What a strange day.
May 26, 2020Let us start with the good news, I did manage to progresss the blocks yesterday for last weeks border. I can piece them, they aren’t even too bad. I got 4 of the 10 done, after a bit of jiggling with the maths and checking and triple checking the plan. It’s funny how often the planning is the hardest bit and sometimes even the most time consuming. I am very happy I now have a workable plan, and I did think at times I might even finish all the block yesterday. I did the hardest four first and was getting faster. Then life happened.
First we got a video call for the dog. We spent an hour playing with him outside so family who can’t visit and see him or the house could meet him. Annoyingly he wasn’t on his best behaviour but they thought he was doing well for his age so it could have been worse. He did very much enjoy the call.
Coming in overheated it seemed a great time to sit in the cool kitchen and do the preparation for dinner. Yesterday was our monthly meat and fish delivery and that means fish pie. No matter what the date I feel fish pie mix needs using ASAP. The mixed chunks never seem to keep. So bulk mashed potato and off we go. I have also realised I don’t always feel up for preparing mashed potato, so in future I will do the whole bag when it comes in and freeze it in portions. You can’t freeze raw potato but mash is fine. One bulk session is a lot easier for me than several small sessions.
Having done all the preparation we were at doggie play time. We try to keep his main events pretty regular, so off we go to play. We do a lot of fetch in this session, but some of his toys are easier to throw than others and yesterday we lost one of his toys into the top of the bushes between us and the railway line. Fenrir was very upset by this and kept trying to get back into the blackthorn to get his toy. No amount of other toys and moving him away was helping, he wanted THAT toy. Yes I have now ordered replacements they will be here Thursday. While trying to wrangle this excited and not totally focused puppy we saw a paraglider. Cool don’t see many of those. he circled us and waved, we waved back. then he decended….into our garden. He narrowly missed our new planting. Well that doesn’t happen every day. While Tet tried to get the dog away from him I went to deal with him, keeping as far back as I could. He said he thought he had landed in a public park?! Really with no access routes and no paths, not much like any park I have seen. With raised beds and a car right next to a house. Well I guess he could be that clueless. So I explained he was in our garden and I would show him the way to a road but as we are shielded so could he keep his distance. That last bit I repeated several times, and in short, no. He didn’t seem to have a clue about social distancing or really anything to do with lockdown. He hadn’t noticed he had landed in an very small village either, and was after the local shop. Where I am is a road of houses with a pub. That’s it. I get accidents happen. He seemed to have enough height to have gone elsewhere, though public spaces to land in near us are few. I do think though than once it has gone wrong you at least listen when asked to keep your distance. I was hoping it was a perspective thing, but no, Tet could see clearly from where he was and said the guy was far too close. After so many weeks of staying isolated this really annoys me. How am I supposed to protect us from people falling from the sky? I should be safe at home. Maybe we should have headed inside as soon as we saw him, but I don’t want a random clueless man wandering around my home, and outside in a large space distancing should have been possible.
I did finish the cooking. Last nights fish pie was good and I have another in the freezer along with a meals worth of mashed potato. I also had a gin and tonic, Orkney gin and local tonic. Very light and soothing. Oddly I didn’t manage to settle down to sewing again. We were both a bit stunned. We did have Fenrir in the sitting room much longer last night which he loved it seems that was fair compensation for his disrupted play session.
Now I had better wrap this up and go and check on my bread, should be ready to go in an tin I think. I am very glad I was prepared with bread making supplies before covid came along. Getting fresh bread is iffy now and we really prefer what I make anyway. I hope some of those who have just learned to make bread will keep it up, these are useful skill and it would be sad to see them die out.
Monday mystery solo robin
May 25, 2020It seems Monday has arrived again. It is almost like clockwork or something. I didn’t manage to finish last week’s border yesterday, though I did finish the pictorial center piece, which I think has over 110 pieces for an 8″ block. Not hard but a bit time consuming. Also very well worth the effort. As today is a bank holiday I plan to work on that border today. I have two or three options for the rest of it. I have met the terms of the technique so I could fill in with plain black, but that really isn’t the plan. I could applique the rest of that border. That would be easy and I admit is sort of tempting, but I really don’t like raw edge applique. Or I could go with the most complex and least predictable, most experimental option and piece it. Take your bets which way I am about to go. I am planning to try 2 test blocks of the thirs option. If they work the way I want I will carry on. If not I may change direction. Which I am sure I will complain and moan about. Mind you if the pieced option does work I have a plan for a full sized quilt based on this border so I would be thrilled to have it be successful.
