Pinky Promise

 

What is it about having a long To Do list that makes me want to start something new? I came back from FoQ with plenty of things to do or finish but then decided that my filing cabinets looked drab and needed a facelift. I used to enjoy painting furniture to give it a new lease of life but I really did not enjoy this job. I should have emptied them, taken them outside, sanded them then given them a quick spray-paint. However, I decided to leave them in situ then paint with primer and pink top coat - only the parts that could be seen. After 4 coats they are still patchy! The trouble with starting a project like that is that it highlights other scruffy furniture and could well snowball into a major operation. 

I still have to complete the caravan stickers - I really need to start and finish one job at a time;) I am tempted to start a quilt but at the same time I still need to make more videos showing how quilters can use the Bernina L890. On the subject of videos, I uploaded a tour of FoQ to Youtube. The walkthrough footage is a bit shaky because I am still getting used to my new camera but I did manage to edit it all myself:) 

Despite all of my faffing this week, I managed to get 2 small customer quilts done and sorted through some of the stuff that Nella needs to take to Uni. There are only 3 weeks to go - she is both nervous and excited! It is really beginning to feel autumnal here after a great summer. The blackberries are fantastic, the nights are drawing in and there is a slight nip in the air. Change is afoot…

Festival of Quilts UK 2022

I reckon it can take me about 5 minutes to pack for a trip but days to get around to putting it all away. I spend several days afterwards trying to catch up with myself, including writing my blog. I am hoping to make a vlog of my experiences this year using video footage that I took as I had a look around the show. 

FoQ 2022 was far better than last year! There was more space, more exhibits and more people:) It was great to be busy demonstrating the Bernina Q-Series machines, except for a day when there was a train strike that seemed to reduce visitor numbers. I kept Q-matic busy showing how automated quilting works and we even did a couple of charity Linus quilts during a quiet spell on Saturday afternoon. 

I had a wonderful surprise when Julie Tebay from Minnesota came to catch up. We rode an elephant together in India but this time she was on a more sedate tour of England. Cecille Flegg kindly brought me chocolate when I was wilting. 

I drove Luana Rubin to Stratford upon Avon to have dinner and see a Shakespeare production at the RSC. It was fantastic but I was a bit confused as to why this production of “As You Like It” seemed so different to the play that I studied at school. During the interval I noticed a poster then realised that I was actually watching “All’s Well That Ends Well”!

As usual there were quilts that I loved for their skill, ingenuity and creativity, and a couple of winners that I may not have chosen if I was a judge. Speaking of which, I had to laugh when I saw some of their photos on the floor one morning as if a disgruntled participant had torn them off the wall in a fury. I am just going to say - I am not impressed by the trend for taking tatty old quilts that are in a terrible state then adding some bits of wool or plastic and declaring, bizarrely that they are ART…

It was fun being interviewed by Brandy Lynn Maslowski for her podcast, “Quilter on Fire.” I did not get introduced to the legendary Kaffe Fassett, who had a special gallery with Bernina for the launch of some special edition sewing machines. I observed that there are some quilters who are extremely good at self-promotion on social media, some with big egos to match. There are also many other quieter, talented quilters who need to shout louder;)

 

Some Like it Hot (and Sticky)

For most of this week it has been scorching hot weather again and I don’t really like it! However, I bought an ice cream maker and had a go at making vegan ice cream. So far I have tried strawberry, cherry and blueberry. I am still working on the perfect recipe without dairy but I think the most successful one used vegan condensed milk. 

Nella was away in Orkney with her friend so I pretended I was on holiday and just pottered around. I filmed a couple of short overlocker demos and with my Editor in Chief away, I had to figure out how to edit the videos in iMovie myself. They are not fancy but I managed to cobble them together, cutting out the bloopers. 

I decided to do all sorts of things I think I never have time for and I discovered that the second-hand backup overlocker can do a fancy wave stitch which I think could look cool on quilt binding. 

The most time consuming activity was cutting out more caravan stickers on my Scan-n-Cut machine. I did not paint the caravan because I thought it would take too long but sticking o hundreds of flowers onto the caravan with vinyl transfer tape has taken forever and I have no idea what will happen the next time I need to wash it!

Alongside churning ice cream and cutting out stickers, I did one customer quilt and won’t attempt to do any more until Festival of Quilts which is next week:)

Cousin Capers

 

Linzi and Karen

                                            Nella, Cousin Elodie, Cousin Estelle, Nella's friend - Kirsty, Cousin Lena

This week I had visitors which is very unusual. My favourite cousins from The New Forest were on an epic caravan tour of Scotland and spent a couple of days with us before starting their journey back south. We had a lovely time eating together, playing board games and visiting Crathes Castle. We visited them last year when Nella was still unwell so this time was so much more fun. We decided that we would love to meet up with our caravans some time, maybe in the Lake District. 

Speaking of caravans, I have been adorning mine with hundreds of vinyl stickers. It has taken ages and I am still not sure if it looks rather like a child’s exercise book cover. I have not yet finished and have no idea how they will wear but I think they look fun. 

I finished quilting the pink whole cloth quilt and got things lined up fairly well. In my opinion it was far more time consuming than doing it freehand but I did learn lots about computerised quilting. I just need to bind it to finish it off then decide what to do with it…

Sparkly and Sticky

Yet again I started a job that I had not planned - it was just meant to be a minor try-out but I got carried away. I decided to paint some of the trims on the caravan a dusky pink then glaze with a sparkly varnish. The glitter did not seem to spread evenly and it just looked dirty. The trouble is that even clear varnish dries yellowish. I decided to sand that off and go back to pink! I have a huge collection of flower-power stickers to attach but I think I may need some help to apply them.

