The Trouble with Time Travel

Knowing that I had a custom quilt job to deal with before I would allow myself to work on my DWR project, I decided to swap Monday and Tuesday around, pretending that I had already made some progress. This idea backfired slightly when I got around to actually checking the measurements on the customer quilt and discovered that it was too small on the back and I would have to buy more fabric to give it wider borders so in the end I did not actually start on it until almost the end of the week.

At least I made progress, albeit rather slow progress on the DWR pieces. I cut all of the melons and pinched squares carefully with sharp scissors then added a stay-stitch around all of their edges to prevent the organza coming unstuck or fraying.

The weird thing was that the small arcs were way too small for the melons. The test block had worked pretty well but after at least 3 undos I knew that I had a problem. It also occurred to me that the melons had absolutely no give. I fiddled with the arcs and worked out that I would have to add an extra wedge to the middle of each arc with ⅛” shaved off each side. If I had attempted something like this even a couple of years ago I would have tossed the entire project away in disgust but I have determined that it will not defeat me - although I have not yet tried to join any melons to any pinched squares so that still might happen! 

I have been giving some thought on what to do once I have got 9 rings done. I originally planned that would be it but I am aware that a potential show quilt needs more impact like fancy borders. Some DWR quilts are appliquéd onto backgrounds but that would either be too easy or a recipe for disaster. I think I may have to add some half-melons and half squares to to make a quilt with a straight outer edge to which fancy borders might be added. But I dread the thought of cutting out another 1000 or so mini eggs.

One idea that I have been toying with is using Decolourant paste to remove the dye from fabric, leaving a ghost image. I spent quite some time online looking for images of significant historical Russian women and trawling second-hand sites in the vain hope of finding a reasonably priced thermal copier, wondering whether I should invest in a tattoo stencil making machine. There are companies in the UK that make excellent thermofax screens but they are quite expensive and I would love to be able to make my own. I had a go at using decolourant on a photo screen from Freya’s school art project but the effect is not subtle enough so I need to go back to the drawing board. 

No wonder a week goes by so quickly here. The customer quilt got started in the end and so far I have the outer borders done and appliqués outlined. BzB has been juried into Paducah and I am thrilled that it is the third of my quilts to have been shown there in the past 10 years. I will be giving a talk at Thistle Quilters in Edinburgh in a couple of weeks so it will be time to revisit some of the show quilts that are packed away and give some of them an airing:)

An Eggsellent Week

During a week of spells of heavy, wet snow and bright sunshine, my hens laid at least 50% of the time. There was even an unusually white speckled one. I decided that it was time to make lemon curd. I am pretty good at that these days, having made notes to myself in my hand-written recipe book that refer to past disasters and how to avoid them.

Much of the half-term week was filled with customer quilts, re-drafting the Fancy Forest blocks so I can make giant animals, and an outing to a junk shop where Nell convinced me that I did not have room for another cheap, beaten-up chest of drawers even though it was a bargain.

I listened to Carrie Fisher’s autobiography on Audible while I pieced together the lapis/malachite DWR arcs and by the time I cut out the amber coloured pinched squares I was onto Stephen Fry’s “Mythos” but I had to pay close attention to the complicated relationships between all of the Greek gods. I fused some of the 1500-odd egg shaped pieces of “amber” onto the skinny melons and realised that I would have to make yet more to be able to fill up all of the large pinched squares. I dread to think how long it will take to quilt around all of the amber pieces, at least 3 circuits each…!

I have restored the indestructible iron that fell onto the nylon carpet so I will use it to weld the misty-fuse and organza onto my DWR amber sections. The major challenge will be joining the curved arcs on without having a tantrum;)

Bumble's Busy Week

With a mid term break looming I had to fit in lots of projects to get ahead of myself. I made a second Mutant Hot Cross Bunny and cut out all of the Russian DWR pieces out in kit form. 

Bumble had a very smart trim, not the traditional Scottie Dog style as all that hair just collects twigs. She was in and out of my workshop all week, snoozing while I completed 2 customer quilts, supervised 2 large DIY quilts and made a vegan avocado cake. I made the cake at Nell’s request - the texture was good but it needed far more sugar which I reckon defeats the object of it being a healthy option.

