The beast takes shape

 

After several hours of assembly, the quilting frame is taking shape in the re-arranged dining room.  Although the frame does come completely apart, it's really meant to be put together once and left together.  So it's a bit of a job to re-assemble it. Luckily all the bolts and nuts were present and correct, and I managed to puzzle out the manual instructions.  Past me had helpfully taken some photos of how the rail supports were adjusted and how the snaking wires on the back of the machine were tamed.  After getting the table together, I sat down with the Pfaff Grand Hobbiquilter and gave it a good clean and oil.  It had been covered up as it sat on the sewing room floor for five years but was still amazingly dirty from dust etc.  With trepidation I plugged it in and started it up - the gorgeous thing sewed perfectly right away. Love it, quality build. So that's installed on the machine carriage now, and it's just the fabric poles to add on to complete the set up.  The roll of wadding has arrived as you can see (tucked under the frame).  The dining room door is now partially obstructed, so I've put a warning notice on it.

I did an audit of my queue of quilt tops, listing them out by size, what type of quilting pattern, what colour thread top and bottom, and what kind of wadding they need.  There are 15 tops waiting but 3 of them I think will need to be custom quilted at the sit down machine as they aren't suitable for an all-over pattern.  I can still baste the sandwich for them on the frame, it's a lot easier to do it on the frame with microtacks than on the dining table.  I also ranked the quilts from easiest to quilt up to most difficult, to give me a game plan.

The audit reveals that I need to order a bunch of quilting thread.  I still have a fair amount of Bottom Line for the bobbin but I will need to order top threads in suitable colours.  The audit also revealed a vintage top that I have no memory whatsoever of purchasing.  I like it but I don't remember ever seeing it before.  I'll have to have a look back in my blog - perhaps I bought it at Carrefour Europeen du Patchwork in Sainte Marie aux Mines.

I'm still plugging away at Month 12 of the Australian BOM and still have more to do.  It's a huge amount of work and I'm conscious the next instalment will arrive soon.  I did make another row for the Tannenbaum quilt.

I also recovered a lightweight washbag I bought on Amazon for travel. It's recommended because of its low weight, but unfortunately the original (right) is hideous to my eyes.  I unpicked the binding and recovered it a flowery bit of old raincoat, then sewed the binding back on with some difficulty - the Singer struggled to get round the tight bend of the bottom pouch.  But apart from the wobbly binding stitching, the exterior is now much less offensive to my eyes (the interior still not great).

I finished the little Bruges lace sample from the Edna Sutton book. It was a good learning piece for the basic ground fill in the centre and the plaited edging and hopefully I'll do better on the next sample.

Our garden is hitting its stride with several roses coming into bloom, along with the irises, foxgloves, the first of the clematis, salvia, delphiniums and many others.  This is our garden's best time of year, when the ground is still moist and the plants largely free of disease.  I've bought a few bedding plants to pot up for some colour later in the summer.  Our worst weed is creeping buttercup and I've been pulling that out in handfuls as it tries to sneakily bloom from within other clumps of plants, luckily its yellow flowers are pretty obvious since I don't have much yellow in the garden otherwise.

The extra Jubilee bank holiday is coming up this next week, so DH gets a short work week which he is quite pleased about.  DS is going to come for a visit next weekend, I wonder what he is going to think of his room?  I think in his mind, it was still exactly how he left it, so I had to remind him that he needs to bring whatever he requires in the way of computers and clothing for his visit.  We are still adjusting to being empty nesters, it was only last week when we were grocery shopping that I realised with a heady rush that I could buy whatever kind of apples we wanted!  It didn't have to be Braeburns or Granny Smiths (the only kinds DS would eat)- it could be anything at all!!!!  Freedom  :)

Summer has started

 We have successfully launched the caravan for the 2022 season.  We did a 'first night test camp' yesterday at a small site near to our storage site, just to check that we had got everything back in (we'd missed a few things) and that everything still worked (a few minor issues identified).  We also ran steriliser through the water system, and then gave the van a bath with caravan cleaner and shiner in the washing area at the storage yard.  So it's all shiny and ready to go when we are able to get away - or rather, when DH is able to get some holiday from work.  We tried out the new chairs and table we bought at the NEC show, both worked well and the chairs are quite comfortable.  Because of the comfort level, they are too heavy to put in the caravan - we checked our noseweight and had to move the chairs into the car instead.  I have a sense of achievement - I was a bit nervous that we would have forgotten how to do caravanning.  We did have a very difficult time reversing the van back into our parking space at the storage yard (hemmed in by other caravans on all 3 sides).  Luckily no-one was watching as we went back and forth about 15 times before giving up and unhitching and just manhandling it into place - fortunately it's quite small so we can just about shove it around on a level surface.  It can be quite daunting at a big campsite when you arrive and have to reverse in while all your neighbours are watching.  In the caravan I was working on my Aldi mint green boucle knitted t-shirt and made a first start on embroidering the caravan stamped embroidery towels I bought in America, and worked some more on the Lace Shawl pattern that I bought at Tuscan Rose in Paducah along with some cotton mix yarn.  