I suppose it is time to learn our doom for the coming week. OK I admit I love this part, I just don’t always love the answer. Those rectangles were hard. This week our technique is,
Stars
Our border size is,
add 4″ to at least 2 adjacent sides of your quilt.
Hmm, well yay stars really fit in with my galaxy feel so that’s good. 4″ however is quite tight, maybe more 3″ friendship stars. Oh I know I could applique stars on, see about on how much I love raw edge applique. I could just stitch in constellations, that might look quite fun. Be a pig to quilt, but that would be a problem for later. My later self would have to deal with that. I think even I am sane enough not to try mariners stars in that space, although I suppose 3/4 ones around the corners might be OK. Ooooh improv stars, the little irregular ones could be fun, not sure it they would fit the scale of my other pieces but then technically neither would the sewn ones and I was OK with that. I suppose I could really leave my comfort zone and paint the stars on. Not sure how well that would work on black but it would give me scope for a lot more definition and detial in the small border. For those of you who don’t know me well, I am not a fan of paint on quilts either. It’s the change in feel of the fabric and the fact it feels too much like a totally differnt craft to me. Well safe to say I have some ideas for this week. Maybe it is good I have the last border to work on while I think these through.
If you are just joining us, yes you can start here. No it doesn’t matter at all that you have missed a few weeks. Make (or find) a starting block with straight sides and over 9″ on at least one axis. Then pick a set of instructions and follow along. I am sure 4″ of stars around your starting block would look great. If you are playing along, please please send me some pictures, I really would love to see how other people are interpreting these instructions. You would be amazed how different the quilts will turn out based on the choices made.
Sorry folks
May 23, 2020It’s been a rough week this week. Largely not related to covid or lockdown. Lost sleep angry joints and nothing going right. Culminating in trying to take a dish out of the microwave last night and discovering it was insanely hot. Not sure I have every come across a dish that hot in the microwave, the food in it hadn’t even thawed. I would love to be able to blame the resulting burns on being tired or distracted but honestly I would never have expected something to be that hot, so really it would have happened whatever. After application of medicinal peas, everyone has dedicated frozen peas for this right, and ice I got away with blisters on only 2 fingers. It just rounded things off. I am declaring this the new of this run and things will get better now. I may struggle to finish this week’s border as my right hand is definitely sore, but as I have told you guys, that doesn’t matter. I can catch up when I have the time, or at worst I will have to skip a week. You never know, having decided I can take the time and not worry I might manage. At least I hold the iron in my right hand so it won’t be near the steam when I am working.
Some days the mojo doesn’t work.
May 20, 2020I finished a customer quilt today and decided I would quilt one of my tops as a summer quilt. I have no end of winter quilts but very few summer ones. This is the one I chose, it’s not too big and I would love to have it in use. In fact I like this design so much I am now thinking I need to make another in the same style.
This very clever design is just 2 fabrics. I have no shortage of ombre fabrics, I just need to pick the feature fabric I want to work with. However before I get distracted by yet another top, this one needs quilting. I am using bamboo wedding, which is nice and light in the summer, though warmer than you mighgt expect when it does turn chilly. I got the quilt loaded and the top borders stitched in the ditch. I picked out the threads I want to use and played with a few design ideas. I decided to go for ruler work in the outer border, but 10 lines in decided that my evenly spaced parallel lines were anything but. Not even or parallel, heck not even close enough to fake it. So i have been unpicking. With the heat i started falling asleep at the frame, that means I get to start tomorrow with more unlocking, wonderful 
The worst part is I have no idea why it was so bad. I think I was being as careful as I could be. I am hoping it was a matter of being hot and tired. Either way while I unpick you can bet I will be considering the risk of trying again with this design or swapping to another.
Spam spam spam
May 19, 2020Does spamming people really make money? This is a tiny blog yet people love to spam my comments. For those of you who actually read the posts and want to interact be aware that your first comment will only appear after I approve it. It is the only way to not give a free notice board to all the scammers.
Late blog today as I am really getting back to my schedule now. I quilt and do house stuff until dinner time then after dinner I can get on with any piecing or other personal work I want to do. Once I clear customer quilts and a few of my own tops then I will spend my days making new quilts, I have several possible patterns I would love to work on.