I ordered a cheap roll of orange organza from Ebay which I was annoyed to discover incurred an additional postage charge since the seller decided that my postcode was in The Highlands. When it eventually arrived it was not what I had hoped so I called Rainbow Fabrics in Old Meldrum where I got the burnt orange crystal organza for my practice piece. They posted my package first class and it arrived the next morning which I think is incredible!

I took Nell and Bumble to St Andrews for the day to catch up with Freya and we had a lovely time on the beach, meeting lots of friendly dogs, even another Scottie called Hamish. We took a drive out to the picturesque village of Crail, just along the coast and walked around the bay and harbour in bright, chilly sunshine. When we got back to St Andrews Bumble even managed to trot all the way to the Deli, deciding she might quite like to be a town dog as it was so exciting. No wonder she snored loudly all the way home. 

I randomly selected from my box of green/blue DWR pieces and constructed 48 basic arcs which will also need to have angled end pieces attached. My friend, Angelika, managed to find some of my favourite gold lamé which seems to have been discontinued so I should get the arcs completed next week then begin work on the amber sections. I am trying to persuade Freya to paint a custom back for it IF she can find the time while studying, kayaking and socialising;)

Trials and Errors in the Studio

I secretly relish when business is slack and I can spend time experimenting in my studio. The trouble with running a small business is that it is easy to get caught on a treadmill with customer quilting, leaving little time to create. I had a go at making a Fancy Forest fox double its original size but my maths was not up to the challenge the first time around so Mr Reject Fox will probably become a cushion. Before long I made 4 correct giant foxes which equals 16 of the mini foxes. Next I made a mutant bunny block and he is huge so I will only need 2 instead of 8. I am such a cheat!

I was going to say that I don’t really enjoy working with small pieces then I remembered my latest idea…

Bumble and I went on an expedition to Rainbow Fabrics in Old Meldrum so I could choose fabrics for my Russian Inspired Quilt Idea. The shop is quite small but jam-packed with sewing goodies. Bolts of fabric are stacked 3 high and a step ladder has to be used to pull out the top ones. I eventually picked out a good selection that I thought looked like lapis lazuli, malachite and amber and asked for long, skinny cuts. I hope the extremely helpful assistant went for a strong cup of coffee after she tidied up my mess. 

I roughly chopped up a few pieces of the amber colours to see if I could produce something that reminded me of the Amber Room. I wanted to see what would happen if I applied a glaze or a sheer fabric using Misty Fuse. The prototypes came out quite well so the next move was to cut a few egg or nugget shapes out using the Sanncut machine. I did a very rough calculation and decided that I would need more than 1000 so having decided that the project could work, I spent a whole day fusing, cutting and scraping sticky stuff off the cutting mats. 

I pieced two DWR arcs to see whether the blues and greens looked good with the amber and quickly dismissed the option of making the easy version.

The other thing I worked on a little was adding denim patches on the reverse of the denim quilt where the rivets had caused some damage. They were Bondawebbed on but I knew they would also have to be stitched otherwise they would eventually fall off. This was not as easy as I might have hoped. The denim quilt is far too big and heavy to make life easy so I came up with the idea of adding rustic sashiko stitching - sewing right to left is fine but going back the other way involves a bit of contortionism and my hand gets cramp. I will just have to do a couple of patches at a time. 

My much abused iron took yet another tumble off the ironing board but because I was fiddling with tricky organza, I did not pick it up immediately and it melted the carpet. There was brown gloop all over the iron and a terrible smell. Amazingly, the melted nylon mostly scraped off quite easily so I may be able to resurrect it by scrubbing with bicarb. There is absolutely no non-stick surface left anyway but it is such a heavy, hot iron I would hate to try and replace it. I almost repeated the exact same accident with the backup iron so I will need to think of how to add a sturdier iron rest. I wonder whether I could use a slate roof tile and a couple of strips of elastic? Or maybe just move the ironing board out of an awkward corner, except that may lead to reorganising my whole workshop on a horrific scale!