Festive week

 I am finishing off yet another packet of festive sweets as I type this - far too many goodies lying around the house and filling up the fridge, not good for my waistline.  DS has been with us since Monday night which has been nice.  We had a pleasant Christmas Day together, then Boxing Day was spent driving down to the elderly in-laws for a few hours then driving all the way back.  Today has been a recovery day - lots of sleeping for one thing.  I hope your Christmas day went well also.

My Christmas presents included an eyelet setting kit, an embroidery book from a friend, a beautiful handpainted lace bobbin, and a 2026 Japanese woodblock calendar.

Today we made a short foray to the Boxing Day sales and I got a few things at Hobbycraft:  a star wreath as I need to rebuild the red and white spool wreath I made some years ago which has now lost its shape; some ribbons on sale; some half price Christmas FQs and some glue.

Between eating, cooking, visiting family etc. I haven't done a lot of crafts this week.  I did get in a few days of sewing and made up a neat little organising pouch called the Nightingale Zipper Case by Center Street Quilts.  It went together fairly well although I had to use my industrial machine for the final binding due to the bulk.

I calculated and sewed the fifth block for my Gail Pan embroidered blocks quilt. One more block to go.

I fought with the 1:24th scale chair all week, the one that wouldn't take wood glue nor tacky glue.  I have got it to hold together, barely, with 3-in-1 glue which is a solvent based glue but only after multiple falling-apart debacles. I think the moral of the story is 'don't pre-stain wood parts when the glue points will be so tiny'. 

After practicing the Baptist Fan pattern with my circle rulers last week, I loaded up the Checkered Dresden Plate quilt and started quilting across the top row.  You may remember that I had been practicing a bottom-up start because that was how the videos did it.  It became apparent fairly quickly that trying to stitch top down was not going to work.  The angle meant that the back of the ruler foot was hitting the ruler a lot of the time, and the circle rulers themselves were canting up from resting on the attachment pins at the top of the quilt so they weren't level, which made the ruler foot hit the ruler even more.  After persevering for four wobbly fans, I gave up and admitted defeat.  I had also noticed that I hadn't pressed the top very well before it went into the quilting queue.  So I unpicked the four fans over a couple of days and unpicked the side attachment, brought my iron up and pressed the seams better as I re-attached the top and then basted across it every foot or so.    So now it is all rolled onto the front beam and I can start over again from the bottom.  I've done the first row and it is working much better. The stitching process feels a bit mechanical:  there are five circles in different sizes to use, one at a time.  I've got them laid out on an ironing board to one side so I can pick then replace each circle in turn.  My stitching overlaps could still be tidier but I expect that will get better with practice. Overall it is looking good and I'm pleased with it now.

I've done a bit more on weaving the sock yarn on my loom, and in the evenings I have been plugging away on my Christmas cross stitch sampler.  There has been a certain amount of unpicking - even with the stitched grid to help, I still went wrong a few times.  But it's cute.

I've squeezed in a bit of papercrafting:  I made a couple of collages on index cards that can be used for inserting into journals, and I made some 'dangles' after watching a video on how to make them.  You can attach these to the journal or to tags inserted in the journal etc.

I hope you've squeezed in some crafting time during this festive week and that Santa brought you some crafty goodies.