Quilty pleasures

I’ve been having such a great time crafting that I’ve not had a chance to update the blog.  I’ve finished a second quilt, again a really simple set of squares with diamond quilting which I plan to give to my niece, and am currently plotting a larger quilt with a saw tooth star motif in the centre.  Over the weekend I also had a dabble, admittedly after a glass or two of wine on Friday night, with an alternative log cabin style pattern.  There may well be a name for it, and I’ll take pictures once I know more where it’s going, but the block will be made up of four sections and a central square (turned on its side).  So far, it looks really interesting as I’ve not been cutting straight and using slightly wonky off cuts to make the edges with a view to squaring the block once it’s sewn together. 

The jumper is taking shape but I’ve slightly lost motivation at the end of sleeve one and as spring starts to thaw given I know the jumper won’t be wearable until next winter.  I’m also halfway through a baby cardigan – pattern from MillaMia – and have completed the tension swatch for a skirt I’m planning on designing then knitting.  Am having fun and games with Excel trying to figure out how to make graph paper based on my own gauge and the resources on the internet have been less than helpful.  I’d ask for comments/suggestions but honestly, if I get one more comment from a Russian Mail Order Bride service, my blood will boil and leak from my ears.  Don’t know why it makes me so cross but SERIOUSLY, what benefit can they possibly think they’ll get from spamming a craft blog.  Some people, pah. 

Prioritising the creative writing has also been a struggle but I’ve started blocking twenty minutes in my lunch breaks to do writing and hopefully that will get me to the forthcoming assignment deadline.  I had several ideas for stories I wanted to write but the tutor’s feedback (on a short piece I’d submitted for comments) was so helpful I’ve decided to develop that – will be a good change for me too, pushing past the first 750 words and actually developing an idea, narrative, story and characters.  Literally, I love the abstract.

My first submission for the Writers’ Hub is nearly finished so I hope that will go up soon and my little blurb about vintage is now on http://vintagebrighton.com/2012/02/what-vintage-means-to-me-the-bloggers/ (and I wasn’t kidding, I love that yellow tank top).

Does anyone else (not mail order bride websites please) find that the more they know about something the less confident they feel?  In some ways, when I started doing crafty things a couple of years ago (not knitting, I’ve always been a knit(ter)) I would just have a play.  Now, I tend to research myself into total paralysis and then have a sudden spurt.  So it was with embroidery until I just realised that, the worst that can happen, is that someone else says it’s rubbish.  It really spurred me on and I’ve been motoring along now.  I am thinking of investing in a stand for the slate frame though as the best place for me to get comfortable with my current home set up is to sit backwards on the sofa resting the frame on the back.  Not great for the lower lumbar at my age.  Anyway, I’ve attached a couple of pictures of work so far. 



"From a distance... la la la" etc



The detail ...

 

... and with the original image

 It was very slow going but think I’ve now spent about eight hours in total on the whole thing, with about three of them totally on my own without the wonderful Lizzy who's been teaching me; albeit I have admittedly been faffing about, unpicking things, stepping back to look from a distance, threading needles (tricky), choosing colours, tidying stuff and other displacement activity. 

I took that to an extreme yesterday when having spent an hour sewing I went to get started on writing before deciding that my embroidery thread could be tidier.  I attach a picture of four hours of labelling, tidying and sorting by colour/value etc.  No writing was done.  Satisfying but much as I resisted leaving the house for the office this morning, I also realised the value of being out in the world and not being at home alone during the day to go more quietly OCD.

From two boxes and threads everywhere, to order wonderful order

Saying that, I potentially have two craft classes of my own to teach – subject to lease regulations at the venues – and am pulling together work sheets on paper piecing and learning to knit.  If they don’t come off, I might just post them on the blog for people who might be interested (again, no mail order shenanigans – see, that’s the OCD side of me coming through again).  And from a learning perspective have signed up to a creative textiles course to start in April - hopefully that will be some compensation to not being able to do the RSN course this year.  Am really disappointed but with a full-time job there's just no way I can give it the attention that I want to.  One for the future though ...

Ongoing projects include craft room blinds, the Colette Ginger Skirt and the Sewaholic Renfrew top for which I bought the most lovely John Kador fabric primarily because I thought it was in the sale.  It wasn’t.  A good lesson learnt – always check all the tags and not just the one that you think tells you what you want to hear.

