This Old House

 When I was at university, I used to watch the popular American renovation show 'This Old House', a pioneering programme before such programmes were popular, or indeed, before renovating/flipping old houses was popular.  It all seemed so romantic and wonderful to see all this history being rescued and cared for. The reality as an adult of course is that owning any house is a constant drain on your resources, and an old house particularly so.  Jobs such as 'a couple of windows appear to be rotting at the bottom' snowball into 'the whole house needs scaffolding' + 'multiple windows are rotting in various ways '; and now: 'there's not much point painting around the failed doubleglazing panes because they will only need to be replaced later'.  An audit of the failed 1970s double glazing panes has come up with 10 (!!) panes and the quote for that (by an intrepid young man who clambered around the scaffolding quite happily measuring windows) is over £1700.  Aaargh.  And of course the scaffolding needs to stay up (at our cost) until the panes can be fitted (4 weeks lead time) and after THAT, the builder needs to paint them all in.  Good thing DH is still working full time is what I say. :)

I finished the binding on the Janet Clare Spoondrift quilt.  It fits nicely on my hallway hanging system.

This was quilted with a panto on my old frame arrangement, and consequently the stitch length varies wildly.  Going forward, I will have the benefit of stitch regulation on my new-to-me Handiquilter Simply Sixteen which was delivered and installed this week.  I'm glad we decided to have the professionals do the installation, because it took him ages to get the frame levelled on our very wonky old floors (which as it turns out, have a decided slope towards the window).  There is just room in its current position for me to walk around the frame.  I had it mounted on castors so that I could move it to create more room on one side. But having watched what he went through to level it, I may never move it again. I've only banged my head a few times while practicing.  :)

I had some basic training on delivery and have read through the paperwork that came with the setup. So far it all seems pretty similar to my old set-up - only bigger, better, and so much more robust and well-engineered.  It came with a ruler table and some rulers, so I want to learn how to use those.  In order to use pantographs, I think I will need to dismantle the yarn storage tree and move it out of the way. Not sure where to.  I'm so pleased to finally own a quality frame that is permanently set up, it's something I've wanted for many decades. As DH pointed out, now I will have to change my quilt process from 'create a top then store it for a few years', into a unified process from planning to quilting in one journey.

I think my Christmas porch scene is now 'finished' apart from connecting up the lights and doing something with a snow effect.  As it's a Christmas theme, I can always add more to it in future. It will be a fun addition to our Christmas decorations.

The Latvian mittens are about 1.5 inches long now and I'm getting the hang of knitting with three colours but it's a slow process.  I tried a Norwegian knitting thimble for a while, but am now just holding two strands over my left index finger and one strand on my right index finger.  I'm a bit worried that the mitten may be a bit snug fitting, but I need to knit a bit more before I can decide.

And summer, such as it was, is almost over.  Hope you have a great bank holiday weekend!

Scaffolding and vertigo

 The last few days were very noisy as a pair of scaffolders arrived to erect scaffolding towers around the house, so that our rotten wood windows can be repaired and painted.  Various plants were squashed and we can't park in our own drive for the foreseeable future, but it's all ready for the handyman to start next week.

This is the view out of most of our windows now.

One of our tasks this weekend is to climb the scaffolding and wipe down all of the window frames and glass. Our windows almost never get cleaned because they are too high up for anything but the longest brush on a pole. And not only do the windowcleaners want exorbitant amounts of money to turn out for that, but at that height they are basically only slapping the glass with the wet brush and not actually effecting any cleaning. So we are wiping off the worst of the grime before the handyman starts. 

 Unfortunately, I have suffered vertigo since childhood and it has become much worse in my mature years.  I managed to climb up to the topmost platform in the picture above, but had to stay on my knees and couldn't stand up. And I definitely couldn't look down, and the slight swaying of the tower as DH moved around was making me dizzy.  I still managed to help with the work, but on the side gables where there is a further upper floor, DH had to climb up to the top platform on his own.  We've done two sides today, and will do the other two sides tomorrow.  We'll have to repeat the process once the handyman is all done his work, but just to clean the glass again so that will be quicker.

