St Andrews Graduation at last!

 After a delay of 2 years due to the pandemic, it was finally Freya’s graduation from St Andrews University, postponed since the summer of 2020. She and her friends caught up for a week of festivities in glorious summer weather. They had all just left quietly in March 2020 without a chance to say goodbye to each other or to the town where they had spent 4 years. 

With intrepidation, Nella and I set off on the caravan’s maiden voyage, hoping that the town centres would not be too busy. We made it in one piece and managed to park reasonably tidily on a slope at a campsite just outside of the town, overlooking the beach. Nessie felt obliged to bark at passers-by as she guarded our spot. 

Graduation day was lovely - the students all showed off in their academic dress and posed for photos at iconic landmarks. There was a parade afterwards and a garden party. Freya found a random student to dog-sit and Nessie trotted off without a backward glance to spend the afternoon with some undergrads. The evening was spent on the beach and for once, the summer solstice was celebrated without cold, Scottish rain. 

I was relieved that the caravan experience was positive - comfortable and not too stressful and we are looking forward to our next expedition in July to a music festival near Stirling.

This week 2 overlocker / coverlocker  machines were delivered for me to become familiar with. There is the top-of-the-range Bernina L890 which is super advanced and amazing. It will take me a while to get used to its capabilities and thankfully it has on-board help videos and automatic settings. The other one was purchased as a backup for my old Babylock which is apparently now scrap. I will probably just keep it set up for trimming the edges of quilts and do fancy stuff with the Bernina. 

I have now finished hand-sewing the binding onto Nella’s puff quilt which looks fab but weighs a ton - it feels more like a mattress than a quilt. It is a great quilt but I can’t see me making another one any time soon;)

Nella had a few days to make up at the Crathes Castle cafe so I got on with quilting the small Warli quilts using Qmatic. They all have some background quilting in silvery grey then there are a few Warli figures stitched on top here and there. The idea was to keep things simple-ish and not get involved in too many embellishments or add hand sewing kantha stitches. I hope to add a few prairie points and see if the coverstitch machine can add a decorative triple line of stitches along the bindings.