An Epic Week

 

It has been a truly epic week, starting out in Glasgow where Nella and I went to stay with Freya to see a band which cancelled at the last minute. At any rate, we went out for tea, followed by ice cream and stayed the night so Nella could get a train the next day to stay with her lovely cousin in Exeter. This was a huge adventure for her, having not been anywhere unaccompanied since she was about 14. She managed the long journey and had a great week experiencing life as a student, partying, playing bingo and making new friends.

While she was a way I spent  more time than usual in my workshop. I had 2 customer quilts on the go, one of which was huge at 3m square. While that was going on I prepared the 304 pleated squares for Nella’s puff quilt.

I have decided to make 4 small wall quilts to hang alongside Rainbow Warliors on the longarm stand at FoQ. They will all feature one of my large doily screen prints in silver. I got silver powder absolutely everywhere before I mixed it with binder to make silver ink. The screen that I made is really too big for one person to handle easily so some of the prints had bits missing - the best one was on blue fabric. I will add some simplified Rainbow Warriors blocks to each small quilt until they are 30” x 40”, trying not to get carried away with embellishments. 

I used another of my gadgets, the Brother Scan-Cut machine, to cut lots of tiny walri figures from glitter vinyl and I will heat-press them onto 2 ½” squares. The idea is to get Qmatic to do automated quilting to show off what it can do.

I caught up with Mo and her wire-haired dachshund puppies for coffee on Friday. I could be quite tempted to get Nessie a wee sister but I have to be sensible, especially as my newly mended overlocker has now seized up completely…

Sometimes it is just Either / Or

 I have spent many hours this week trying to work out a definitive method of placing borders onto a quilt using Bernina Qmatic. In fact, I have been like a dog with a bone testing things out. This is because I want to be able to explain how it is done for one of my Zoom pupils and I always make a summarising video with notes after the lesson. I have figured out how to get the designs to line up beautifully and I have worked out how to place them accurately on a quilt. However, it is an either / or situation if the quilt is not absolutely accurate - you can either joint the designs up perfectly OR fit them within the borders perfectly. My videos try to explain this conundrum - accuracy of pattern or accuracy of placement, not both! It is not really an issue if you are working on a whole cloth without pieced borders. 

This is why almost all customer quilts are done with nice, straightforward all-over patterns such as the two I did this week - "Feather Flip” and “Camelia”.

Despite a mostly sunny week, as soon as we parked our deckchairs at Crathes Castle for an outdoor showing of “Mamma Mia 2”, it rained - a lot! No wonder it is so green here. There was not much crowd participation in such a downpour but it was still a fun evening out. I am so glad that I will be taking a caravan rather than a tent to a “Doune the Rabbit Hole” in July since the chance of rain during a Scottish festival is high!

I have cut out 306 x 4 ½” background squares and 306 x 5” squares to make Nella a puff quilt to take to Uni and I hope to get cracking on that this week when she visits her cousin in Exeter (all by herself!) I have also decided to make 4 small quilts to hang with “Rainbow Warliors” on the Bernina Q-series stand at FOQ. The plan is to do some screen-printing and keep things simple but honestly, I should just have decided to make a new show quilt! 

Quilted Coat (and other stuff)

 

I have been trying to make wee videos to summarise Bernina Qmatic lessons that I have been teaching on Zoom. Nella makes a great job of editing them then I add notes and screenshots which I hope make some sort of sense. I don’t claim to have THE definitive method for doing things - just ways I have found that work for me.

Other time wasting exercises this week have included trying to track down lost Hermes parcels and chasing up my KLM cancelled flight expenses which still have not been processed.

I have been enjoying watching The Great British Sewing Bee on telly (except for the Transformation Challenge which I detest). The poor contestants get such a short time to rustle up wearable garments. I took the best part of 2 days to complete my quilted coat, previously having cut out all of the pieces. It looks impressive and is comfortable to wear, although perhaps a bit bulky. I have no idea where I should wear it - perhaps just to Tesco, why not?

One of my Facebook friends commented that my hair had grown so I got Nella to take a photo from the back. I was quite shocked! I never wear it down as it feels too hot, I am hopeless at hairstyles and don’t like having short hair because I think I look like a man. I could do with a Lady’s Maid to plait it for me every day because I just use a giant clip and look like I have a bird’s nest on my head.

My friend, Mel came over for help with laying out her Puff Quilt. I showed Nella a picture of the project - she loved it and asked for one of her own to take to Uni. I made a sample to see how footery it might be and gave Nella the go ahead to shop online for her choice of fabrics.

Nessie and I had a grand day out at a Scottie Dog meet-up. She met lots of dogs just like her which bamboozled her, declared she did not like her sisters but did not mind her brothers, and won a prize for having a waggy tail. 

Smart Sleepover

I have caught up with all of my customer quilts for now so I had time to finish a few things off in the caravan. The dead battery finally got recharged and I was able to get the water pump going at last. I now know how to get the gas going so I practised making toast in the grill. I thought it would be fun to be able to lie in bed and get Alexa to turn gadgets on so I invested in a couple of smart plugs. I can now command Alexa to switch the kettle, heater and lights on! I am not sure if she will be able to do that when I am on a campsite and have to use a different wifi connection without too much jiggery-pokery;)

Nella, Nessie and I had a very comfortable sleepover in the caravan followed by breakfast and agreed that it was far nicer than camping in a tent. 

Since Spring is in full swing I have more eggs than I can get through myself so I made a batch of delicious lemon curd. I got some spare blankets out of a cupboard-of-doom in the house, thought I should reorganise it, scrub the damp patches and repaint but then just shut the door and walked away.

It was good to have some “spare” time this week to catch up and do some experimenting with Qmatic before a session with my Zoom pupil. I will type out some notes and make a video summary before I forget. 

I have not yet had compensation from KLM for my cancelled flight and the ensuing expenses of around £500.00  I am not at all impressed by how difficult it has been to get in touch with customer services so that will be my top priority this week. 

I did have a look at a an unfinished patchwork project, found that I had cut out the pattern pieces and gathered some fabric but that has not yet progressed further.

Just Pootling

I have to remind myself that I have been away from home for the past 3 weekends and psychologically that is busy, even if there is no major project going on. I worked slowly on a couple of customer quilts, had a half-hearted attempt at making pleated facemarks (Nella’s request), and had a lovely, overdue catch-up with Mo who has wire-haired dachshund puppies.

There was a full day without electricity for some sort of maintenance and I really wondered what I was going to do all day without power and wifi. I determined that I would learn how to operate the water supply and loo in the caravan. I cleaned all of the tanks, filled them back up with water and attached the basic pump. Despite all that there was no water supply, even though everything had been working fine when the Caravan Man was here. What I had not realised was that many of the functions in the caravan rely on a 12v battery supply, even when it is plugged into the mains. This includes the water pump and loo flush. I would rather it was a manual pump because then I would not have to remember to charge the battery. Needless to say, the battery was flat because someone (probably me) had left something on that drained it. Eventually, I will make a Youtube video aimed at idiot caravan beginners like me that explain these basic procedures. Honestly, I read the owner’s manual but I could not find a clear explanation about what runs off mains and what only runs off the battery! 

I did a very basic project with my Cricut Joy cutting machine. I used scraps of vinyl and cut out circles to stick onto the caravan taps to indicate hot and cold water. I wished I had come up with a more exciting design, maybe with additional flowers but for now I just need to see if they will stay stuck on even if they get wet. 

I realised that I do actually have 2 sewing projects that I started and forgot about. There is my quilted coat and also a funky bird wall hanging. I need to work out whether I have all of the pieces and see if I can get back to them.