Mooove over Darling

Having finished at last the quilt for my friend’s baby I’m excited about trying more challenging quilting.  It’s not a complex design - just squares sewn together although I’m considering hand quilting round some owl shapes for definition, maybe one owl per square – that it whipped up really quickly.  I stitched the squares together in rows first and then stitched the rows together.  I’ve read different things about pressing seams in quilts – pressing them open or to one side - and decided to go for the to the side option.  Given it’s for a baby, I thought that might add some strength to the stitching as they wouldn’t be under pressure where the seams were pulling apart by being pressed open. Maybe that’s factually incorrect but was my sense when looking at it. 

Sewing the rows together, I thought I had matched up the seams perfectly but on the first row one of the square is out by about 2mm.  This of course means that my rotary cutting was also off on a couple of squares but sliding past that it made me really focus on matching my seams for the rest of them and gosh darn it if it doesn’t look pretty flipping good if I do say so.  I had a bit of a tip off that the baby’s room is yellow so am glad about the colours I’ve chosen for it.  The OH thinks it’s very bright but I did remind him it’s for a baby and besides, OH lives in a world of magnolia and coffee coloured things – and in my view a bit of bold never hurt anyone.  How we’ll manage when we live together I don’t know – the first time he came to my house, I saw him balk at my Wedgewood blue dining room and vintage yellow Royal Ballet poster.  Hey ho, change is evolutionary so I’m hopeful he’ll see sense about colour adding richness and excitement to life in general.  And I am already convinced that neutrals help to bring those colours to life so there’s room for his pale (and not stale) muted tones. 

Too bright?  For a baby?

I had been hemming and hawing about what to do for the backing and binding and settled on a white cotton with a sage green stripe for the back.  For the binding I was going for a taupe mini dot and thought I’d put a thin band of this across the middle of the back to break up the stripes and unify the binding, back and front.  Once I’d pinned it together and machine quilted it was obvious that a dark solid would really pull it together so I opted for dark brown – one of my original purchases so the tip is to listen to your instinct.  Plus I’d forgotten to do the strip of brown mini-spots across the back.  Cough cough.

When putting it together, I was a bit uncertain about the basting stage.  Given time constraints and lack of experience I thought spray basting (I gather in the community of quilters I should probably whisper that) might be the way forward but given it’s for a baby and I didn’t plan to wash it before giving it to my friend (hence it being stored in a ridiculously cautious way and washing my hands every ten or so minutes when I’m working on it) spray basting concerned me slightly – what are the risks of using spray adhesive on a child’s quilt?  Anyway, after I’d rolled the top and batting together and then started smoothing the three layers together it dawned on me I was too late anyway and I quite liked the pin basting – it’s repetitive and soothing, and to quote a great man those curved pins have a “nice action”.  Sigh, Alan Partridge, how right he was. 

Onto the mojo part.  My boss brought in a selection of children’s books that she no longer needs and she thought my nieces and nephews might like.  One of them was Click Clack Moo – Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin.  I hadn’t seen this book before but I was pretty uncool when I read it.  I think “laughed like a drain” probably best describes my reaction to it.  Now it might be that I’ve been working in HR for too long, and it had been a particularly tedious day of disputes, conflict, grievances and petty griping about all sorts of stuff and nonsense that would push a nursery teacher to their limits but a simple soul like me to near hysteria - but the protracted negotiations of the cows and chickens, and then the militarism of the ducks at the end struck a chord.  The pictures are lovely and reminded me of blocks for a quilt so I thought about using them as inspiration and trying to make a story quilt for my littlest niece perhaps with a copy of the book as a gift for her.  A long-term project with all the other things I have on the go but I do like the idea (clearly I wouldn’t infringe copyright and it would be a source rather than a copy, but it is just a thought). 

My jumper hit a bit of an impasse and I had to seek expert advice – I would blame the pattern (who wouldn’t) but I can’t.  I’m always nervous about ripping back as I’ve never managed to get the stitches back on a needle when I’ve done that.  I carried the picture around with me for a day or so then spoke to someone who really does know what she’s doing and almost as soon as I had her on the ‘phone it was obvious what was wrong.  That’s always the way – sometimes I ask someone else in the team just to pop in if I’m wrestling with something technological as it always resolves itself magically as soon as they’re nearby.

