September not bound for finishes…
The day has dawned warm and windy here in Frankston, Victoria. Meteorologists have warned about horizontal
weather – so batten down the hatches.
When I get to stitching the past few days in the Meteo 2020 SAL I think
it will show a dramatic change to temperatures.
And yes, that is on my cross stitch rotation for the coming week – to stitch
September and see the changes. I must also
consider the extra motifs to fill in the blanks. The end is in sight – it should be finished
the first week of 2021 – and how quickly is that looming?
Stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne has morphed into stage 3.4
with the prospect of easing to 3.2 in a week or so… I don’t know, it has become
a bit too hard to follow as most of the restrictions do not affect me – apart from
businesses closed, not travelling outside my 5km radius, with the exception of
travel permit to head to work as an essential employee – (15 years’ experience
has won out) – I don’t have school age children and pre-lockdown, I didn’t
spend much time at cafés or shopping centres, but now I’m fanging to get to a
restaurant to have a dinner out, to drive to the country to see my girlfriend
or my sister – plan a weekend away. I
don’t like going to supermarket shopping anymore – I get anxious around groups
of people now. Not to mention that the
Car Dealerships are closed down, but the benefit is that I am saving up a
whopping deposit on my new car, ordered at the end of June. When lockdown is eased and I CAN drive more
than 5km, then I’ll have a new car to drive into the country to see my
girlfriend and sister…..
I always thought personalised numberplates for cars were a
bit wanky and pretentious… but guess who has bought personalised plates?? Yep…and they arrived this week. It’s not quite regulation to show
numberplates on social media – but here is a snippet..
I must really pull my finger out and finish
the hand embroidery on this quilt so I can get it sandwiched and quilted. I’m still thinking of combination machine and
hand quilting this one.
Reading back to my last post, I realised I missed last Saturday
– I remember the weather was dreadfully chilly and I spent a lot of my time at
the sewing machine – sewing for no real purpose, but trying a couple of
techniques. I had the idea that I
needed to make a couple of mug-mats to go into my Stitchy Gift Bag of bits – so
I had a go at a bit of Quilt-as-You-Go mug mats
- random stitching and these 2 are the result. One has had the binding finished, but the other
is waiting for the binding to be attached… which seems to be the running
feature of my fortnight - but I
digress..
I then found a bit of patchwork that I had pieced and had
the backing ready to go to be quilted…. (I have a pile of these that I walk
past at least 8 times a day and it was on top of the pile) and of course that
fell under my machine needle for a bit of distraction. I’ve done all the quilting process now, and
now I need to put some binding on and stitch it down.. I also need to darn in
all the ends of the quilting, as I started in the middle of the project. – So this is another project not quite
finished.
Missouri Star Quilt Company Tutorial last week was a fun
quilt of patches of Sewing Machines. It
caught my eye (as so many of their tutorials do) Of course, I had to have a go… and an
afternoon later, I have two more mug-mats quilted and ready to be finished off –
the black one will probably end up with some felt applique – and once again,
the binding is attached but is waiting to be finished down.
Halloween quilt is on hold for the moment. I’m thinking how I want to quilt it – and because
it is such a fussy pattern, I don’t want the quilting to distract from the
pattern, particularly the bats. I’m
leaning onto just making some spiderwebs across the whole pattern… Then, there will be binding to attach and
stitch down…
Then of course I got side-tracked again.. and started another technique.. Storm at Sea
is a really distinctive design and I spent a lot of last Sunday on quilt math…
colouring in options for designs.. I didn’t want to make a whole quilt, just 4
patches together to get the idea of paper piecing… I spent a few after-work evenings putting
them together and neglecting my cross stitch, but hope to spend this afternoon
pulling the paper sections off and putting the mini-quilt together.. Then I can
sandwich it, quilt it, put the binding on and finish it – it can then also go
into my gift pile.
I’ve ordered some Australiana fabric for a requested
project, so when that arrives, will want to put that one together fairly quickly
– until I have all the fabric together and see it, I do not have a direct
pattern in mind, but inspiration will hit.
I have a new friend in my Sewing nook – Meet Jacky Lamby. She has been gifted to me by a work
colleague who is extremely modest about her crochet skills. Jacky is a shelf sitter and is positioned to
look over my shoulder and watch me at my sewing machine. Jodie – thank you. It is almost a backwards compliment to a hand-crafter
to describe something as good as something you’d find in a shop… but Jacky is so well made – I could imagine
finding her in a baby-wares shop for an exorbitant price
Bit by bit, I’ve been finding little things to sort out the
organisational aspects of my sewing nook.
I have a LOT of printed patterns, some freebies I printed around 2004-05
which I still want to stitch (someday), some magazine charts I’ve pulled out –
rather than keeping an entire magazine.
I have sorted these into Stitchery/Cross-stitch/Patchwork. I have them sorted into Christmas/Halloween,
Sheep/Teapots, Samplers by Motif/Band/Alphabet and Blackwork. I have been very good and have kept an excel
spreadsheet to document what chart can be found in what book.
I hope you have enjoyed my meandering today – I was listening
to a new to me Floss-Tube – Jan Hicks Creates.. in this time of isolation, felt like I had a
stitchy friend sitting next to me and telling me what was in her week… I wonder if I should investigate floss-tube a
bit more.. Do you have any channels you
like to visit? Please leave a comment
and let me know.
