Perhaps it is because people are constantly asking me if I am busy that I feel obliged to fill every available moment in my working day, particularly since I am not teaching much in school at present. Certainly, with everything lined up in kit form for the week, there was less opportunity for getting side-tracked.
Monday’s project was assembling the spandex pouffe Book Project which went well after a couple of attempts at attaching the lurex piping. I wanted to figure out how to explain the neatest and most straight-forward method accompanied by step-by-step photos. Fitting the cylinder onto the circular ends also went without a hitch. The major problem that I had not foreseen was how to fit a firm foam cylinder with a 48” diameter into a 14” opening. I had imagined that I could just squash it all in but it proved to be impossible. I suddenly realised why most pouffes are filled with polystyrene beads or why they have a long zip around one end. I came up with a radical solution because I did not want to take it all to bits and start again. I used a bread-knife and cut the cylinder in half then I cut one half in half again. It was then far easier to shove the firm foam inside the cover, pat it all back into shape the sew up the back by hand like one of my totems. I have tried sitting on it and it survived, although I experienced a sinking feeling. Really, it is just a frivolous foot-stool or a place on which to balance a tea tray. I don’t even know where I intend to put it since I can imagine Thistle shredding it with her claws. In my Book, this project will be titled “Spandex Pouffe - Not For Cats”.
Since I don’t currently have a backlog of customer quilts, I decided to finish off a couple of tops that had been stashed in a basket for a fair while and try to sell them. There was an ancient one that was made from all sorts of worn and unusual fabrics that seemed impossibly skewed out of shape. Some of the fabrics looked like they could easily have been recycled from garments of the 1950’s. It could only be freehand quilted densely in order to fix some dodgy seams and deal with the fullness. When it was done, I chucked it in the washing machine with two colour-catchers which emerged later soaked a suspicious dark grey. The unloved vintage quilt now smells clean and feels softly worn - it just needs to be squared it up a bit before a gingham binding is attached.
The other top was one that I bought as an unfinished project at a Guild sale some time ago. I could never decide whether to add borders or turn it into a sleeping bag so it kept getting put back into the basket. After the usual faff of forgetting how I last managed to programme my longarm to use Quilt Path, I supervised while the machine robotically quilted an allover honeycomb pattern. I should be able to go away and do something else while the machine is doing its own thing but I still don’t trust it to behave when I am not watching. I am very pleased with the way it turned out and I think the hexagonal quilting design on top of the bright stars looks great. I posted a picture on Facebook and sold it within an hour!
Website Wonder, Helen Bantock, worked away at making all of my updated icons, pictures and text operate correctly and I am delighted at the fresh, new look of www.thequiltquine.com
This more than made up for the chagrin that my FOQ results seem to have been lost in the post and that I cannot find a single haulage company in Aberdeen to work out a simple shipping quote to Germany.
I wrote my final Parent Council Chairperson’s Report for Fenella’s school 3 days ahead of schedule and finished the week working on the Book version of “5 Bar Gate” since I did not take any quilting photos while I made the original yurt panel or even its spin-off, “Willowbay Herb”! It is one of several projects that I plan to take to a Quilting Retreat in the Lake District. I am actually one of the tutors so it will remain to be seen how much sewing of my own I manage to get done. Still, I reckon it is better to take too many things to do than not enough;)
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