We had a very relaxing weekend in Suffolk – it’s a place that really shakes the cobwebs out, not least because it’s flat and quite windy - and came home feeling like we’d been on holiday.  Then tried to change a light bulb in the bathroom.  I love my flat but it’s fair to say the DIY Dad who lived there before me seemed to have a pathological fear of a job well done.  It’s as if he couldn’t bear to get a light fitting in straight, or fix the giant hole in the ceiling he had made trying to put up something in the hallway (I still don’t know what).  He was a barrister.  Now I’m not casting aspersions on his profession or practical abilities, but something about the state of the finish of the DIY tells me he may have been better suited to more “thinking” pursuits than practical ones.  The light fitting in the bathroom is such a total b7g8er to undo and redo that it took an hour to change the light bulb.  It was not our finest moment.  Chatting to my sister last night she told me about her husband grumbling that she had forgotten to pack his mobile charger for a business trip he was packing for himself.  I was reminded of the OH’s comment as I stood on the bath several feet away from the offending light fitting looking at his grimacing and unhappy face when he dropped a bit of the fitting.  “You moved it” he squawked with not a trace of irony.  Which led to one of those conversations reserved only for couples – “how could I have moved it, I was at least a MILE away”, “ I didn’t say “you”, I said “we”, you misheard” – not convinced I managed to bite back “you misspoke” – I’ve had a bathroom in darkness since before Christmas and I really did need that light to be fixed.  Ah love, it’s not for everyone.

 

2012 projects for the New Year (or thereabouts)

Happy New Year to anyone who may be reading.  It feels I’ve missed the boat for a round up of 2011 adventures and besides, I’d much rather look forward to 2012 and all the adventures to come.

I do have a couple of pictures from my first forays into cake decorating.  This isn’t me diversifying my hobbies as frankly at this rate I will have no time for anything else.  It is an essential skill that, having made and nurtured no less than six Christmas cakes over the last few months, I simply had to learn.  I took myself to Cakes4Fun in Putney for a Saturday of cake decorating and was genuinely surprised by the results.  The tutor made everything look incredibly easy which it wasn’t, or at least certainly not for me and my impatient, large-handed self, but with a few simple techniques the class were able to pull off some pretty great results, if I do say so myself.



First steps - crumb coating



Next step - icing

Final step - decorating

Glad I got a snap of this one - the holly leaves fell off during the car journey home

So to home and the cakes for the OH’s mother and my family Christmas (the latter of which travelled to York, Putney, Winchester and then got mislaid in Winchester so didn’t make it to Devon – I hear my brother has scoffed the remainder which has to be a good sign, although the niece thought the icing “tasted funny” – well, that’s Dr Oetker’s problem and not mine; besides, I rather liked it and for us the priority was a super thick layer of marzipan – in an ideal world we would reverse the current ratio of cake to marzipan I think).

My first solo flight

Although I sewed my sister a very small Christmas token – we don’t do presents for Grown Ups – I’ve not been at the sewing machine much.  However, I have treated myself to some lovely, simple dark green 100% wool crepe from Linton Direct, suppliers to several of the top fashion houses including Chanel.  My reasoning was that every woman should own Chanel, but most women can’t afford it – I certainly can’t so this gave me a cheap-ish thrill (it was in the sale section) and I still feel rather darned special.   I plan to use this for the Merchant & Mills trapeze dress once I’ve tracked down a lining fabric (quite hard to get as excited shopping for the linings isn’t it). 



www.merchantandmills.com

My sister-in-law also very kindly gave me some fabric for blinds for the craft room.  After the “Great Light Shade debacle” of December 2011, where two lightshades arrived very squashed and then didn’t fit anyway (“what the blazes” were not my exact words but you get the gist) it will be nice to get started on the finishing touches.  I had a devil of a time cutting out and squaring up and I managed to very slightly burn the lining fabric so there is an iron shape on the top corner of the back of one of the would-be blinds.  Could have been worse I grumbled.  If these go well, I might even make blinds for the living room and take down the rather too-grand-for-the-room theatre style curtains I have up at the moment.

The OH has started mentioning moving again, and although in principle the idea sounds good, I am both incredibly attached to my flat and very averse to the hassle of moving.  Now I have my lovely new craft room the motivation dwindles further.  Oh, if only he would consider living in my lovely flat but men are funny souls and this one is funnier than most.  Clearly my almost bat-like tendency not to be dislodged from a comfortable spot also makes me a rather funny creature so I’m not complaining, just observing.  Anyway, his mentionings have meant I’ve pushed my RSN course back to later this year which is sad but practical and it doesn’t stop me continuing to learn techniques and skills.

So I mentioned I’ve not been at my sewing machine much but I have been knitting up a storm – here is even a shot of me knitting in the car on the way back from New Year in Devon. 

