Putting in the Hours

There has been no slacking this week in my workshop! I quilted the table linen project in straight-ish lines and loved the texture that the rope added. There were a few problem creases that appeared which prompted me to run over them repeatedly with matchstick lines which I can attest was quite boring. There were 2 old stains on the linen which I should have left alone but I decided to peg it out on the washing line and throw a couple of buckets of water over it. When the quilt dried the stains had spread and multiplied and the quilt would not bend enough to go in the washing machine so I decided to soak it in the bath with some stain remover. While it was under water the central doily went completely blue so I fished it out, dripped it back outside, rinsed it with a watering can and hung it to dry on a farm gate. 

I left the two horizontal edges unbound to give them a rustic look but I added binding made from a ripped linen pillowcase to the top and bottom then added lengths of clothes line as an embellishment on all 4 sides. 

The idea is to project a slideshow of images onto the quilt on the theme of “Domestic”. I want to include old photos of women in domestic service, ladies having afternoon tea, cotton pickers, textile weavers, factory workers, makers and crafters. This is proving difficult since people did not own cameras and take selfies in those days and pictures on the internet are rarely copyright free. I want to include as much detail as I can about the subjects, dates, places and photographers. If any blog readers have any pictures the vaguest bit relevant hidden away in photo albums then I would love to include them. I reckon I need at least 60 which would make a slide per second one minute presentation. It would be great to include audio in this project in the future.

The rest of my week was spent on custom quilting a lovely New York Beauty customer quilt. It was entirely stitch-in-the-ditch and curved longarm ruler work which took a while but I am very pleased with how it turned out. 

I was sent photos of Beezlebub hanging at Paducah by Mark Caraher and Donna Hartford.  The quilt will now go back to Bonnie in Oklahoma to relax its creases while it waits for its next outing. At least while it’s away I don’t have to store it;)

Next week, apart from customer quilts and my usual malarkey, I must get “Domestic” ready to photograph (which means finding at least one good still antique photo) and mark out the DWR with a chalk grid. It is far easier to mark a quilt before it goes on the frame. I will worry about how to get the marks off later because I suspect that this will be another one that can’t go into the washing machine…