In another milestone, I have actually started to set up the Grace quilting frame.  First I had to retrieve the various boxes of bits and ferry them up to the dining room - apart from the poles which would just get in the way at this point:

Then I had to undo all my careful wrapping and bubble wrap from 2017 to unveil all the meccano pieces:

I've now started to screw the table frame together, consulting the manual and my scribbled notes from last time.  It's going to take a while...  And I went ahead and ordered an entire roll of Hobbs Polydown wadding which should be delivered this week.  I probably have enough Hobbs Heirloom wadding for the nicer quilt tops, and I'll use the Polydown for the rest of them and will have some left over for future quilts.  Although buying a roll is a big investment up front, it is far cheaper by the yard - working out to less than £6 a yard as opposed to £8-£10 a yard buying it in precut packets.

I've made a push this week on Month 12 of the Australian BOM as I feel that I am falling behind.  This was another month with a lot of elements to create.  There is still embroidery to add to the shoe pincushion and the darning mushroom, and I am currently stitching the 'lace' edging around the doiley.

I went to a lace day recently, the first one for a while.  I was seated with some very pleasant ladies and we had a good natter while working on our lace.  I was adding the edging to my Bruges mat from my instructional book - this is a simple mat to teach you the grid filling and the three-picot edging.  It's a bit wobbly but I feel like I am progressing.

I also snagged a Platinum Jubilee commemmorative bobbin.

Earlier in the week I was working some more on the Tannenbaum quilt.  After doing Row Four (square in a square), I decided to practice using my Brother Scan N Cut to cut the fusible applique pieces.  It was a bit of a learning curve.  Scanning in the pattern is easy, so I didn't have to do any tracing.  The machine cut beautiful circles and 44 leaves in various fabrics backed with fusible web, but some of the leaves didn't fully cut and I had to finish them by hand.  For the stems, to avoid wasting fabric and fusible web, I switched the machine function from 'cut' to 'draw' and drew out all the required stems nested together on the fusible web.  Then I could cut the web into sections to add to various green fabric before doing the final cut with scissors. I've fused the design in place but I need to wait for my big machine to come back home before I can stitch the edges - the Singer of course only does straight stitch.  I'm enjoying this pattern, I like scrappy quilts with lots of different elements so I don't have to make too many repetitive blocks.

Future travel: I have started to book up travel and hotels for a solo trip to Italy in the fall for a couple of weeks.  I've sort of had to make myself do it - a part of me just wants to stay home where it's easy and safe.  But I am listening to my adventurous part instead, the part that took me travelling the world in my 20s and landed me here in the UK married to an Englishman.  That part is pretty buried by decades of wage slavery, motherhood and indolence but it's still there, and it's been waiting a long time for me to retire.  Time to give it some rein and see if the joy is still there, even if it is a bit scary for my homebody self.  

The one with way too many tulip pictures

 I enjoyed my day at Keukenhof, the famous Dutch show garden which is full of dazzling displays of tulips and other spring flowers. It's only open for six weeks or so every year, and it's a bit of a roulette spin timing your visit so that you see flowers and not just buds or withered stems.  In my case, the peak flowering time was actually while I was in Paducah, so by the time I got there this week the surrounding flower fields had all been deadheaded and some of the displays within the garden were starting to go over.  There were still plenty of stunning things to see though.  The park is like multiple mini gardens all overlapping, and every way you look is another charming or glorious vista - everything from classical large bed displays to forest vignettes and everywhere canals, rivulets, fountains, sculpture, garden buildings....and of course a windmill.

You could go inside and climb to the observation deck

The variety in tulips was just astonishing, I had no idea there were so many different shapes, sizes and colours.  Some were taller than above my waist, some were like lush paeonies at ankle height, and everything in between.  The day was overcast but fairly bright, resulting in the colours of the flowers appearing to glow from within.  I tried to capture the glowing colour with my phone camera but it's still not like the real thing. The colour combinations in planting were so striking as well, to a quilter's eye there were so many design possibilities.

