I survived my first week back at work. The first few days were really difficult but by Friday it was feeling increasingly familiar although I haven't tried all our systems yet. I was also cheered by several other colleagues admitting to various homeworking difficulties during a virtual team meeting on Friday, The days seem really long without any colleagues to talk/moan to though. I've actually resorted to playing a Youtube video of ambient office noise in the background on a few days which helps me concentrate. Some colleagues said they played music but I think that would be too distracting for me. If I have to work then it is nice not to have three hours of commute every day, but I still feel the huge loss of free time to do my own things. Luckily I'm really old and will get to retire in a few more years :)
I've continued to work on the centre of the Giggleswick Mill quilt: I completed stitching down the hexagon ring, then soaked the piece to remove the glue, slashed the back of each hexagon and remove the cardboard. After it had dried and been pressed, I spent some time fussy cutting the motifs for the central bouquet and fusing them down. There is only half a close-up in the book of how Di Ford did hers, I had to resort to using my magnifying optivisor to study the main (small) picture of the whole quilt. It's come out alright I think, although my 'circle' has not stayed entirely circular thanks to the malleability of fabric. I'm going to finish all the fused motifs before stitching them down.
The next step was to trace, fussy cut and glue 48 little pentagons - I did some of this during the team meeting I mentioned above with my camera turned off. Then I stitched groups of six into little flowers which I am now appliqueing down around the central circle. Once they are all stitched down, I will repeat the soak/slash/remove card process.
For something new this week I started one of the cartonnage kits I bought at the French quilt show in St Marie aux Mines a few years ago. It makes a little organiser with a central covered box which lifts off.
The instructions are in French which right away necessitated looking up several unfamiliar words, and there are no diagrams or pictures other than the cover photo. I have an English book on cartonnage so I referred to that. Both sources specify bristol board, which doesn't seem to be something you can buy online easily. Several art suppliers have books of bristol but it sounds like that's for painting watercolour on so I wasn't sure it was actually the stiff card I require. So I rummaged in my stash and came up with some old bookcovers and notepad backs and cut my pieces out of that. As some of the pieces are shaped, it was really difficult to cut the bookcovers - I ended up using my scroll saw to cut the curves. There are about 60 pieces so it took ages to cut them all.
Then I started assembly. Tacky glue works well to glue the main boxes and I had some kraft tape for strengthening the joins, but normal PVA glue didn't work well at all for glueing the fabric onto the liners. The mess is also taking up most of my sewing area now.
Giving up on the PVA glue, I looked online to see what glue was recommended for cartonnage. Despite this being a popular hobby on the continent, I couldn't find anything on UK websites. I looked at several French YouTube videos, pausing them to see what glue they were using, then looking those up online. I couldn't get those glues over here but I did discover one brand which was related to publishing and book construction in the UK, which led me to the discovery that the glue I need is called 'bookbinding glue' here in the UK. Then I could order a pot of Pinflair bookbinding glue from Amazon which arrived yesterday and I am back in business. The new glue is perfect: it grabs easily, remains moveable for an amount of time, doesn't stain the fabric, and dries quickly. I'm enjoying the construction but it's quite fiddly and there is a lot of start/stop as you wait for glue to dry.
Other than that, I have continued knitting Hey Teach, working on the Little houses cross stitch, and have done a bit more on the Chinese dollshouse in a globe kit which I still don't really rate. The weather turned cold and rainy on the exact day I turned the heat off for the summer and has remained blustery, we even had thunder and lightning yesterday afternoon. We're still not going out, although on my walks I have seen shops re-opening and lots of people out and about. I think we are siding with the opinion expressed by one sewing Youtuber I watch, who said: "yes, the curve has flattened, which only means there is more room in the ICU for you".
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