Tonight I started on the pictorial border, I had seen a foundation pieced block in a book a couple of years ago that would be perfect for this quilt. Which lead to a lot of hunting through boxes. It turns out the block is designed to be 20″. That’s fine but I need 8″ so I am working from the layout sheet instead often pattern. The pieces are now quite small. The block was already quite detailed, this has made it trickier. I have removed a few seams, but not the ones that lead to tiny pieces. Some I can barely see, but I figure I don’t really need to see them so long as I can find the line. It looks scary but foundation piecing is foundation piecing, I think the biggest things to remember is this will use a lot more fabric than you might expect, as far more is in the seams than actually on the front of the block, and that the seam allowance needs to be 1/8″. Oh I should probably also mention that generally one foundation seam takes about the same time regardless of size. So a small block takes as long as a large block. I am really pleased with how much I got done to tonight. I started with one of the least intimidating pieces, but by the time I stopped I had done one that had some of the smallest parts, and indeed the foundationnwas smaller than my presser foot. That’s a moment to have some sort of pokey thing to help you guide pieces through the machine. I am optimistic it is possible to complete why I have planned before Monday morning. Famous last words?
Monday mystery solo robin
May 18, 2020It seems to be Monday morning again. I wonder how many of you use this to help keep track of the weeks. This will be my 9th week of posting these instructions which is either my 10th or 11th of being at home. Honestly it doesn’t seem that long. I have a routine now that works for me, well actually we have a routine that works for all of us. The puppy is now really a dog and is learning the ways of humans. He is still very excitable, which I suspect will last longer than usual becasue it is so hard to expose him to new things. This means anything new even a little new is the most exciting thing ever. He is also large now. Still not quite his full size but well over 30kg and I can comfortably stroke his head without bending and nearly his back. He gets a little short changed on a Monday morning. We can’t sit and cuddle as long as I want to get this posted as early as I can. He does of course get his toilet break and drink and some cuddles before I come here. So let us see what torment and possiblity lies ahead this week. I do hope you guys are having fun with this in between cursing it. This fluidity and randomness is something I know a lot of quilters struggle with but I do think it is valuable to at least aclimatise to it. I think it makes it easier when a quilt is scrappy and random or when you don’t have the perfect piece of fabric to finish something. Often the perfect fabric doesn’t actually exist and maybe these exercises will help make us a little more able to compromise and adjust.
If you have just found this page, welcome, no it is not to late to play along. Make yourself (or find an orphan block) a block that is at least 9″ on at least one side. I do reccomend it has straight sides. Other than that anything goes. Pick a week to start, and follow the instructions. If you finish before the next instruction comes up feel free to go and do one that has already been posted. There is no magic order or right way it really is just random. Equally if an instruction takes you several weeks that is fine too. Just pick up a new or old instruction when you are ready. I am expecting to be posting these for about a year, maybe longer, so please join in have fun. If you could send me photos of what you are working on I would love it. Comment on a post and I will email you where to send them.
I think I have put this off as long as I can bear, let us see what is in store today. Technique this week is,
Pictorial
Well I didn’t remember that being an option. I don’t know about you but I will need to think about that. what space do we have to work with this week,
Increase the size of your quilt by 8″
Well that’s a good size at least. Also vague, one axis both? Maybe all around. Hmm, this feels like enough rope to hang myself, but I may be being paranoid. Now can I think of something pictorial that fits with my quilts new name, note to self naming the quilt at this stage may have made my life harder. Always remember all technicalities count. I think that may be my mantra for this week.
Bear paws done
May 17, 2020I managed to get my act together today and get the border finished. As well as a lot of other small jobs and participating in baking day. The border was indeed quick to get together as all the parts were made. I just needed to get the padding pieces in. I did manage to get the end bits the wrong size first try, but as I tell my students, when a border doesn’t look like it fits when you go to pin it you need to measure both parts in case there is an error. There was but it was easy to resolve. One of the reasons I made the important blocks of the border smaller than the whole length I needed was so I could adjust the border to the right length.
Sorry I didn’t realise this was so blurry, I will try in better light tomorrow. I didn’t mean to put the border on that side, so it is possible in future photos it will have moved. Then again it does look fine there so maybe not. Either way I won’t rush the decision. I will be interested to see if anyone knows me well enough to see what my bears are dancing, it amuses me, and was suggested by a friend. We had it fully designed by 9am last Monday. The friend isn’t a quilter but does totally get my slightly odd way of looking at these things.
For my baking day, apparently it is world baking day today, I used up the left over egg whites from yesterday. I made my first roulade. It turned out very well, a little browner than I would have hoped, but with the golden sugar that is always a risk. It was filled with the left over cream from yesterday and tinned peaches. It is nicer than it sounds and much less sweet than store bought roulades. I liked it enough it may become a regular feature. It was also a lot quicker than I expected. The onlky issue is baking parchment. It seems there is a shortage of it. The brand’s I usually use are totally unavailable. The best guesses are it’s made in China, or there is very little in the supply chain and now more people are baking that has caused the failure. Hopefully I can find ways to work around this for now.