The whole place is designed as a pleasure garden so there are plenty of cafes, souvenir shops, toilets, a few restaurants, places you can bulk order bulbs etc.  There are also some flower display pavilions.  It was an easy trip being only an hour's flight from Luton airport, and with a direct bus from the airport to the gardens - just the usual waiting around for ages for security etc.. I stayed at an airport hotel for two nights so I could spend the whole day at my leisure in the park.  I would definitely go again another year, and try to time it so that the surrounding bulb fields are still full of colour.

I took my Aldi mint green boucle t-shirt as my plane knitting project again.  I'm almost finished the front, then just the sleeves to do.  I shall likely turn it into a caravan knitting project going forward.  We fetched the caravan back from its annual service today, which it passed with flying colours, and we are now ferrying carloads of camping goods back to the storage yard to re-install into the van.  Eventually it will be all ready to go away in at some point this summer when DH gets some holiday from work. 

I finished off the binding on the ByAnnie Zip it Up! pouch that I started on the course in Paducah.  The result is a useful pouch with one outside pocket, a handle,  and two inside pockets: one mesh and one vinyl.  In the class samples, the teacher showed that you could add a second outside pocket, or split up the interior pockets into multiple smaller pockets.  I don't know what I will use it for, I tend to prefer to be able to see all my stuff so I actually tend to use plastic or metal trays sometimes. But I feel like I learned some useful things in the class. Obviously you could use more attractive fabric - I didn't want to take anything precious to a workshop because you never know how it will go down.

This week I also started work on the Edyta Sitar Tannenbaum Christmas Tree quilt.  My big machine is having a time out and is about to go off to Janome UK for a spa date, because it has decided that it doesn't want to sew a quarter inch seam any more.  So I've had to break out the Singer Featherweight to sew this quilt. I hadn't used the Singer for well over a year so first I had to apply oil and grease at the appropriate points and fiddle with the tension.  It seems to be working fairly well now although still being a bit of a tension diva.  This is a scrappy quilt but I am cutting from stash yardage, so cutting is a bit of a lengthy process: cutting 10 squares from this green and 10 squares from that green etc.  The background fabric is what I bought at Hancock's of Paducah. I worked on blocks two and three while listening to the Australians chatting on Chookyblue's Zoom call last night.  It's more of a wallhanging than a quilt, being only c.46"x65" which is good because I shall display it at Christmastime.

I'm starting to feel more and more like the time is coming soon to break out the machine quilting frame and get it set up in the dining room.  DH is resigned, although he has demanded a sign on the dining room door  to remind him it's blocked by the frame and can't be opened  He made an attempt to persuade me to set  up in DS's refurbished room, but the light isn't as good in there, there is a bunch of furniture which would have to be moved or stowed, and I don't want to muck up the new carpet with thread lint and possible oil drips (the dining room has old floorboards).  Looking back in the blog, it appears that I last had the frame set up in 2017, so about 5 years ago.  Hopefully the Pfaff Grand Hobbiquilter that sits on the frame is still functional, it's not been used in the meantime.  I don't think I have enough wadding for all the waiting quilts either, so I will have to acquire more.  You used to be able to order a whole roll of wadding - I used to do that for the quilting group I ran for several years.  It was a lot cheaper and then they would just pay by the yard for what they wanted as a non-profit group benefit.  

Sumo has started again so I am happily watching the highlights of the summer basho every night on NHK while I work on month 12 of the Australian BOM.  I saw a Japanese woman 'talking to camera' at Keukenhof - perhaps she was a Youtuber?  When she was finished, I remarked 'Amazing isn't it?' in Japanese as I passed, to which I received a surprised 'Konnichiwa'.  Actually I enjoyed hearing the multitude of languages from people at the park, it attracts an international audience and the staff seemed all to be polyglots and could serve you in your own language then switch effortlessly to a different one for the next customer.  Highly recommended to visit if you have never been, but do read up online in advance about when to go as apparently the park can get madly crowded especially on weekends.

Loot

 If you are interested in Paducah and what I did there, please see the prior two posts 'Paducah 1 of 2' and 'Paducah 2 of 2'.  This post is more of a breakdown of some of the loot I came home with.  But first a couple of photos from the Quilt Museum of miniature quilts on dollshouse beds, so adorable.

I saw lots of things I liked but had to evaluate potential purchase in terms of 'how much does it weigh', 'how bulky is it?' and 'can I buy it in the UK even if it's more expensive?'.  So the result is a rather eclectic collection of things that caught my eye that I thought I could fit into my case.

I'm sorry a lot of the pictures are sideways - I dropped my main camera so I'm having to use my phone and keep forgetting to rotate the pics.

