On retreat

 I was away this weekend at a two day cross stitching retreat up in Sheffield, the same one I attended a year ago.  The ladies I sat with last year have all stayed in touch on WhatsApp so it was like meeting up with friends.  They and most of the other attendees are serious stitchers, buying all the things and tools and enough charts and kits to keep them going for 200 years.  I remember being like that when I was younger, lol.  Now I am fully aware that I already have enough projects in waiting at home to keep me going for at least a few decades, so my shopping impulses are much milder.  I'm also just a dilettante with cross stitch, I enjoy dabbling at it but I'm not particularly good and I'm very slow.  Still fun to be away and with like minded people, and to see what everyone is working on.  I was working on my hand towel cross stitched border, and I took along a few other small kits that I've started such as the Houses of Great Britain series.  I've come home with lots of goodies: table gifts, a few patterns, a few free things off the swaps table. 

The handstitching of quilting binding continued this week - I finished off the poison green checkered Dresden quilt, and have almost finished the final pink doiley scalloped quilt.  Meanwhile I have done a bit more work on the Gail Pan embroidered blocks quilt.  I did sash the blocks in the end, but with a subtle half-inch wide strip, just enough to give the eye somewhere to rest. Then I started pulling out possible border fabrics from my stash, trying out a lot of possibilities.  I think I have settled on this reproduction print and I'm probably going to insert a second narrow sashing of green just to give some definition. The colours aren't showing well in this photo taken in artificial light.

I finished up the final little American Country panel oval basket that I was working on last week.

I have a plastic tub of these little containers now, made up from the two panels I bought in Tokyo.  They are all cute and all seem like they should be useful, and yet I have not as yet been using many of them.  I may need to go to another craft fair in the future and unload some of my production.

On small dollshouse kits this week, I made up an old club project for a hatbox and shopping bags in printed cardstock.

I also found my notes, and shaped formers, from a class I took at Hove dollshouse week back in 1995, to make fabric covered containers.  I had always meant to get back to this and make some more, and like so many things, 'one day' never came.  So I had a go at making a few containers, which involves cutting pieces of thin cardstock to fit the wooden shapes, covering those in fabric, and assembling the liner and outer using the wooden shape as a temporary former.  It sounds simple but in fact I found it difficult to get a neat result.  I tried a little oval box, a rectangular casket and an open box. Also you need fabric with a very small print to be in scale, and I don't have so much of that type of print.  Needs more practice I think.

The next kit in the queue (my basket of small projects is almost empty now!) is a kit for making a dollshouse rug using bunka trim, from Little Trimmings.  Bunka is a Japanese? braided cord that can be teased out into a curly spiral of thread.  When glued down to a flat surface, it looks like carpet texture.  I've prepared the base, and coloured in the pattern with pencil crayons to help prevent white showing through, and prepared the pieces of bunka.  So now it will be lots of fiddly gluing, going to take a while I think.

I saw another retirement clock - I'm not going to get this one but it made me smile:

Memories of South Korea

 Some time ago online, I randomly came across an artist's installation project called The Cherry Blossom Project. The artist was Sara Cook, author of a book on the Korean textile art of Bojagi, and she was inviting participants to sew strings of traditional Korean 'mandus' (dumplings) in Korean silk organza which will be hung as a mass installation in late May at the Phoenix Arts Space in Brighton.  The reason I decided to pay to sign up was for the opportunity to try stitching with this interesting fabric.

I had seen the  wonderful stiff and gauzy silk organza in the many traditional costume tailoring shops in Korea, and I had worn a polyester version when I rented a traditional hanbok costume to do the tourist visit to one of the Royal Palaces.  It felt crisp and cool against the skin, even on the warm day, and surprisingly not scratchy.  I only saw it on rolls in tailor shops, I didn't see anything that looked aimed at the domestic sewist but I wasn't really looking then. This is the fabric used to make the pieced Bojagi patchwork which looks like stained glass when held up to the light.  When I got home, I bought a book and then found out that it is very difficult and expensive to buy the authentic silk organza from the UK.  

me posing in a cheesy way at the rental shop's photo corner 

in my tourist hanbok costume.  The jacket is made in polyester organza.

