Bank Holiday Monday, one of those lovely Bank Holidays when I have the day off and all my housemates are safely at work, out of harm's way. I love these days, I reckon I can make as much mess as I can as long as it all tidied away by tea time. In fact it is my duty to make lots of mess and make the most of this the most sacred of days. In return it is also my duty to have the mess tidied away and a nice dinner ready to alleviate the burden of those who have to earn a crust and keep the economy going. Even though I am now working part time, I still treasure these halcyon days.
Today I was going to finish or as near as finish my Medallion Quilt. I started it as part of the Irish Modern Quilt Guild. The link up has started, I think it finishes on the 29th or thereabouts. I added the corner squares to my red and white border and made my hour glass squares, all 28 of them. They are 4" each. Somewhere the math went wrong and instead of 6 on each side plus the 4 corner squares, there was only room for 5 1/2 plus the corner squares. Back to the drawing board.
Next I made a checkerboard of 1" squares, and then the world started to fall apart. (well not really, but I was sewing to a schedule here). My machine is like the skoda of the sewing machine world. It is the cheapest Janome, or at least it was 20 years or so ago. I treat my sewing machine like any other gadget I have, I am very fond of it but don't understand how it works, don't want to know and expect it to work on without any maintenance. If it ain't broke don't fix it is my motto. It sews great then all of a sudden it jams, the thread breaks and needle breaks. Go have a cup of coffee, leave it for a while and it sorts itself out. Usually. Except 3 cups of coffee and 3 needles later I was muttering like Muttley from Wacky Races. After pulling the house apart looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack I had to admit defeat,. pull on the shoes and head to the local shopping centre for more needles.
Some strange quirk I have means that at times, I try to find a literary quote to accompany whatever it is I am doing. I hesitate to say this in public, makes me sound a bit of a twat, but there it is. Today's literary accompaniment was the speech from Richard 111 . For the want of a needle, the sewing was lost, for the want of the sewing the deadline of the medallion may be missed.
And I have no idea how, but I managed to add loads of photos from my phone to my flickr account. Unfortunately they weren't quilting photos but loads of photos I had taken of photos in my cousin's photo album. (bit surreal that) I clicked on a pop up on my phone saying I was happy with flickr, goodness knows how that activated the mass transfer. Took ages to delete them. Would anyone else be interested in millions of family photos from the 1940/60s. cute as I was. Funnily enough we are a family of blondes with the odd red head to keep it interesting and my genealogy friend in work looked and said "omg it is the children of the dammed"
New needle was installed, the Slimming World chicken korma was bubbling away and I measured the hour glass squares against the quilt. And you guessed it, when I add the inbetween border, the half squares border will be too short! ho hum. Tomorrow is another day. Miraculously the korma, the sticky rice, the spinach, the spicy green lentils and the broccoli all made it on to the table without mishap. There may have been a few threads acting as garnish.
It has been a little while since I last blogged, life has been busy, watching the Giro D'Italia, gardening, washing windows, catching up on my pile of books to read. The Giro D'Italia was fun, it literally passed the end of our road and everywhere was green. Even our local butcher got in on the action, Nesbitt's Butchers. His son, (the butcher's boy I suppose!) was selling pink buns and pink lemonade. My garden for a point of interest looks great now, if you are going to visit me now is a good time. And I read Longbourne by Jo Baker. Really really good. Some of the Jane Austen spinoff books are a little predictable but this had a really strong story line, both independent of and complementary to the Bennet family. Mr Bennet how could you? This week I am reading "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" by Ayana Mathis.
A couple of quick photos, my Irish Modern Stash Bee blocks for April were for Mrs Giggles, aka Anna. Anna had agreed to wait a couple of weeks, as I was going to use some of my Philadelphia fabric. Anna asked for 2 crazy patchwork squares, done in the format of log cabin, with an off centre fussy cut centre. I used some of my Wee Wander fabric, and was really pleased with the overall look. One of them (not telling which one) kept jumping when I tried to trim them, I should have pinned them when sewing, after all some of the seams were bias seams.. But then this is a learning curve (all puns intended)
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My Ulster Rugby quilt is making good progress, I won't bore with more WIP photos. No more progress on the plus quilt for my Philadelphia son. I stopped the night I was so tired I put one 2 pairs of glasses and haven't touched it since.
There has been a little knitting. I knitted 2 more Barnardo's jumpers, a Dennis the Menace jumper and a Where's Wally jumper. My friend in work kindly sewed them for me, she knows I hate sewing knitting but I forgot to get a photo. I am making good progress with my aran rice stitch scarf. Rather unseasonable knitting, but I'll be ready for the winter early this year.