I finished sewing the binding on two more quilts this week:

The vintage top bought from an antiques dealer and quilted.

A hexie lap quilt with shaped side edges.

I tried to take part in an online FB workshop to make a little hinged box designed by an Australian designer called 'Boxed and bound'. I got everything cut out and ready, but unfortunately the workshop fell through due to a number of technical difficulties that the UK teacher seemed unable to resolve.  I didn't have assembly instructions but managed to complete the box on my own anyway by following cartonnage principles.  I got it mostly right and the box is quite cute, like a book. I used my Scan'n'Cut to cut out the card and decorative papers.

I've cast on for a Latvian mitten from the book Mittens of Latvia by Maruta Grasmane. The cast on went alright, with a single Latvian braid. But the chart is knitted in three colours, a hurdle I have tried and failed to jump in the past. I knit continental so I'm fine with two strands: I hold one over each index finger.  Three strands I find very difficult to wrangle. I've tried multiple ways of holding them, have watched many Youtube videos, and am still struggling. I'll see how I go.

Now that all the quilt binding has been machined on, I have turned to other projects on the list.  One such item, on the list since I bought my 'new' Janome machine four years ago, was to try out all the stitches that came with the machine.  I watched an interesting Youtube video about the domestic sewing machine industry and planned obsolescence the other day (can't find the link now) that quoted statistics from sewing machine servicepeople that something like 60% of home sewers only ever use zigzag and straight stitches on their machines.  It was tedious but I stitched out most of the over 200 stitch patterns to see what they're like.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much better some of them looked than the little icon printed on the machine index.  I used some pieces of firm twill fabric from one of DS's old lab coats and purposely didn't apply any stabiliser, so that I could see which stitches were more likely to pull or distort.   I have stapled the samples onto the wall next to my machine and I will endeavour to use more of the machine's stitches. It certainly makes me feel like doing a crazy quilt.

Another project in the queue was a sewing themed panel that I bought sometime in the last few years.  There was one big panel about 19x22.5" and several smaller panels of c 5.5".  I had a sort of plan worked out on graph paper so cut out the various panels and started sashing them up.  It worked out fairly well. I'm not sure what I'm making yet but I think it will likely be a wall hanging.  I'm going to make some 8-pointed star blocks like the one in the upper LH corner of the main panel picture.

I've been gradually progressing on the Christmas porch project over the last few weeks.  Adding all the bits is my least favourite part but I had a basket full of various Christmas items accumulated over the years from which to choose.  I've used two strings of colour lights on the porch railings and a string of clear lights on the garden tree, both of which will connect to battery packs in the finished item.  I would still like to add some snow but that's very hard to get looking natural, we'll see.

My bobbin lace friends came over this week and I managed to finish off another sample of Bruges Lace - this is a tri-lobed leaf about 2.5" high which came out fairly alright, just some tension issues with the pivot stitches.

And the exciting news this week is that, in a triumph of optimism over graph paper calculations, I have purchased a secondhand Handiquilter Simply Sixteen mid-arm machine which will sit on a 10-foot frame. It was a good buy because although it's an older machine, the seller had it all set up with all the accessories which would otherwise be additional extras if I bought a new one.  I went with the 16" throat also on the thinking that the machine is a bit smaller/less tall, so more likely to squeeze under the slanted ceiling.  I've ordered castors for the frame from Handiquilter so that I'll be able to move the frame around in the limited space depending on whether I want to work from the front or from the back.

  That meant that I had to empty out the attic room. Luckily, I had already put a lot of effort into downsizing my formerly-vast machine knitting stash.  So in a few hours, with DH's help, I was able to transform the room from this:

to this:

Due to the projecting fireplace and the slanting ceiling, I will only barely scrape the minimum working space around the frame. It's going to be a tight squeeze indeed and working conditions will not be optimal, but the machine will hopefully be great.  Kind of the reverse of my previous arrangements where I had a great room downstairs in the dining room to work in, with lots of natural light, but a heavily-bodged frame and basic straight-stitch domestic machine.  Really looking forward to having stitch regulation to help make my quilting look better.  With a 16" throat, I think I will be able to do up to around 10" deep pantograph designs depending on the quilt roll diameter.  The machine also comes with a ruler base so I could potentially learn how to use rulers.  The seller and I are jointly paying Handiquilter to dissassemble the frame at her house and deliver and construct it at my house, which saves a lot of aggro  and time for both of us.  It should be coming next week.

