In A Spin

The problem of how to cut and sew the DWR quilt borders really got my brain spinning. I kept staring at the fabric and eventually realised that I would only get  10” mitred borders from my 3 metres of navy so I had to come up with Plan B. That was to reserve the navy as the backing then find a wide piece of grey fabric that I use when blocking quilts and bung it in the washing machine with half a dozen packs of blue and green dye and see what transpired. It looked worryingly purple while spinning around but it came out a good-enough dark teal.

Freya was home from Uni for Spring Break so I enlisted her help to draw a 90” chalk square onto the teal background. I wished I owned a tile-laser to get accurate lines and angles. Once the main body of the DWR quilt was centred came the tricky issue of the wavy border. It proved to be too big, even for the 90” square “quilt-top” which I had now had so I had to remove a section on all 4 sides until it could sit roughly 12” away from the main quilt. I can’t tell you how long all this faffing took, pinning into an unwieldy double section of insulation board, balanced on my table to I had to breathe in and shuffle around. The board is so big that I have to turn it to reach all of the sides and this often knocks things over. Eventually I pinned all of the fabric on, typically putting the pins in backwards, making them difficult to remove when I machine sewed it all down temporarily using an extra large stitch. 

There is now a Plan C, since it appears that appliqué has come into play. I had to make a lot more ¼” orange bias to go around the wavy borders, as well as the main DWR. I will have such fun sewing all this on then removing the temporary stitches (NOT!)

Fergus is about to have his final lesson with the guitar teacher he has had for the past 9 years. I thought he might like a cushion for his studio so I ordered a thermofax screen of Jimi Hendrix’s head. The cushion cover that I bought was really too big for Jimi’s head, that I had forgotten to enlarge accordingly when I placed my order so I had to hand-cut an acetate stencil to make a border like one of his groovy album covers. I admit I did not think this through - I should have used a spray glue to make the acetate sit flat and used a stencil brush to dab on the paint - the result is definitely a bit rough and ready but Jimi’s head printed with puff paint looks really cool. Maybe I could print a psychedelic duvet cover next…

Freya had a “fake” birthday a week early since she is meeting friends for a holiday in Italy. I made a 4-layer chocolate cake which barely had room for all of the candles. Now that she is a grown-up she just requires sensible presents like holiday money but I decided she should also have her own pepper grinder and a DVD of Paddington 2. I misplaced the DVD inside a quilt that I picked up from the local craft shop and did not find it until I had a brainwave 48 hours later. Never mind, Nella and I can watch it first then post it to Freya for a bit of light relief from all that studying;)