What time is it?

 I've been trying to re-adjust my sleep schedule by staying up and getting up later, since Paducah is six hours behind the UK.  The result is that I already feel jetlagged and don't know whether to eat meals with DH or try to move them later as well.  And then Friday night we have to get up at 3am for the two-hour trip to the airport, to arrive three hours ahead as it is an international flight.  I am fully expecting to breeze through Security in 20 minutes and then have 2.5 hours just hanging around, but there you go. If we took the risk of showing up later then maybe there would be traffic jams or big queues. The Chicago transit is looking even more problematic as the airline has warned that thunderstorms and high winds in Chicago could cause delays.  Yay.  At least I passed my pre-boarding COVID test, I was worried about that.

I made a push this week and managed to largely finish Month 11 of the Australian BOM.  It still needs a press, the spangles of the lace bobbins added with beads (which I will do after quilting) and it needs the tatting added in the corner coming out of the tatting shuttle.  The original has the tatting simulated by embroidery, but a clever tatter on the FB group came up with an actual tatting pattern to match the embroidery.  So I've been trying to re-learn how to tat the last few weeks, I had forgotten a lot more than I realised but then it probably has been 20 years since I last tatted.  I managed a practice piece with lots of mistakes, and now I have started the real thing.

I'm quite cross about my Tilda Cot Quilt.  My 3/4 of a yard of border fabric arrived, neatly and squarely cut, and I sliced it up into border widths and sewed it on.  It wasn't until I stepped back to view the finished result that I realised the apparently random shell print is in fact linear, and was either printed off grain or my fabric wasn't as squarely cut as it appeared.  The result is wonky lines of shells that look like they were cut by a drunk.  I don't have enough fabric to re-do it.  I suppose the future baby owner won't care but it's still annoying.  Hopefully the quilting texture will obscure the lines a little bit.

The transformation of DS's former bedroom is now complete, with the new carpet being laid on Tuesday.  Formerly like the black hole of Calcutta, the room is now a calming and restful sea of beige.  I said to DH that I would have hated everything about it when I was in my 20s, when I thought beige and magnolia were old-fashioned and boring. I would have wanted wallpaper and patterned carpet and fancy ballooned curtains and more more more.  Now in our late middle-age, we both feel the room is so peaceful and tranquil that we almost don't want to even use it for anything.  Maybe I should learn to meditate and it can be the meditation room.  I am looking forward to DS's reaction when he eventually visits, I think he is going to be pretty shocked.  We have put the furniture back in.  I am going to use the bed to spread out my entire quilt collection, to give the textiles a rest from being folded up in cupboards.

Well I am all packed, I hope I am taking the right things to Paducah.  I have a small shopping list, and I will try not to buy things just because they are cheaper than in the UK.  Wish me luck!

Out with the old

 DS's departure continues to send ripples through our lives and our decor.  His room is ready for the new carpet now and the fitters are coming after Easter.  I fixed a couple of protruding floorboards and painted a neutral colour over the ugly modern tile hearth installed by the previous owners in front of the Victorian fireplace, and the electrician came and fitted the new light fixtures.  In the meantime, his mostly empty room is a useful staging post. I've been saying for some time that we should get rid of a bulky cane furniture suite that was crammed onto the attic floor and primarily used by the cat to sleep upon.  We picked the suite up secondhand and used them in the conservatory at our old house, but there wasn't a good place to put them in this house. There also wasn't anywhere to put them together to take a photograph for marketing purposes.

So today we manoeuvred the lightweight but bulky pieces down the narrow attic stairs with some considerable effort, and I hoovered all the cat hair off the cushions and wicker and posed an attractive shot for photography.  As there were multiple similar sets on ebay and Facebook going dirt cheap (or even free), I didn't price them too highly.  And a few hours later they were out the door and off to a new home for someone's mother-in-law who is apparently over the moon to have them.  So a win all around.

