Spring Cleaning in Autumn

I don’t know why it always amazes me how much can be achieved with a good TO DO list.  All sorts of jobs got done including booking flights to Strasbourg for the show in Ste. Marie aux Mines and almost setting up the Bernina Qmatic system. There was a blip when I could not find the bracket for the PC monitor. A pair of glasses and my tripod were also missing but it took days for me to remember that they were all safely stashed in the suitcase full of quilts that I brought back from FOQ.

I wrote a lengthy blogpost for Bernina Germany on the story behind BzB which I will also publish in English. I had to trawl right back to the beginning of my blog for references to the project that never seemed to end. It looks like the original drawing was done in 2007 or even earlier and I kept having ideas or guiltily chickening out for the next 10 years!

Christine Porter kindly sent a couple of photos of TT from the World Quilt Show. It will continue on a USA tour with Manusco. BzB should have gone on display at the Knitting and Stitching show but I had to ask for it back to get it ready to go on to quilt shows in the USA. The competitive life of a quilt is usually 2 years within its completion so unfortunately I could not afford for it to be out of commission for 4 months.

I completed 3 customer/DIY quilts, even one with a too-short backing that I had foolishly not measured. I had to unload that one, cut strips off the side and sew these along the bottom, adding significantly to the time taken. 

All summer I have been haranguing my kids to get rid of toys and books that they have outgrown. They have sold a few things on Ebay and they have now sorted out bags for the Red Cross Shop or the dump. Freya has gleefully put aside her maths jotters for a ceremonial bonfire. Over the weekend I managed to get rid of a shelf unit, Lego, a cycle trailer and a puppet theatre. The house that we rattled around in 17 years ago is bursting with things that we no longer need. Now that the school year has begun, I am in the mood for a major purge, tackling cupboards, even ditching out-of-date food colouring and bags of citric acid that I must have bought for some long-forgotten reason. My next task is to sort out electronics, in particular the charging cables for gadgets we probably don’t have any more.

My workshop also felt claustrophobically full of “stuff” so I had one of my ruthless clear-outs in there, ditching a pile of wadding scraps. There is already a tall pile of offcuts that could be sewn together which will probably still be in that state in 6 months time. It was definitely time to offer a box of quilt magazines a new home and to sort out the pile of cardboard boxes that might come in handy. My shelves may not be stacked with matching boxes but things are considerably tidier which clears the way for some new creativity.