Crush

I enjoyed the two really good speakers at the QGBI Region 16 day in Perth on Saturday. Judi Mendelssohn gave an amusing talk on how she does not consider herself to be a championship quilter with many examples of how some projects did not quite turn out as originally planned. I was struck by her belief that the act of sewing and creating unravels any stress that she is experiencing. Lizzie Wall spoke about how her pictorial quilts led her into creating fantastic, contemporary ecclesiastical garments.

Judi’s point about sewing being a stress reliever has never felt truer for me although some of my self-inflicted stress is actually caused by my desire to create huge projects while also trying to write, blog, teach and be a responsible parent. Fergus is currently very resentful of my efforts to make sure that he does his homework, pack his school bag and do some music practise. He is constantly telling me that he hates me which is rather trying!

I spend my time in school reminding the class to listen, to be attentive while I am explaining, pick up the pencils from the floor and hang their coats up so it is a drag to come home and not get a little co-operation. 

I have been working frustratingly slowly on a customer quilt because I am still getting to grips with the tension settings using the new, jumbo bobbin. I simply don’t have enough hours in the week to keep up with my to-do list. On Thursday I sussed online banking, paid bills, posted a parcel, remembered to get my haircut and took my great friend, Mo, out for a birthday lunch. 

It is hardly any wonder that after enjoying a fiddle session with new strings, my attention must have wandered for a split second and I stupidly managed to clip the back end of my Landy on a metal rail in a tight car-park space. Because the wings are made of aluminium, it just crushed and crumpled the rear section out of shape. I was really annoyed with myself and felt awful that a tiny bump has caused such expensive damage to my vehicular best friend. 

Autumn blew in on Sunday morning so after a brisk dog walk it felt good to get laundry and school planning done so that I could do some more blackberry picking and piece one small section of the wonky berry strips. It seems to have taken ages to make 10 free-cut bits and I think a total of 16 will be necessary. I am looking forward to ordering a plum-coloured leather hide and dyeing some some more linen an interesting shade of pink. That could involve a trip to IKEA but on the other hand, it would probably be far more economical to order it online, not make a round trip of 250 miles and be tempted by Swedish flat-pack furniture!