Fixer

I consider myself to be a problem solver or a fixer, without the dodgy associations of crime or MI6.

My children have often commented that they just want me to listen sympathetically, rather than come up with ingenious solutions to whatever problem they have. 

This week a non local customer, who was on a fishing trip, came into work first thing to present me with a lovely bunch of flowers. I had helped her to fix her jammed longarm machine remotely by telling her how to get everything unstuck. 

Someone brought in a battered vintage Bernina that she had inherited from her mother. I cleaned out a lot of fluff, gave it some oil and it performed very well apart from not doing the fancy stitches. These are operated with some cogs which could have been worn or required a full service. The new owner was pleased as she only wanted to make bunting and cushions.

The washing machine in my cottage conked out last week. It turned on but would not fill with water. I am responsible for replacing the white goods and I dreaded the thought of trying to get the old machine out and down the cobbled alleyway to the street, let alone acquiring another one, probably second hand, and getting it back into the cottage. I took my laundry to work as there is an ancient washing machine in the building’s downstairs kitchenette that is used by the garden machinery business for washing boiler suits.

A visitor, who only called in for a cup of tea, helped me to pull out the dead washing machine and I thought I would just try plugging it in to the neighbouring socket. Amazingly, this brought it back to life!

If only I could work out how to solve bigger problems like how to get divorce proceedings going;)

I plan on spending Sunday figuring out how to put my quilted coat together. I hope it just means joining the outside pieces, same with the inside, attempting under-stitching, bagging it out then maybe top-stitching…?

Fan-Tastic

This week was so hot that I wished for a Scottish summer, although it was hot there too. I was glad of the neck fan and bedroom fan that I had bought. One night it was 28 degrees and even my stone cottage was hot upstairs. There is no air-con at work and we were sent home at 4pm where all I did was water my garden, marvel at how fast runner beans got and try to beat the slugs to the odd strawberry.

Goosey Quilters, based in Tavistock, is celebrating its 40th anniversary so some of their members came along to longarm some of the 40 Linus quilts that they have made to hang at their exhibition in September. They completed 8 quilts as a team effort and had fun learning how to free-motion quilt on longarm machines. 

I decided that it was time to declare that my patchwork coat pieces are ready to be made into a garment. I could probably go on adding scruffy kantha hand stitching to it for ages but I think there is already enough. I cut out the lining with scissors on the floor without pattern weights. This is the second lot of lining that I have bought for the coat as I lost the first lot in my move. I need to ask for advice on how to put it together because the original pattern is for an unlined coat made from boiled wool and it has a flappy front that flops backwards in some ingenious way. Hopefully I will just make an outer and inner coat and put them together…

Norfolk Minibreak

Before I left on my Norfolk mini-break I completed a lovely customer quilt, an Irish Chain with silver metallic thread. The Q24 did a beautiful job - a thread net and slower speed helped.

I have been having a long weekend in Norfolk with my girls because I wanted to see Nella’s final year textile art exhibition (and meet her new boyfriend!) I will actually be back in July for a slightly longer visit to attend her Graduation. 

One of the days was unbearably hot so Nessie and I did not venture out at all. We had a cooler seaside day at Gorleston, followed by getting soaked in a torrential downpour later that evening. 

It was lovely to have a pretty lazy weekend - back to Go, Go, Go next week;)

Crazy Busy

This week at work was all demos, teaching and customer quilting as well as cracking out the machine inventory, preparing the classroom and all of my usual dashing about. Every evening I did some extra hours for my Friday job because they were short staffed. I was glad when the weekend rolled around and I did not have to set an alarm.

Consequently, last week’s laundry still has not been folded, my “sewing room / office” is in a muddle and I have been eating the same thing every day to save time. 

The Slug Pub was not a success. I was feeling triumphant the first night because there were 3 of them in the beer trap but by morning they had sobered up and dragged themselves off to wherever they hide. I ate 2 slightly under-ripe strawberries before they stole them from me. 

