Not hot for Australia

 I was briefly in a zoom call with my Australian quilting friends Friday night, and was complaining that it was still 25C at 9:30pm.  I was emphatically told that 25C is actually a lovely temperature and they wish they had that now  (it's winter there of course).  And in the news today it was reported that Greece, Spain, Portugal etc are going up to 42C so I suppose our high today of 29C is something to be grateful for.  But for me, I am sleeping dreadfully because it's still 24C in my bedroom at night and having our pathetically small transom windows open means that I wake when the sun comes up at around 4:30am.  Today I bought a blackout blind and stapled it across the window up to the transom, so I can at least block out some of the light.  I suppose it's whatever you're used to. It's supposed to go up to 33C tomorrow, I may have to sleep in the living room...

Anyway, enough moaning.  This week I have returned to the Fat Cat Dresden Plate quilt that I cut out from Tilda 'Chic Escape' layer cakes at the retreat back in January.  I sewed all the wedges at each end, then brought a padded board and my travel iron into the living room so I could turn all 144 wedges through and press the points while watching TV.  Then I arranged them into 12 plates of 12 wedges each on my design wall.  Now I have to sew them all into plates, starching and blocking each one onto a template I have drawn on some scrap fabric pinned to my ironing board so that they all end up the same size.  A bit tedious, I don't really like repetitive block patterns because I get bored but hopefully it will look nice when it's done.  I like the inner star pattern created by sewing both ends of the wedges. I think the choice of background fabric is going to make or break this quilt, I will have to go through my stash and see if I have anything suitable.

I've continued to embroider the Gail Pan Stitchalong blocks that I started while I was travelling.  Time consuming but so cute when they are done.  Each block will get framed by more Tilda fabric once I'm done all six sets, to end up with a wallhanging size quilt.

When I bought my Korean fabric at the Dongdaemun market in Seoul, they threw in a free half-yard of blue and white vase print that they said was mis-printed although I can't see where.  I was looking at it and suddenly envisioned making a needlebook out of the vases.  So I've fused two vases to stiff pelmet interfacing and lined them with coordinating fabric to create covers, and will insert two felt 'pages'.

Back in 2012, I spent a stupid amount of money on the 1:48th scale Robin Betterley 'Silver Thimble Quilt shop' kit along with all the kits to furnish the interior of the shop. Because I am a quilter who also used to make dollhouses.  It has been waiting all this time but last week I decided to make a start.  So far I have assembled the laser-cut room box and decorated it, and done a lot on the front - which cleverly slots onto the room box like the lid of a gift box slides down over a box.  It's so tiny!  All the pieces go together so perfectly, a really quality product.  I still have an awning and signage to add to the front.

I have also been opening - and then shutting - my biggest dollshouse which stands about four feet tall. It's a massive Victorian townhouse that I bought back around 1993 I think, and spent hundreds of hours (and too much money) on decorating and furnishing it over the next 15 or so years.  But now I think I need to downsize it. It's too big and an awkward size to display because it needs to sit on a low stand to bring the attic down to eye level, it's too tall to sit on a normal table. And I haven't really engaged with it since moving it to this house eleven years ago. But when I open it and look inside, all the years of work come flooding back to me and I just can't think where to even start with it.  The contents vary from crude budget makes through to expensive collector furnishings, so probably I would be better off trying to sell some of the more valuable items separately.  And then there are kits that I lovingly made from scratch which are hugely valuable to me but probably not to others - but if I keep them, then where am I going to put them?  I think former cherished hobbies are perhaps the hardest categories to downsize. It's easy to just give old dishes or pictures to a charity shop, but when you have invested a lot of love and time into a passion, it's much more difficult even when the passion has subsided.