspect what's been happening to the eaves after all the aggressive clamping I had to do.  I had one crack that's not too obvious and some loose rafters which I re-glued, and a few marks to erase. So not too bad.  Righting the roof, I went over it to scrub off glue strings and remove obvious lumps.  A number of the smears had dried surprisingly hard so they have stayed on as added texture.  To paint it, I bought some artist's acrylic from Hobbycraft which I thought would have more chance of staying on the resin tiles.  The painting took forever with so many nooks and crannies, but it really does look so much better now it's all one colour.  I remembered to paint the little roof of the front porch as well so it will match.  The main roof is certainly far from perfect (thanks to the warped tiles and the difficulties in clamping them particularly) but considering how much trouble it gave me to build, I think the end result is reasonably good and certainly gives a very good effect to the dollshouse, something special and unusual. Every time I look at it from a different angle, I keep finding more little nooks that need touching up but I'm just about there now.  I was thinking of weathering it or adding some moss, but some online research shows that a lot of Japanese tiled roofs look surprisingly pristine. Or they weather uniformly to a lighter grey.  Only a few older ones seem to get mossy and then the moss grows along each tile in a defined pattern hard to replicate in miniature.  So I don't think a few splodges of green flock here and there is going to look realistic. And I don't really want to wash all the tiles with silvery grey, I rather like the satin black look. 

I tidied up all the mess from seven months of roof construction and put the roof on the house.  I'd almost forgotten there was an inside to the house, it was fun to open the rooms up for the first time in months.  The whole thing needs a really good dust though.

 Now I've started to sweep up the last handful of kits.  I have six hanging lanterns to make, two chairs, 6 or 8 arm rests. 3 or 6 light fixtures, a sign for the ryokan and a television set left to make.  Once those are all done, I can start looking at the landscaping outside.  Then eventually I need to start accessorising and finishing the inside rooms (my least favourite part.  I know, I'm weird, most people prefer the interior design part).  The kit instruction books each have a prologue featuring Japanese cultural items and artwork, plus I have my own reference photos from our trip.


In quilting, I've sewn together the hexagon 'frame' to go around the panel, to see how it looks.  I am turning under 1/4 inch seam allowances on the hexies that will overlap onto the panel, and securing them with Roxanne's basting glue. Eventually these will be appliqued to the panel.  The frame seems to have worked out ok and fits the panel satisfactorily.  Now to sew the rest of the vertical rows together then I can start thinking about border fabrics.  Of course, I've started thinking about the next project and have pulled out a collection of red, white and blue London fabrics from my stash. I had fun looking through my collection of magazine tearout patterns and books, but I think I might use the Tumbler template that I bought from Missouri Star some time ago.

Facebook pimped me the Bluprint/Craftsy sale at a vulnerable time, when I had just found out I will receive a modest corporate bonus award this month.  I bought two layer cakes, and a quilt kit solely because it was the cheapest way to get two packs of fat quarters.  Must buy all the pretties bwah ha ha.

Rat(s)

I heard the scrabbling above my sewing room again. DH was still disinclined to believe me even when DS walked into the kitchen one night (the kitchen is above my sewing room) and surprised a rat up on the counter. Then I found a plum pit on the floor and thought DH had dropped it until we discovered an apple had been gnawed overnight. So we had to put all the food away into either the fridge or cupboards and get the Council pest contractor in.  Meanwhile we shut the cat into the kitchen each night.  The rat man came on Friday and immediately found a dead rat behind the kitchen cupboards.  He's put poison down behind the baseboards where the cat can't get to it.  DH is still hoping it was a single rat that somehow wandered into the house perhaps through the open basement door when we were in the garden. The rat man will come back in a few weeks to see if the poison has been taken up at all.  Hopefully it was just the one and there are no ratty relatives still wandering around.

I swapped my days this past week so that I could be free on Friday to travel to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham. FoQ bills itself as: "Europe’s leading patchwork and quilting event attracting over 25,000 quilters from all over the world. The show is a celebration of quilting in all its forms, with over 300 exhibitors offering essential supplies, world-class galleries of quilts from leading international makers, 350 workshops, talks and demos plus a magnificent display of over 800 competition quilts. It is the ultimate patchwork and quilting experience."