I was determined to do very little this weekend but that did not seem to include cutting the grass, re-potting tomatoes and chilli peppers, dog walks, batch cooking, hoovering, and grocery shopping. I WILL go and add some stitches to that patchwork coat…

Slainte Mhath, Slugs;)

First I tried straw, then I teased out wire scourers to apply as mulch, splitting open the end of my thumb but NOTHING seems to stop the pesky slugs that are trashing my strawberries. I have been out at dusk with a trowel, waging war against the slimy pests. My next strategy is to put out beer traps, otherwise I will not be able to eat a single homegrown strawberry without biting into something vile and squelchy. 

It was all-systems-go at work with customer quilts. I think 4 different ones were on the frames this week ranging from brightly coloured Kaffe Fassett fabrics to more traditional combinations. 

I had hoped to declare my patchwork coat pieces done but I could not do any hand-stitching unless I put a plaster on my thumb, which was very awkward. The coat pattern is for a single layer of unlined boiled wool so I have to figure out how to add a lining to hide all of the scruffy insides. It is times like these when I really miss having a big work table. 

I worked out that I only have 5 free weekend days to quilt the 2-person show quilt that I was hoping would be entered into FoQ. It does not feel like enough time and I don’t fancy having no weekend time off between now and the end of July, apart from Nella’s Graduation. I am disappointed because I thought I had come up with a good plan but it needs to be achievable as well as impressive so we will either have to defer the quilt or just apply an edge-to edge pattern. 

I have to say, full-time working has killed off any creativity I may have had. When I get home from work I really can’t be bothered to do very much - take Nessie out, eat, make packed lunch, perhaps an hour of telly, then bed! Gone are the long days of working on a show quilt at the expense of absolutely everything else…

Not an Actual Mummified Squirrel

Last week was hot - it got up to the mid 30’s C and was just as warm inside at work which is not ideal for making quilts. I even missed my old workshop which rarely went above 10 degrees C and was always colder inside than out. All I wanted to do after work was sit very still in my cool cottage with a cup of tea.

Apart from watering my plants every day, trying to keep the tomatoes alive, I planted some flowers and seeds in an old paddling pool. Slightly foolishly - I climbed down a ladder to the river at the edge of the derelict garden to collect some stones to line the bottom. I was mightily freaked out to see the glassy eyes of what I assumed was a mummified squirrel meet mine as I scrambled down. It was a while until I realised that it was actually a weird, plastic chipmunk that had somehow wedged itself into the riverbank. 

Hopefully, apart from a few more tomatoes, I have finished planting since I have already spent a small fortune on compost. 

 

I have a couple of projects going on in the background, one of which is the patchwork coat which I cannot seem to decide might be nearing completion, apart from its construction. The other thing was randomly patching some scraps together to make an iPad cover as requested by Nella. I have not yet started the punk-rock inspired cover for the heavy-duty Singer, despite having all of the studs and mohican wig. However, I have thought about the quilting that I might do on a 2-person FoQ entry. It needs to be simple, classy and do-able apart from the 800+ French knots that I would love to add…

 

Real Life Animal Crossing

I used to be somewhat addicted to a Nintendo game called “Animal Crossing” where I would run around planting, watering and weeding on my virtual island. That was ME in real life this weekend, planting up a veritable farm in containers, taking over any unclaimed patch of ground. If it was my own garden I would probably put in lots of raised beds but Nessie crashes around on the grass playing footie and when I eventually move on I will have to shift an awful lot of plants in pots!

Last week when I had visitors it was unseasonably cool but now it is so hot that I am mostly inside my cool cottage since I overheat easily, even in the shade. It looks set to be a sticky week at work ahead (25-30 degrees C) which I am not looking forward to.

I had a jaunt to Cowslip Studios near Launceston on Saturday with work colleague / gardening guru, Karen to see the Kaffe Fasset quilt exhibition but really it was an excuse to swing by the lovely, Homeleigh Garden Centre and B&M which had wilting tomato plants on sale for £1.00!

I spent ages on Sunday preparing pots for planting. The pots that were donated to me by a friend are deep and use up too much compost so I put sticks, bits of turf and cardboard scraps at the bottom to take up some of the volume. I have now had to order yet more compost because I still have some flowers, baby tomatoes, chillies and rocket to plant. 