Buoyed by the success, we also took a big load of stuff to the charity shop including a very large unframed picture (also an orphan from the previous house). I have a sense of achievement - although to extract one of the chairs out of my knitting room required moving a big shelf stuffed with yarn, making it painfully obvious that I need to go through and rationalise all the odd balls and packs of yarn. A job for another day.

I've spent a lot of time this week working on the current month of the Australian BOM, which has a lot of stitching in it so is going to be a lot of work.  I haven't taken a picture because it is assembled in pieces which individually don't look like anything yet. I've been watching the second series of Bridgerton on Netflix while I stitch - not really enjoying it as all the characters seem to have turned into unlikeable caricatures and I don't think the romantic leads have any chemistry, but the costumes are still enjoyably bonkers.

 I felt a desperate urge to make something following a long zoom call with some UK quilters, dominated by a couple of dominating women who were endlessly monologuing - so I ran off a little gift bag on my Brother ScanNCut and felt better.

In contrast, last night I joined Chookyblue in Australia who was zoom-ing from a quilter's retreat with a room full of talented women, some of whom had driven 1100km to be there.  They all seemed to be sewing amazing quilts and having such fun, I was deeply envious.  I don't think there are many residential retreats like that here in the UK.

I finished off a project this week that I've been working on for a month or so, which was the renovation of an antique sewing box.  I bought the box cheaply on ebay because I wanted to try my hand at some restoration and this particular box looked attractive and like it was hiding secrets under the grime and decaying polish.  Which it was: I was thrilled to find my careful cleaning with some steel wool and wax remover gradually revealing the intricate marquetry in different coloured veneers.

I was able to clean the lid, refinish it and replace a couple of missing pieces of veneer, then clean and wax the box itself.  The lift out tray needed some loose joints reglued, the tray lids cleaned and in a couple of cases propped up with reversible inserted supports, and the fragile pincushions needed some subtle mending to keep the sawdust inside. I bought some real wool baize online and adhered that to the bottom (it's almost straight :)  ) I'm quite pleased with how it's all turned out. I don't know that I will actually use the box since the pincushions are very delicate, but perhaps if I collect more antique needlework tools in future then I could store them inside.

I saw a scrap quilt at the Quilters Guild weekend last week which looked like a useful way to use up squares.

I was primarily thinking of my scrap baskets but then I received another instalment of the Tilda Club this week which has a charm pack of Tilda Cotton Beach fabrics.  I felt like sewing something fairly easy, so I cut the charm squares into four x 2.5 inch squares and started sewing a  small version of the scrap quilt:

It could be a wall hanging, or maybe a cot quilt.  The Tilda fabrics have turned out to be rather relentlessly medium in value so it needs a border to spice it up a bit.

In the wake of finishing the Bucks Point butterly mat, I posted that I intended to learn how to make Bruges Lace this year.  So far it's been a pretty dismal attempt, the couple of books I have are confusing and tend to contradict each other and to be honest I've put very little time into it so far.  This week I have tried to do better and am making a coaster-sized medallion which will have a filling and an edging for practice.

Not so long until Paducah now!  I've arranged my COVID test and secured my official proof of vaccination letter, and also spent an afternoon preparing little packets of supplies for the supply lists for the classes I'm booked on.  I've also found out that a long-time blog friend (Hi Swooze!) is also going to be attending so we've arranged to meet up for the first time IRL. I'm starting to feel excited (apart from contemplating the very long travel day to get out there, I'm not looking forward to that part at all).

Heaven awaits...

An expedition

 My new travel backpack and I headed off to Ipswich for a long weekend to attend the Quilters Guild AGM. This was a three day event organised by local volunteers with a programme of classes, outings, some exhibitions, a small trade area and a few meals. It was awkwardly sited at an out-of-town wedding venue so I ended up spending £30 on taxi fares (and it would have been more but I managed to share or cadge a few lifts) but apparently they really struggled to find a suitable location.  