Where does the time go?
May 16, 2020I was sure I had blogged yesterday, but apparently not. I blame a rough night. Waking up that sore really does throw me. Despite that I made good progress with my bear paw border yesterday. I have all the paws done and one of the “blocks”. It is one of three in my border but probably wouldn’t be seen as a block in the traditional sense. As all the components are now done I should be able to finish the border and put it on tomorrow. I had meant to ask Rachel if I could blog her quilt again, but we got distracted in some fabric shopping and Facebook failing to video call or post photos correctly. I was pleased when she said it did feel like visiting a fabric shop even though we were having to use photos not video.
I am hoping to get a chance to try and set up a web cam tomorrow. A friend very kindly sent me one, much appreciated as you can’t buy them at the moment. I wonder how long that will last, I assume China has been getting production back up and running, but equally it is now a worldwide shortage. Filling all the orders will take some doing I think. As I can’t do anything about it I will just wait and see what happens. Once I do have a reliable means of sharing video I will be looking to set up some online classes. I really want to do something that feels like my regular weekly classes. Quite freeform and where people can ask any questions they have. It isn’t a format I have seen others doing, but following the norm has never really been my goal. It will take a bit of trial and error to get right though, so the first classes will be small and tested by people who can provide feedback and help me work through the issues.
As well as the sewing and selling fabric, I have been making more icecream. I am reallky loving my icecream maker, and that it allows me to make any flavour I like with less dairy than usual. It also lets me use up fruit rather than waste it. I think there will be a mango and a rhubarb in our future. Today’s recipe used a custard base, which means I now have spare egg white, so maybe tomorrow will be roulade as well as finishing the border.
Masks part two
May 14, 2020Well odd as this will sound yesterday went so smoothly I didn’t get chance to work on masks other than my before breakfast quiet time.
For those who don’t know I am still quilting for customers. I was only taking them by post but now the travel restrictions have eased I will also take contactless drop off. All quilts will be quarantined, same as everything else that comes into my home, then quilted. So if you have a stack of new quilt tops after being stuck at home, yes I can quilt them for you. I also have backings and weddings if needed and some basic sewing supplies. I do have plenty of parking space, you will not be on a road and exposed to other humans. I took in the first delivered quilt yesterday and I think we were both happy with the process. The customer even found my house from my directions, which is always reassuring.
I finished the quilt that was on the frame, and I am considering loading a small one of mine soon. I had forgotten how much I enjoy free hand quilting. It seems all the quilts for a while have been rulers and ditch work. I can do it, I like the effect but I really don’t love the process. I let rip on the borders of the last quilt and it felt amazing, I really want to do more of that. Lol I suppose that means if you have a quilt that needs an all over I would be thrilled to quilt it. Seems crazy that I am seeking to quilt things where my quilting will probably not show ,such, but honestly it was so much fun.
I also had a clearing quarantine session yesterday. It seems deliveries always come in lumps, filling quarrentine. My cupboards become empty, I start to worry, then things clear quarantine and I find I am well stocked again. It really does feel like each round of shopping is now three shopping trips. Ordering, aka creating the wish list because you never get what you order now, delivery, that exciting yet disappointing moment, and finally actually getting the goods and putting them away. Before covid I hated the putting away bit, now it is my favourite part. I like the space where the things had quarantined and the full shelves, both are much more satisfying than wishing and paying.
So back to masks before I go and make the bread for today’s lunch. I think I said yesterday that after a lot of research I decided to go with a cup shape masks with a center front seam. This should be the most comfortable and durable from what I can see. I found two patterns that get good reviews and had the shape and features I was looking for.
https://www.craftpassion.com/face-mask-sewing-pattern/
This one seems to be about the most popular out there. It’s a good general shape and fits most people pretty well. It comes in multiple sizes and it looks like hundreds of thousands of these have been made and are in use. I won’t say that the majority is always right, but it is also one of the ones requested by hospitals, and I think they probably know their masks. This is the pattern I will be using for community masks. It is a good general purpose pattern. The second pattern I found is the one I am going to try for myself. Why am I making mine differently? I have access to me, so I can tweak the fit, I don’t have access to everyone else. So for mine I am going to try for the best fit I can.
https://media.rainpos.com/220/personal_mask.pdf
Well that was harder than it should be, my paste function doesn’t want to work. This mask pattern has been tweaked by an engineer, he wanted more fabric under the chin, which I also want and he wanted a more custom fit. This pattern has eight sizes so there aught to be a decent fit for most people. I took my measurements and made my first guess as to my size. Yup, it’s a guess, educated maybe but measurements never tell you everything about fit.