My mini farm is growing raspberries, beans, tomatoes, strawberries and tatties! Hopefully, it will survive the heat if I water everything nice and early in the morning. 

Since it is too hot to be outside I might go and have a rummage amongst my scraps. Nella has requested an ipad pouch so I will see what I can do without buying any more fabric. 

Family Hols 2026

 

I had a lovely week with all 3 of my children coming to stay in my tiny Tavistock cottage. We love being with each other, doing outings and just hanging out together. It is a pity we are all so far away but at least none of them lives in Australia!

We visited Cotele and Killerton House National Trust houses, had a day out in Falmouth and Totnes then an evening watching Beltane Morris dancers. 

We cooked, had many cups of tea, sat around a bonfire and laughed a lot. Nessie and I will really miss them when they all leave but at least it won’t be too long until we meet again at Nella’s Graduation.

A Screwdriver and a Spoon

It was a short, quick week at work and varied with an overlocker lesson, a videography tutorial, customer quilts and everything in between. 

In my garden a naughty dog made a wee hole in the greenhouse playing footie and I planted a row of hollyhocks on the other side of my rotting fence. My trowel broke in the stony ground so I had to resort to using a screwdriver and a spoon. I was advised that slugs might enjoy my new plants so I put pot scourers around them to put them off. Hopefully my neighbourhood hedgehog will eat all of the slugs anyway.

I have 3 beds made up in anticipation of my children visiting. I could really do with a bigger house or shorter visitors!

I considered making a start on the iPad cover that Nella requested then decided I did not have space for that right now as Freya’s tortoise will be taking up residence on my sewing table.

Fed up with how long it was taking me to paint Jo’s wall with a brush, I bought a sprayer which was definitely the way to go. I made an executive decision and got some paint mixed in Farrow & Ball’s brassica colour. I was worried that it would look too grey but there is a violet tinge to it so I think it looks rather nice:)

How Many Tomato Plants are too Many?

I only managed one small customer quilt this week as I was busy doing other jobs, including stock taking many varieties of calico…

It was a bank holiday weekend! I have been helping Jo to jazz up her back yard and we started on painting the walls and fence which always takes far more paint than you can imagine. I watered down the pale lilac masonry paint to get a base on the roughcast walls. There should be a law against those, particularly ones done in black granite. I am hoping that Jo might be able to find a sprayer in the back of her shed because using a brush takes ages.

I did a bit of garden “pot-tering” and have had to relocate some things to the derelict garden next door. I bought a bag of bargain seed potatoes for £1.00 so put some in boxes, some in rough ground and still had some left which I gave to my neighbour. 

I replaced the dead pansies in my baked bean tin garden with marigolds, planted tomatoes, strawberries and runner beans. I still have raspberries, hollyhocks, dwarf beans and tomatoes coming mail order plus the tomato seeds I sowed in my greenhouse have all germinated! If they all grow I will just have to preserve them.

My last chore of the long weekend will be to scrub all of the soil and paint off my hands.

Bloomin' Hectic Week

After driving from Norfolk last Sunday, I attended the welcome reception for Nicholas Ball’s retreaters prior to their week at Quilt Direct. They worked on their improv fish all week, ending up making them twice the normal size in their enthusiasm. 

As well as making sure the retreaters were fed, watered and happy I had a customer quilt and lots of teaching. There was a day of 1:1 overlocker, another day of 1:1 Bernini Aurora and 770QE, a B990 zoom session, then my new Friday job. 

My evenings were also busy - Nicholas came round for tea, we went out for pizza and had a gala dinner to attend!

My house could do with a jolly good hoover, Nessie needs a brush, and I have not even taken the new heavy duty Singer out of its box.

On Saturday my work colleague, Sue, and I turned up at Jo’s house to do a “Groundforce” special on her back yard which had not been completely cleared since she had a new kitchen installed. In addition, a previous owner had painted the concrete green and it was a victim of Devon winter slime. We made 3 trips to the dump then pressure-washed everything. Jo was delighted and keen to repaint fences and walls, purple of course:)