The train gods smiled on me and I had an easy three hour journey down there, changing in London, and went straight to the venue from the station.  After giving away money to the various raffles and fundraisers, I headed for my first class which was meant to be a carousel of eight tutors over two hours. They announced that we could choose four, but then made it even more complicated by only  having half of the tutors teaching at one time. This inevitably meant that popular classes were over subscribed and I actually only to got to do three hurried mini-workshops:  to make a gathered Japanese flower, a simple little pouch to be decorated in future with embroidery, and an origami-folded pincushion top a la Jennie Rayment.  After that I attended an interesting talk by the Quilt Study Group about aspects of British quilts, and then took part in the Social Supper.  Not a lot of food but it was quite social as our table tried to follow the convoluted games for which we had been instructed to bring fat quarters and jelly roll strips.  So I ended up with a couple of new FQs. The person who won the table's jelly roll strips understandably didn't want them as they were an extremely mixed bag so we decided to donate them to the Linus charity stand at the event.

The FQs from the Social supper, a pink FQ I won in the tombola, and the goodies from our goodie bag

The half-started mini-projects from the Carousel, and a couple of FQs I bought in the trading area. I also bought a couple of kits from Euro-Japan to make a little purse and a kimono wallhanging (not pictured)

Saturday morning was the well-attended AGM (probably because there were no other events scheduled) during which I did a lot of knitting on my pale green boucle t-shirt. I finished the back and started the front.

The back of my t-shirt, a bit crumpled from being stuffed into my bag

 In the afternoon I was booked on an outing to the Warner Textile Archive, which I think would have been very interesting but due to a series of mix-ups and an unfortunate road blockage (burst water main) we had very little time at the actual archive.  Bless the volunteers for all the hard work they put in to arrange this weekend which couldn't have happened without them, but the communication and organisation were a bit shambolic at times.  Today was a gorgeous sunny day for our outing to see the famous site of the Sutton Hoo archeological dig, however once again due to apparent lack of planning, we had virtually no time to actually see the exhibitions and house and were given a truncated but still quite interesting tour to the royal burial mound field. I think DH would find Sutton Hoo interesting so I hope we can take the caravan down that way, perhaps next year, and have a more leisurely visit.  I had seen the film 'The Dig' before going, so it was quite interesting to see the real place.

A sculpture of the iconic helmet

Our tour guide at Sutton Hoo, in authentic Anglo Saxon regalia.

When we got back, I found out I had won one of the handmade bags in the Chinese Auction which is this very useful holdall bag so I was quite pleased.

I'm glad I attended the weekend despite the occasional organisational wobble. It felt good to reconnect with other quilters after the last couple of years and I even bumped into a woman from my very first tour to Paducah in I think 2005, we recognised each other right away and had a lovely chat. I chatted to several nice people, saw some great quilts, learned some new things, had a nice walk around the historic Ipswich town centre on Saturday night plus saw a lot of scenic Suffolk on the bus tours, did some fabric shopping, and got to practice 'being away' some more.  I need to start getting ready for Paducah which is only three weeks now.

Month 11 of the Australian BOM has shown up now - they even look exciting when they are still in the packet.

This week I tried out another of the Sew Sweetness Minikins 3 pouch patterns. This one is the Palomino Pouch in the large size. I used a novelty fabric covered in pictures of classic British pubs and DH thinks his dad might like it for carrying his medications in - I'll save it for his Dad's birthday.

I had a lucky find in a charity shop this week: a pair of pincushion dolls both dressed in shattered silk gowns  Their bases are padded cylinders perhaps for hat pins or sewing pins, and one sports a very dashing padded hat which may have been a pincushion.  I may make new gowns for them, likely to fit over the originals so those are preserved.  I don't know what date they are, possibly 1920s or 30s?  There are no markings on them.

And finally, some fabric arrived this week. I had ordered some 'A Celebration of Sanderson' fabric in the Rose and Peony  Medium, Bright colourway because, in the photo, the multifloral looked like the border fabrics we used to see in the 1990s.  But now it's here, it's a lot more vivid than I thought, more like day-glo neon. I also ordered a couple of coordinates, but I feel a bit like I need sunglasses for the lot of them. Not sure what it will get used in, but hopefully something. It will certainly be bright.