For reassurance I’m just backseat driving on this occasion.  It will eventually be this jumper with one important adjustment.

from http://www.knitonthenet-shop.com/

The front is done and I’ve nearly finished the back.  The reason it’s taking about half the time it should is because I quite clearly missed the festive deadline so decided to veto the colour work.  The colour work was about a quarter of the reason I decided to make this jumper, and the rest was the fabulous sleeve shape.  I’m a huge fan of 40s and 50s styling and am always sad that my day-to-day lifestyle of City work means I can’t really indulge my passion for dressing in a way that more positively reflects me.  It’s always a watered down version which only started to happen when I moved into this type of firm six or seven years ago.  I’ve noticed that the tendency to “tone things down” has spread into my home dress sense too which I think is a shame, but ultimately as you get older you tend to dress more practically anyway.  For example, for Christmas Day lunch with my lovely sister and all her lovely little people (the children, her husband is a very tall man) I had plotted a rather natty little dress and cardigan ensemble in the morning but thought about three children and their sticky fingers and opted for the failsafe jeans option.  And I was jolly glad I did – mini-Moo started teething in earnest so by the end of the meal she had wiped turkey and veg all over herself and even getting her upstairs and into a nice toasty bath meant I got covered in food too.  She looked a real poppet in her romper afterwards though – all cherubic and lovely.  Anyway, it’s just not practical to wear something that you really love in that situation as you know it’ll end up being ruined so there’s inevitably a compromise between the inner style maven and the external presentation of conservative girl about the City. 

Just before Christmas I had to work from home to wait for a couple of deliveries and it made me love my new craft room even more.  Not only could I work at my desk properly, but whenever I need to find anything, I know where it is.  Ah, well I will do – there are a few teething problems on the organisation front (anyone else find that?) but I am getting there and things are starting to find their natural spots.  Who knew I owned such a vast array of old biscuit tins although it explains a lot about my current fitness level.  Keeping things simple is definitely my motto for this type of organisation, but it’s just a case of things finding their place and me getting a proper chance to use the room more. 

I’ve already lined up my projects for the coming months which will help with that.  First and foremost I must clear away the last of the piles of dislodged debris.  Largest of these is my shoe collection which I think will need to be housed in the loft (with my rogue Wasp nest) with just a choice few pairs retained for day-to-day use.  There is currently one last Dratted Corner of Shame, the last area to be sorted and then the flat has been reclaimed from fabric, yarn etc.

Once the piles are dealt with, I need to make the blinds for the craft room, and possibly the living room (and the dining room could do with something too).  I’ve done the cutting out for the baby quilt I’m making for a friend so must crack on with that this weekend – I’m still not confident I’ve grasped doing a border but that’s a way off and I think I need to find a new fabric for it anyway.  I really need to plough on with my embroidery which has been very slow going so need to ramp that up a bit.  The knitted baby blanket also needs some attention.  I think I’m nervous of the entrelac border and so am neglecting the body of it.  Surprisingly, the border worries me less than the likely boredom of sewing a long border on; but if the worst came to the worst I could always crochet something.  I’m no longer sure that I like the colour though which is more problematic. 

Once those shoes are in the loft, the room really will take on a life of its own for working in.  It’s such a cosy spot and already feels like a haven.  Once it gets some projects under its belt I see it becoming very hard to leave.  And just in case I wasn’t busy enough, I start my creative writing course next week – all those years of writing scraps of fiction that never come together into a whole will have been good practice I hope.  Having read Dorothea Brande’s “Becoming a Writer” it certainly seems that regularly writing is the key.  Mine has never been regular but learning how to structure things would be rather useful and even if the scraps remain in the bottom drawer forever, it will still be a really interesting way to spend the next few months.  I spent a good chunk of Christmas reading the collected short stories of Agatha Christie and it has left me pondering many things about short fiction and answered a lot of questions I should reasonably not have had about why my efforts have been unsuccessful. 

So 2012 kicks off busy but it sure does make time fly.

Frosty mornings, lovely days

Hasn’t it got wintry – I love this time of year when the sun bounces off frost covered pavements and people are starting to walk with a spring in their step as they plan their free holidays over Christmas.  It’s so different to January when the nearest Bank Holiday is a way off, summer seems so far in the past it’s impossible to imagine the warmth ever coming back, and that time off you enjoyed so much over Christmas has triggered a period of reflection so intense you’re considering all sorts of crazy options to “change your life”.  I’m sure self-help book and NLP CD sales spike in the New Year. 