Hopefully by the next blog I should have a finish!
Oh and by the way, my friend Anne loved her cushion, both in the garden and the dining room.
Helen
x
Today I was going to finish or as near as finish my Medallion Quilt. I started it as part of the Irish Modern Quilt Guild. The link up has started, I think it finishes on the 29th or thereabouts. I added the corner squares to my red and white border and made my hour glass squares, all 28 of them. They are 4" each. Somewhere the math went wrong and instead of 6 on each side plus the 4 corner squares, there was only room for 5 1/2 plus the corner squares. Back to the drawing board.
Next I made a checkerboard of 1" squares, and then the world started to fall apart. (well not really, but I was sewing to a schedule here). My machine is like the skoda of the sewing machine world. It is the cheapest Janome, or at least it was 20 years or so ago. I treat my sewing machine like any other gadget I have, I am very fond of it but don't understand how it works, don't want to know and expect it to work on without any maintenance. If it ain't broke don't fix it is my motto. It sews great then all of a sudden it jams, the thread breaks and needle breaks. Go have a cup of coffee, leave it for a while and it sorts itself out. Usually. Except 3 cups of coffee and 3 needles later I was muttering like Muttley from Wacky Races. After pulling the house apart looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack I had to admit defeat,. pull on the shoes and head to the local shopping centre for more needles.
Some strange quirk I have means that at times, I try to find a literary quote to accompany whatever it is I am doing. I hesitate to say this in public, makes me sound a bit of a twat, but there it is. Today's literary accompaniment was the speech from Richard 111 . For the want of a needle, the sewing was lost, for the want of the sewing the deadline of the medallion may be missed.
And I have no idea how, but I managed to add loads of photos from my phone to my flickr account. Unfortunately they weren't quilting photos but loads of photos I had taken of photos in my cousin's photo album. (bit surreal that) I clicked on a pop up on my phone saying I was happy with flickr, goodness knows how that activated the mass transfer. Took ages to delete them. Would anyone else be interested in millions of family photos from the 1940/60s. cute as I was. Funnily enough we are a family of blondes with the odd red head to keep it interesting and my genealogy friend in work looked and said "omg it is the children of the dammed"
New needle was installed, the Slimming World chicken korma was bubbling away and I measured the hour glass squares against the quilt. And you guessed it, when I add the inbetween border, the half squares border will be too short! ho hum. Tomorrow is another day. Miraculously the korma, the sticky rice, the spinach, the spicy green lentils and the broccoli all made it on to the table without mishap. There may have been a few threads acting as garnish.
It has been a little while since I last blogged, life has been busy, watching the Giro D'Italia, gardening, washing windows, catching up on my pile of books to read. The Giro D'Italia was fun, it literally passed the end of our road and everywhere was green. Even our local butcher got in on the action, Nesbitt's Butchers. His son, (the butcher's boy I suppose!) was selling pink buns and pink lemonade. My garden for a point of interest looks great now, if you are going to visit me now is a good time. And I read Longbourne by Jo Baker. Really really good. Some of the Jane Austen spinoff books are a little predictable but this had a really strong story line, both independent of and complementary to the Bennet family. Mr Bennet how could you? This week I am reading "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" by Ayana Mathis.
A couple of quick photos, my Irish Modern Stash Bee blocks for April were for Mrs Giggles, aka Anna. Anna had agreed to wait a couple of weeks, as I was going to use some of my Philadelphia fabric. Anna asked for 2 crazy patchwork squares, done in the format of log cabin, with an off centre fussy cut centre. I used some of my Wee Wander fabric, and was really pleased with the overall look. One of them (not telling which one) kept jumping when I tried to trim them, I should have pinned them when sewing, after all some of the seams were bias seams.. But then this is a learning curve (all puns intended)
My Ulster Rugby quilt is making good progress, I won't bore with more WIP photos. No more progress on the plus quilt for my Philadelphia son. I stopped the night I was so tired I put one 2 pairs of glasses and haven't touched it since.
There has been a little knitting. I knitted 2 more Barnardo's jumpers, a Dennis the Menace jumper and a Where's Wally jumper. My friend in work kindly sewed them for me, she knows I hate sewing knitting but I forgot to get a photo. I am making good progress with my aran rice stitch scarf. Rather unseasonable knitting, but I'll be ready for the winter early this year.
Hopefully by the next blog I should have a finish!
Oh and by the way, my friend Anne loved her cushion, both in the garden and the dining room.
Helen
x
sounds like one of those days.....sewing can be very frustrating at times!
ReplyDeleteOh, I could use one of those days :-) Sorry to hear about your trouble though. Good luck with the rest.
ReplyDelete