An applique pattern from The Vintage Spool for a tea and cake party

A vintage embroidered pillowcase, some cheater cloth and a panel

AQS museum t-shirt

A kit for a 30s-50s embroidered wall hanging

pack of Moda Wildflowers FQs 

border and block fabric for a quilt I am planning to make: Tannenbaum by Edyta Sitar

Another pattern by the Vintage Spool called 'Cherry Crush' and some fabrics picked to make it with

Pack of Lori Holt plaids because I want to make more of her patterns

'Envelopes' quilt pattern from a magazine I bought while I was there, so I got some background fabric

Assorted dollshouse bits: stain pens, leatherette, mini mirros, Fimo cutters, E6000 glue

Assorted cartonnage fittings (latches, handles etc.) and a nice big bottle of the glue the Youtube teacher likes to use, which you can get in the UK but so much more expensive

Assorted ByAnnie bag mesh, elastic and zips in case I make more of her patterns

Assorted pins

Vintage alphabet blocks, packaged to read 'Quilts'

handmade wooden quilt brooches from the Quilt Museum gift shop (one is a gift for m-i-l)

So as you can see, I had plenty to add to my 'Projects in Waiting' list.

This week I have knit a bit more on the Aldi boucle mint green t-shirt which was my plane knitting project.

I also made some more attemps at the tatted embellishment for Block 11 of the Australian BOM and on the fifth attempt struggled my way to a somewhat lumpy result.  I sewed it on anyway so I can get started on the next block.  The next block is another one with lots of elements, so it took about three hours just to prep the various bits with stabiliser, fusible etc. and I've now started the embroidery.

As previously mentioned, I made up the bound book cover but I haven't photographed it because I'm not happy at all with how it turned out.  I had to repair the handle on my Travel knapsack as well - the knapsack worked brilliantly all week, even when heavily loaded with fabric, but the webbing of the handle eventually frayed and fell out.  I have opened the seams and replaced with a stronger piece of webbing where I have folded over the cut ends and sewed them down - less tidy inside but stronger I hope.

Still waiting to be finished is the ByAnnie Zip It Up Project bag that I started in my class, it just needs the binding but I think I have changed my mind about what fabric to use for the binding.

I forgot to mention in my Paducah posts some of the trends I noticed.  There were multiple vendors displaying what looked like intricate quilts but they were actually selling machine embroidery files to stitch the various complex elements.  I haven't seen this much in the UK - high end embroidery machines must be a lot more common in America. Another thing I saw were patterns for a '3-yard quilt' or a '5-yard quilt' and several vendors selling 3-yard and 5-yard bundles of fabric at great prices for making up these sorts of quilt patterns.  There were multiple long-arm manufacturers and it seemed like almost every American quilter I talked to had a long-arm or at least a mid-arm or sitdown longarm.  I guess with the bigger houses it is more of a possibility to have a dedicated quilting machine. But one woman had bought a Gammill 20" throat stationery machine fitted into a folding table.  The two wings of the table collapsed down on either side of the long arm, for a total width of only 9" she said. That would be much more do-able in a British house. She said she came with five other friends and they had all of them bought a Gammill longarm taking advantage of the show specials - wow. There were more kitted quilts (fabric and pattern together) than you would normally see at a British show, bag patterns/bag making seemed popular, but I don't think I saw any quilted garment booths nor hardly anyone wearing a quilted/patchwork garment - which is a big change from the shows I went to 20 years ago when it was almost the norm to be wearing a patchwork jacket or waistcoat. I didn't see many toymaking or dollmaking vendors I don't think, which are commonly found at UK shows.  A fair amount of panels were available, and patterns for quilts made from panels, including a couple of vendors who were digitally printing their own panels of various sizes - for example, one vendor had mini-panels featuring all 50 states, various countries, various international cities etc.  Another trend I saw, which I don't think I've seen in the UK yet, was packs of lasercut fabric pieces.  John Flynn for example was selling a lot of these, some of them to make miniature quilts which I guess makes sense when the pieces will be so accurately cut.  The edges of the fabric pieces are slightly browned but not singed.

This coming week I am taking advantage of retirement to attempt a day trip over to Holland to visit the Keukenhof tulip gardens.  I'm flying in and out of Luton airport and will stay at Schiphol airport, I'm not going to try to go into Amsterdam or anywhere.  I had a fleeting visit to Keukenhof many years ago and I've always wanted to go back.  The peak flowering time happened while I was in Paducah but there should still be plenty to see I hope. I hope the weather will be kind.