Anyway, my point is it’s a beautiful day.  If you live on a big hill like me, then you might have struggled to make your  way down to safety but despite the perils I couldn’t really see a few small patches of ice as a reason to work from home so striding purposefully down the centre of the road, I made my way deftly to the station and into work.  The wander along the river was bracing and lovely.  The little patches of wintry sunshine surprisingly warm although I didn’t linger for long as I could feel my toes starting to curse the December weather.  My sheepskin mittens meant the fingers were safe.

I got home last night to find my craft room finished and the IKEA shelves built – what fantastic builders.  They’d also phoned me to tell me the shelves were extremely heavy so where did I want them as once they were in, they weren’t likely to be going anywhere.  I managed to knock my back out when I went running yesterday but I couldn’t resist starting to move things into the craft room so have hefted all my books, sewing stuff, crochet cache and knitting gear out of the living room, dining room, bedroom, hallway etc.  You get the idea.  The boxes currently conceal a myriad of things I’ve got to sort out.  Hell, the cushion is perched over a shelf of doom that I’m going to sort on Friday but the point is, the flat is gradually looking like a home again and some concerted work on Friday should bring it all together.  Can’t wait.  Ended up propping myself up on cushions to sleep, having taken some ibuprofen and that stuff is a miracle as am no longer doing the Velociraptor walk that makes my colleagues laugh quite heartily at my painful expense.



From this ...



... to this (still a work in progress)



The next thing I must make is Roman blinds – it overlooks the street and I don’t really want to be working in there in the evenings exposed to the nosey gaze of passers-by.  My sister-in-law has some spare cappuccino coloured fabric that I can use, and I’ll need something to contrast it.  I wonder if a blue and white ticking would work as the centre, or if I should go for another plain cream fabric.  The plan for the lights is a dark lime green shade from John Lewis, and then I’m going to repaint the white shelves – which are not very attractive and don’t quite fit anywhere in the room but are extremely handy – perhaps in a green colour like the lampshades or a very dark brown, or perhaps a dark purple.  So much to think about.  I do love a project.  I’m also not sure where to get the actual stuff to construct the things – dowels etc – all the bits and pieces.  Ho hum, I sense some googling coming on and an eagerly awaited December pay day.  If anyone knows any online places to find the essentials and/or good and thrifty curtain making fabric/lining etc, I'd love to hear.

Pierrot rising

Pierrot pondering - another fan of the onesie (image from Pinterest)

I was looking back at my earliest blog – not hard, there aren’t many – and it struck me how quickly the blog changed.  I’ve gone from writing about things I like and how that appeal would lead me to try and make them, to writing about the process.  How I’ve gone about learning things and my technical challenges etc.  As a result, I think I’ve held myself back in terms of making things but also letting my imagination take over a bit more.  I’ve allowed my desire to make things to hide behind the process of learning.

So it’s time to stop focusing on the detail.  Well, stop focusing quite as much - I actually quite like the detail too - and start focusing more on the things that inspire me and capturing those images/thoughts/words etc.  These are actually quite numerous but I then get myself into a “I don’t know how to translate what I see into what I make” quagmire and don’t push through it.  I’m slightly hampered by only having my Blackberry camera which is quite good but not great.  Dear Santa, please bring me a camera for Christmas (or vouchers towards a camera).  And maybe an embroidery foot for Bobby if I’ve been really good this year.  I’ve already bought the pin boards for my craft room and as a consummate hoarder already have plenty of things to pin up to inspire me as Bobby and I are sewing away. 

Early to be making them but a New Year’s Resolution is to start pushing past the pattern.  Pardon the alliteration, but I really think this helps.  I should probably also not confess that what got me thinking was packing pyjamas for a trip to see my brother this weekend.  I decided on the marvellous space saving onesie that I bought recently to much derision from the OH who described my attempts at demonstrating its chicness (it really isn’t) and general practical loveliness as akin to a demented convict mime.  Rude.  If the floor hadn’t been covered in fugitive stuff from the soon-to-be craft room (picture of current devastation above) he’d have been sleeping on it.  I would also add that the onesie doesn’t have feet  - I love a onesie but am not trapped in some kind of crazy infantile regression-style breakdown where I don’t know where the edges are between my adult life and “inner child”.  Or something.  Anyway, it got chilly last time so making a playsuit was impractical.  Come spring, perhaps that’s the sewing project to kick off with.  Let’s get through Christmas first people, let’s get through Christmas.



This was a cupboard - currently a crime scene - soon to be a craft room (I hope)