I felt like I was on TV’s “Repair Shop” when I fixed the damaged tow hitch cover. I attached pieces of a plastic box to an area that was broken, splinted that with sticky fibre glass then squished in some plastic filler. I wish I could garner up the same enthusiasm to fix things in my house;)

I spent much of the week working on a Q-Matic whole-cloth quilt just as a practice exercise. I matched up most of the elements accurately and now I feel confident that I could teach those techniques to pupils. 

I can’t believe that August starts on Monday. This year is certainly moving at some pace!

Peanut Butter vs. Petrol

We had one of the hottest days on record on Tuesday - 30C in Scotland is very unusual and I tried to hide out in my workshop, which is always significantly cooler. I made 2 little bags for my dji Pocket cameras and pieced a whole cloth practice quilt that I will experiment with using Q-Matic.

I got sidetracked seeing if I could use a heat-gun to remove tatty stripes from the side of my caravan. This became a whole-day project, followed by trying to remove 25 year old sticky residue. Peanut butter was suggested as a household remedy but I can attest that it does not work at all - the only thing that would shift it was a cloth soaked in petrol. I have decided not to paint the caravan but cover it in hippy stickers instead. 

I filmed another Gopro clip of using the L890 to add a sparkly chain-stitch down the edge of a quilt binding but when I played the footage back it was in weird slo-mo. Luckily, when it got imported into iMovie it seemed to sort itself out! I have so much to learn with all this film-making malarkey…

Festival Fun - Finally!

Nella, Nessie and I spent the weekend at a music festival called Doune the Rabbit Hole near Stirling. The last time we went to a festival was just after Nella was first diagnosed with anorexia in 2019 and we really should not have gone because it was a pretty miserable experience. 

We had a great time in 2022 and it felt like we had turned back the clock on Life.

Camping in the caravan was a superior experience, particularly as I also put up a gazebo with fairy lights. I enjoyed trundling my trolley around with jumpers, chairs, drinks and just plonking myself somewhere to listen to live music. The weather was good, everyone was friendly and the People-Watching was marvellous as there were so many crazy outfits. It was a truly happy, hippy kind of event:)

Inspector Gadget

 I have been busy figuring out how things work. I felt that the time was right to go back to posting my silly short daily news videos and I have been attempting to film demos on the Bernina L890 that are aimed at quilters rather than garment makers. Because I have not used all of this techie stuff for a while, I am a bit rusty and had forgotten that I could use a wireless mic with my phone. My Gopro was annoying me because it seemed to drain the battery in just a few minutes. Hopefully I will see an improvement after giving it an update and by using a separate remote control, rather than my phone. 

I was amazed to discover that my caravan fridge can have 3 different methods of power - gas, battery and mains electricity. Since I always intend to stay in places with power this means I can take more fresh food, even ice-lollies:)

I got 2 customer quilts done using Q-matic for a customer who likes wool wadding because it really shows off the texture. The bright quilt was also backed in purple Minky which gave it a most luxurious feel on the back.

I almost fell out with the L890 when I tried to get it to do a decorative chain-stitch. I thought that I carefully followed all of the video demos for correct set-up but after almost an entire afternoon I could not get it to stitch. Eventually I realised that I was not using the correct needle position - there are 5 of them after all! I managed to get a heavy, sparkly thread (Razzle-Dazzle) to run through the looper. I turned my small Warli quilts over and sewed along the straight line of the binding’s blanket stitch so the sparkly chain showed on the correct side of the quilt. To stop it from unravelling I later secured it with a tiny zig-zag. The 4 complementary quilts are almost complete, apart from the hanging sleeves - unless I start any further embellishment which I promised myself I would not…

Full Steam Ahead

 

I seem to have had a very busy week! I completed the small Warli quilts, added some prairie points then blocked them all ready to be bound. At first I could not figure out how 4 quilts that all started off at 30” x 40” ended up at different sizes until I remembered that the quilting would make a difference, Doh! Hopefully the differences of up to 1” won’t be too obvious when they are hanging.

I had a hexie customer quilt with a too small back so I bought a large, flat sheet and dyed it bright yellow. Another odd job was to cut down and overlock a king-sized duvet for someone. Never let it be said that I am not an accommodating quilter;)

On my inaugural caravan trip I decided that my morning tea did not taste nice from melamine mugs so I ordered some jolly Cornishware ones. Obviously, they all needed a cute travelling bag so they do not get damaged in transit.

Nella helped me to screen-print a cheapo parasol that I bought in case it is ever scorching when we eat breakfast outside the caravan. It was a slightly tricky job, trying to hold the brolly flat on an ironing board outside.

A job that I kept shelving finally got done this week - after a Zoom lesson on Qmatic with a pupil I like to make a video summary of the lesson with screenshots and notes. Nella does the editing for me but the notes always seem to take me a while to get around to finishing.

I have been trying to get back into making videos, particularly showing off the Bernina L890 overlocker / coverstitch machine. Not only do I need to know what I am doing with the new machine but I also have to remember to charge the relevant camera batteries and use a wireless mic. I am thinking it may be time to resurrect my “Here’s the News from The Quilt Quine” short vlogs.