The cat is very excited about the new machine as you can tell

A less stressful caravan holiday

 We got away for a long weekend in the caravan, first time towing with the new car.  The new car actually towed really well, it's a bit more powerful so the ride was smoother and the fuel economy was significantly better (new car is a faux-hybrid so electrics kick in occasionally). Although I realised as I was directing DH to reverse up to the caravan for departure, that we need to add the extra step to our list of actually attaching our  new detachable towbar. Luckily bystanders were few at our rural campground near Shrewsbury.  So rural that the bunnies significantly outnumbered the campers.  They were scampering around and grazing around the units almost without fear. Very cute to watch out of our caravan window.

We had a nice country walk to Haughmond Abbey ruins and around Haughmond Hill, with views over the countryside.

And we had a nice day in Shrewsbury which has some wonderful old buildings. We'd been before but not for decades so we enjoyed a self-guided walk around the city which nestles in a loop of the River Severn. I saw some lovely Victorian tiles in Shrewsbury Cathedral which would make great quilt patterns.

I was mostly working on a cross-stitch bookmark kit from a magazine in the evenings. After we got back, I finished the binding on my One Block Wonder quilt that I made a few years ago by cutting up beach panels.

Visiting the Handiquilter stall at Festival of Quilts last week has re-ignited my hunger for a long-arm machine. So I have once again been prowling around the attic room with a tape-measure and graphing out frame sizes to see if I can squeeze one in.  Their budget machine and frame combo (Moxie on a Loft frame) is slightly smaller so I was hopeful, but it's only a few inches smaller.  I could shoehorn it into the room but would probably be hitting my head on the slanted ceiling quite regularly.   Also the Moxie only has a 15 inch throat so would not be a giant leap forward over my current Pfaff 11-inch machine apart from it has stitch regulation which would be wonderful.  There are some real toe-catcher length stitches on the one-block wonder quilt where I started going too fast on some parts of the meandering.

Sewing this week has mainly been machining binding onto quilts (one more to go) or hand-sewing down the binding (currently working on the vintage quilt top that I quilted).  I have picked out a mitten pattern from my new book 'Mittens of Latvia' and sent off for some Shetland yarn in colours I don't have enough of in my stash. 

I bought a new blind for the kitchen, as the one I put up when we moved in over 9 years ago had become very faded and stained.  This one is in a William Morris pattern and looks quite pretty in the light. Luckily I could re-use the fittings from the previous blind so didn't have to balance on ladders with a drill this time.

This coming week, at some point, the scaffolders should be arriving to scaffold our house ready for the handyman to start repairing and painting our decrepit windows the following week.  It will also be a chance for us to wash our filthy windows (we gave up on hiring people as they just bring brushes on sticks which don't really do anything to the upper storey windows).  DH may have to do the topmost 4th-storey windows as I suffer from vertigo if I look down.  

Oh, and the cat is fine after her surgery, it all healed really well and the t-shirt outfit worked great the whole week.

Birmingham

 I went up to Birmingham for a few nights so that I could visit the Festival of Quilts at the NEC. I enjoyed it last year when they retained the fourth hall to maintain COVID social distancing, giving everything a really spacious feel.  They have contracted back down to three halls  this year so aisles between shop stalls were narrower but still not too bad, and it didn't feel too crowded.  The quilts themselves were displayed on new rat-maze-like solid temporary walls in a confusing labyrinth with inadequate labels.  Category names were only shown on randomly placed banners  at the ends of some aisles, but not within aisles. So without buying a programme to understand the codes, you had no idea what category you were looking at in each aisle unless you peered at the tiny type at the bottom of each label. Nor did the labels give any credit to designers even though many quilts appear to be from commercial patterns. It was frustrating for me as a viewer (who doesn't like spending additional money on programmes) and I also found it confusing trying to work out whether I had seen all the aisles or not, due to the maze-like layout.  Despite that, there were lots of lovely quilts on display to enjoy.

