I had a good time at the sewing retreat this week. There were a lot of positives: I had plenty of room on and around my table, it was a nice big T-shaped conference room, the organisers were really conscientious and looked after us well, people were really friendly and it felt very egalitarian and low key, the workshops were interesting and generally it was just fun to sew all day with no need to cook or feel guilty about household jobs. The poor reviews for the hotel were fairly justified, it is very tired and the food was compared by several people to school dinners (that's a bad thing if you don't know). Luckily my room was adequate. I did make inroads on my gluten free snacks I had brought with me and was glad I had them, but there was generally something for me to eat even if it wasn't great. The pool attached to the hotel was actually quite nice and I had a nice swim in there one day.
I got loads done on the various projects I had brought with me, but unfortunately my machine decided it didn't like being on retreat and stopped stitching properly the second morning. I've had so much trouble with it for years, it's a real lemon but I've been nursing it along the last few years. It has the rattling bobbin and jumping bobbin case issue which seems to affect a significant minority of the Janome 8200QCP machines, although there are plenty of people who love theirs. The second morning the bobbin case jammed up and wouldn't even come out of the machine for quite a while, and once I got it out and put it back in, the machine won't form a stitch properly anymore without the thread also yanking out the bobbin case. I tried adjusting the spring that holds the bobbin case in but had no luck. Luckily DH was my hero and drove an hour to the hotel on his lunch break to bring me my Janome Gem (I also got him to bring a pillow off the bed as the hotel pillows were dreadful, hard and lumpy). Luckily the Gem still worked fine, and in fact sewed considerably better than my big machine has done for quite a while. So I used that for the remainder of the retreat.
So now I'm in the market for a new machine as it doesn't feel worth it to throw yet another £100+ at servicing the lemon machine to try to get it working again. Apparently the Janome 6700 also can have the rattling bobbin problem. I don't know what's happened to Janome, I've had three previous machines- the first two were workhorses and the third was still fairly good. I'm also a bit flabbergasted at how much machines cost now. I've had Juki recommended to me, and I've joined a few Juki groups on Facebook where people seem pretty happy with their machines, so that's a possibility. But the DX-2000QVP which seems to be the quilting machine of choice, only has an 8" throat space. My broken machine has an 11" throat so it would be quite a reduction. On the other hand, I don't quilt much on my sit down machine since getting the longarm frame..
My first retreat project was to cover several panels with some of the selvedges I've been saving for years. I had prepared in advance panels to be used for a zip pouch, a project bag, a wallhanging and a round case. This used up a lot but not all of my selvedge collection. There's another panel I forgot to include in this photo.
The next project was to try out my Clover jelly roll rug making gadget and to use up some of the large amount of 2.5" strips of scrap fabric I had accumulated and some of the many bits of narrow wadding left over from quilting on the frame. I had looked up 3 or 4 bag projects on Youtube to make as I didn't want to tackle a rug. I haven't done this before so I started with what looked like the easiest one, a basket from 16 WOF strips (however I had to piece together scraps to make up WOF lengths then join them all together.) I had vaguely thought that you would just fit the gadget in place then hang on to it while you put pedal to the metal. In fact, I found I could only slide the gadget about 4-5" at a time, any further and the strip/wadding combo would start to unfold and spring open, plus you have to manipulate the folded fabric to keep it folded as it goes under the presser foot. So it was a lot of starting and stopping and fairly tedious to do. Good thing I was on a retreat, if I had been home I would have given up out of boredom.
I chose all blue strips for the basket, and it turned out ok. It was a bit tricky zig-zagging the tubes together on the Janome Gem as its maximum width is only 5mm (as opposed to 9mm on my big machine). The construction process is similar to when I made a few of the clothesline bowls in the past. The original basket had sewn-on commercial handles to make it into a bag, but I may just use it as a storage basket.
At the end of the retreat, I started sewing pink strips together and I've worked on that a bit since getting home, to make a tote bag (currently still needs a base and handles). It feels good to be using up all these scraps and wadding scraps.
The next project was to sew up a Thatched Cottage pincushion from AmberMakes, which was a companion project to the doorstop that I made a few years ago. The panel had been sitting in my stash ever since. I did all the sewing and assembly at the retreat, including some hand embroidery of flowers around the doorway, but I haven't stuffed it yet to finish it.
Two more finds in the deep stash dive were a printed birdhouse panel, and some screen-printed little birds from UK designer Sea Parrot - both purchased at previous Festival of Quilts. I'd also bought some fabrics from Sea Parrot. It seemed like I could make something using all of them together, so I pulled a bunch more fabric from my stash, including the perfect marbled grey-green to use as sashing for the panel, and made this
bird wallhanging. The borders were just eyeballed, I didn't try to make the blocks fit exactly as the central measurements were weird and let's face it, I'm very poor at arithmetic. I quite like how it turned out, it seems very spring-like. The designer liked it as well and
featured it on her social media (Facebook).
Next up was to make the spool blocks to go around my Sashiko spools embroidery panel. These finish at 3-inches so were a bit fiddly to make. I tried to sew accurately (not my forte) but in order to align the wood ends with the thread centres, I have ended up with some wobbly blocks. Hopefully when I add sashing it will disguise the wobbles.
The morning I spent without a sewing machine, I did one of the three (optional workshops) with Abby of AbbieAnne Patchwork Quilting & Textiles to make a fusible applique picture of a snowy forest scene which will be a Christmas stitching of some kind. This was fun as you could add as many trees as you like to build your own forest. Some ladies had brought some gorgeous northern lights sky fabric instead of the kit fabric. I used a subtle metallic print I found in my stash, and a mix of the kit fabrics and my own greens. It's only fused at the moment, I need to zigzag around the appliques and add a border.
So that was the retreat, I got lots done but have also come home with lots to do, to use up the tubes and the selvedge fabric, and finish off the applique.
I've made a start on the pantograph stitching of the Carabelle Batiks quilt on my frame. I've knit a bit more on the tea cosy hat and the Shawl Neve, done a bit of cross stitch on my monogram, and I'm putting together a Rolife kit for a booknook featuring cherry blossom, and I'm halfway through weaving the third grey placemat on my little loom.
I have donated knitting books to seven different local charity shops, so the piles have reduced considerably but it will need a couple more trips before they are all out of the house. I had to take my replacement sewing glasses back to Specsavers because I tried to use them on the retreat and they weren't letting me focus on my sewing needle. After more tests, the optician said the glasses weren't set at the correct focal length so they are remaking them for me. Luckily I had my reading glasses with me for the retreat.
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