I would strongly disagree with the last statement, having had the good fortune to visit Paducah and Houston shows in my time, and it isn't a large show by American standards.  But it is large enough that it is a challenge to 'do' it all in one day and I certainly didn't do the quilts justice.  I spent the first few hours shopping from my list. 

I got some cloud fabric for the top border of my One Block Wonder quilt - visible hanging down from the top of the design wall.  It's not a perfect match but I think it will do.

I looked on every stand for 30s fabric for the border of my 30s Sampler quilt and did not see any 30s yardage in the entire show.  A handful of stands had 30s repro quilts on display and were selling patterns, or FQs. It just shows how out of fashion I am, lol.  In the end I chose a red modern floral fabric which is sort of 30s in feeling, but it reads as a lighter value than I wanted.  What do you think?

Also on my list was a new seam ripper (broke two this year), a new pair of Fiskars orange-handled scissors for snipping threads (and wow are they ever expensive now, £14.50!) because I lost my old ones, and some applique needles (I got some Clover needles but also some interesting Tulip needles from Japan).

Also on my list was a Blocloc Half Square Triangle trimming ruler after seeing these being used in a Youtube video to square up HSTs.  They have a ridge underneath which butts up against the seam allowance. Hopefully this will increase my accuracy when making smaller HST units.  Other purchases included a half-hexie ruler which I will use in cutting spare hexies for my One Block Wonder quilt, a small Fiskars turntable cutting mat, some cheap snap purse frames, and a pattern for a little sewing pouch with accessories.

There were half a dozen Japanese traders near the display of some selected quilts from the Tokyo International Quilt Festival.  I bought a kit for a cute little zip purse from one (although I think the instructions may all be in Japanese) and on another stand a kit for a 3-D kimono wallhanging.  I tried out a few words of my terrible Japanese on the latter lady, she was astonished and delighted and launched into a flood of Japanese as she pulled out the instructions and probably explained it all in great detail while I just stood there helplessly not understanding a word.

I saw many other lovely things for sale and of course lots of fabric, but the few things that really tempted me just seemed to cost more than I felt like spending. It was fun to look.  At midday I joined the enormous queue for the sold out trunk show talk by Jenny Doan, the American Youtube star from Missouri Quilts.  She was lovely and chatted with the audience like we were all old friends.  FOQ had chosen from her offering of talks a lecture on how rearranging or cutting up HSTs could generate many different quilts. Her husband Ron was holding up the quilts while Jenny talked. It was surprising how many nice quilts you can make from such simple elements. I enjoyed it but felt two hours was too long (hot room, hard seats).

By mid-afternoon I was only just getting to the quilt exhibits and was quite tired by then.  I enjoyed the antique Baltimore Album quilts in a visiting exhibition from the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.  Most of the winning quilts didn't do much for me as I tend to have traditional tastes, but there were some other lovely entries on show.  Another year I think it would really be better to do two part-days at the show rather than try to cram it all into one day, but then I would have the added expense of accommodation and meals etc.  The train schedules make it at least a two hour trip for me but longer if the connections don't align well so not really feasible to go back and forth on two successive days.

I finished the little sunflower cross stitch kit I started on our holiday to Cumbria.  The yellow parts of the flower were all fractional stitches in two shades of yellow which I failed miserably to stitch accurately according to the chart. So the flower heads are not really as the designer intended but look ok I think.  Now I will stitch them into some sort of needlecase.  The kit suggests a simple folded felt case but I think I will try something a bit more interesting.

I've started to sew the vertical hexie strips for the One Block Wonder quilt but am struggling a bit with aligning the rows.  Now that the seam allowances have narrowed the hexagons, the layout wasn't really working with the panel and I had to insert an additional hexagon in width.  That threw everything else out of alignment and some of my unsewn vertical rows have gotten a bit mixed up on the right hand side of the layout so I need to do some repinning until I'm sure it's right.  I don't want to end up sewing the wrong half hexies together.  Attending FoQ made me feel like I would like to do a lot more sewing but it's hard to find time as I am often too tired in the evenings.  Not like my younger days when I would regularly sew until 11pm.