The Language of the Wind, by Kaatrin Mozhi (India)

My Haven, by Danuta Owczarek (Poland)

Aoife's View, by Ethelda Ellis Erasmus (Ireland)

Emerald Coast by Nicky Hargrave (UK)

The Quilt, by Mary Mayne (Bedfordshire, UK)

Enchantment of Snow by Patrizia Sparano (Italy)

They had done a duplicate quilt all in autumn colours.

A display of Red & White quilts from the International Quilt Museum, 

some or all of these were in the famous red & white quilt show hung in Manhattan in 2011, afterwards being donated to the museum

As someone who is a bit out of the loop with the modern quilting world, it was surprising to see some quilts that were so intricately pieced that they would have been prize winners back in the day, but nowadays are not.  I was also surprised to see a large percentage of quilts hanging badly, from gentle waving on some through to significant bulges and valleys on others. I think it's because of the modern trend to quilt everything so closely within an inch of its life - if not done with care to maintain balance and even density, it can cause distortion and prevents the quilt from hanging flat when suspended vertically.

I had a day and a half at the show, so plenty of time to see the quilts, do some shopping, and attend three of the quick and easy one hour workshops.  All three workshops were a bit of a bust in the sense that within the 60 minutes there was absolutely no way to do more than just minimally start the advertised project and get an idea of how to finish it . The first one was introducing 'boro' or the Japanese tradition of mending by layering fabrics and fastening with running stitches; the second was a concertina 'book' with fabric covers that we quickly block-printed with acrylic paint and wooden stamps; and the third is mean to be a page for a sort of fabric junk journal where each page is meant to feature kantha stitching and floral embroidery. The third was the least effective as the teacher had the idea of using cheap fleece fabric for the wadding which turned out to be almost impossible to needle through.  The Boro sample is the only one I might finish. But I had some interesting chats in the classes and it was nice to sit down for an hour and make something.

I didn't buy much, steering resolutely clear of all the fabric stalls.  I bought some more woven stabiliser  that I was running low on for bagmaking, a needle minder and a couple of solid metal needle threaders to try (the wire kind always break on me), and on a vintage stall I found a bunch of hand-painted lace bobbins for only £2 each (normally these retail for £7.50 upwards). But I had fun looking at getting some inspiration.  I also had a play on the Handiquilter stand and had the Grace Cutie frame explained to me (machine quilting).

In Birmingham New Street station, you are now greeted by this impressive giant mechanical bull statue.

I always find Birmingham quite baffling, with all its changes of level, massive buildings or equally massive construction sites blocking line of sight/access routes, strange mix of cutting-edge architecture, heritage and derelict buildings etc.  I did a walk around on Wednesday using a guide I found online, and was surprised to find many attractive features such as the canalside area. I was particularly impressed by the new Birmingham Library building interior, which is apparently the largest public library in the world.  They had only a modest collection of handicraft books however.

Before I went, I finished binding quilt 1 of 6, which is the Tilda Wreath Quilt.

I also had to create this punk/goth number for the cat, after she had surgery to remove a cyst from her side.  The vet supplied a cone so she wouldn't lick the healing wound, but she was really struggling to get around or even to eat/drink with the cone on her head.  I looked up cat surgical protection suits, which are a bit expensive, and also found videos on Youtube showing how to convert a baby onsie into a cat suit. But then I stumbled across a video showing how to cut up a t-shirt and basically tie it onto the cat to create a custom fit.  DH nobly sacrificed one of his t-shirts and after a bit of experimentation, I came up with this outfit.  She can behave almost normally in it, including using her litterbox, and it has stopped her from licking the wound all week.  The vet said to leave the cone on for a week, so the cat can come out of her goth straitjacket this weekend.