I pulled a fabric I don’t love from my stash, I can say an American fat quarter will be enough to make 2 test mask, or I suppose 2 real mask duh!
Having cut my first two pieces I have learned two things. Firstly, I use a 60mm cutter pretty much all the time. I find it a lot easier on my hands and wrists. However there are a few projects it doesn’t work so well for. This is one of them. The nose curve is just a shade too tight for a 60mm cutter. I will switch to the 45mm for future mask making, maybe even scissors for some, but that’s another story. I also realised that if I cut the fabrics right sides together it will save me a step. Why cut then flip them to sew when they could come off the cutting mat aligned. The curve is a very nice shape to sew I was really happy with that, and the pattern is designed with a quarter inch seam, so all the quilters will find that pretty easy too.
I tried on this first layer, it looks promising, but remember at the moment it still has seam allowance on. That worried me a little, it’s sufficiently close to right now this make come up a bit small once I get the lining in, well let’s give it a go. Oh, pressing, for speed press flat. Just one half on top of the other. If you have a tailors ham and it’s a mask you are custom fitting, press over the ham it will make a much nicer shape.
These are the two layers sewn together. Not sure if you can see but I have nested the seams so there should be fabric covering all the seam holes in the front of the mask. I did pin the seam alignment to make sure they stayed nested. I don’t think that would be essential if you were bulk sewing but for my first couple I will. The shape feels a bit odd under the machine but really not hard. I should say blogging this is taking a lot longer than the making did. It took less than 10 minutes to get to this stage. To turn this it is just pulled through one end, then press these seams flat. Again I think a tailors ham would make this easier, but I did it on a flat ironing board.
I was right, the mask was now a little small. It did still fit nicely over my nose, even without a nose wire in yet. So having felt the mask was close before sewing in the lining I decided to make my next sample from the pattern 2 sizes up, which adds back that half an inch. The second test looks huge.
This is before the lining though, after lining it was pretty much bang on, except I wanted to bring it in a little tighter under my chin. That is easy enough to do as the pattern has a center seam, I can add a dart to the seam itself. So I now have a pattern I think will fit nicely. The next step will be making it in a fabric I actually like.
Sorry folks
May 13, 2020I am sorry I failed to blog yesterday, it got a bit full on. Between quilting I am pushing to finish, training the dog and some bonus weeding of the fruit bed I didn’t end up with much “free time”. That is in quotes as all my time seems to be allocated to something these days. The time that was allocated to blogging did get used for something worthwhile. I have been researching mask fitting.
I am sure I have taken a lot longer to address this subject publicly than you may have expected, and now I think is the time to explain why. I have been researching and answer questions privately for weeks, and that led me to stay quiet here as long as possible because there was one big message I felt was critically important but that might change how people behaved. Now the government have actually made the issue public I feel free to talk masks.
The big thing you need to know about masks is we will be wearing them to protect others. Your mask provides little to no protection for you but a lot for others. Equally their masks protect you. BUT…..yes that is a big but, if you mess up mask wearing you increase the risk to everyone. Wearing a mask well is a skill, and it is one we all need to learn. I think we are going to gain another level of respect for those who do it daily. However know how many people do do it, should tell us this is completely learnable. The main thing we have to learn is that once we put it on the mask is contaminated, worse than that it is heavily and dangerously contaminated. If we touch it we WILL spread germs and in quantity. So we need to learn to put it on, and leave it alone until we take it off and secure it for washing. We need to clean our hands immediately after taking it off and try to avoid touching the dirty mask. Most of that should be pretty straightforward. Most of us are now used to dealing with everything as though it is contaminated. The hard part is not touching the mask while we are wearing it. Sorry folks no lifting it for a quick drink or a smoke. On is on off is off. This also means many people will need multiple masks. If you wear a mask to work on public transport, you need a clean one to wear to come home and a secure container for the dirty one from the morning. Wear it during work and you need to change them when they get damp, and they will we breath out a lot of moisture. You need to change it if you stop for a drink then need a mask again. This is all possible, but we need to think, plan and I would suggest practice wearing a mask at home to get the hang of things.
Today is a day of deliveries, so rather than longarm and miss things I will be making a mask or two. Then I will be able to share my findings. I am starting with a well fitted mask for me. Oh yes that’s another factor, a mask needs to fit, and seal as well as possible to your face at it’s edges, that was the main point of yesterday’s research. Once I have a pattern that is good for me I will do the same for Tet. I Will then move on to some one size fits no one perfectly masks to give away. Watch this space.