My kit arrived, with five pieces of starched Korean silk organza, which Sara had dyed with natural colours in shades of pink.  Apparently she has been trying out different dyes so there will be subtle colour differences across the installation.  The instructions showed how to fold in a quarter-inch seam allowance  - the fabric instantly holds a crisp crease just by marking it with a bone folder.  I thought the organza would fray more, but perhaps the starch is preventing that and I had no issues.  The crisp organza has a real 'spring' to it, so the dumplings hold their shape like little firm marshmallows - when you pat them down, they spring back up into shape. It was easy to stitch with a whip stitch, folding the squares on the diagonal to create the dumpling shape.  After stitching the five graduated sizes, I strung them on the provided cord and took photos.  Then I boxed the string up and posted it back to the artist. I look forward to seeing photos of the finished installation.  And if I ever go back to South Korea, I will make efforts to acquire some of this wonderful translucent fabric.

This week has just been lots of hand sewing binding down, and sewing hanging sleeves onto the two wallhangings.  I started with the little Crib Quilts American Country panel that I had quilted with clamshells. The map of 'Quilt Town' includes the Crib Quilts shop in Tokyo, which made me wonder if it was a real map of their neighbourhood.  But when DH helped me compare it to Google Maps, there isn't much correlation apart from the railroad tracks.

Next was the New Zealand 'Turning Twenties' quilt.  Not a thing of beauty due to all the busy fabrics featuring NZ motifs, but it brings back lots of memories of my 2024 trip.  DH prefers the back of it, which is less busy as I was using up all the big leftover pieces.  

Next was the digital panel of tea pots. I had found when quilting this that the panel is not square on, but actually a little skewed.  This, combined with there being a lower density of quilting in the lower section where the drawers are, is making it hang quite badly with a big bulge at the bottom.  I tried steaming it flatter which helped but gravity is against me.  So I think I am going to have to stitch in a rod or batten at the bottom to correct the bulge.

Currently I am sewing binding onto the ugly poison green checkered Dresden quilt. The final quilt will be the pink doiley quilt.  I remembered, after trimming it last weekend during the virtual retreat, that I had planned to add interest to the plain sides by scalloping them.  But I had only cut straight of grain binding strips when preparing the quilt, and I didn't have any more of the pink background fabric (the usual recommendation is to use bias binding for binding curves as it lies flatter).  I experimented with a sample, and found that if I kept the scallop pretty shallow, and consciously sewed fullness into the straight grain binding strips, then they could work.  So I cut both sides into scallops and sewed the binding on.  Sadly I forgot the trick where you clip into the corner and pull the edge straight to sew the binding across where two scallops join, so I made a mess of all the corners.  So I had to unpick both sides and do it over again.  It should be ok now.

Once I had all the binding on, I used the last part of the virtual retreat time to make a Japanese-style rice pouch bag - this was a project that came, along with the fabric, when I was a member of the Tilda Club.  It is enhanced with some hand embroidery here and there.  I may give this to my niece when she visits the UK.

I reorganised my Japanese fabric stash, which had become a bit chaotic.  I feel guilty about how much I bought on my last few trips, that I haven't used up much of yet.  I did pull out the remnants of the American Country panels 22 and 23, and made up a final couple of pouches to use them up.  This zip pouch, and an oval basket that I am still working on.

I took my new hobby of junk journalling on the road this weekend, trying out a session at a local church where you can hire a table to yourself to work on.  There were only a couple of other ladies there, doing scrapbook layouts, but they were quite friendly.  I cut out a digital journal kit that I had printed at home, and worked on a few master board collages.  I might do it again, I think the next session is in a few months.

I've started researching a possible trip to China for 2027, but it sounds quite intimidating.  Language and cultural hurdles aside, apparently it is a very difficult country for gluten allergies. I read that they don't even have a word for gluten in mandarin, and that it is very difficult to explain your needs because allergy awareness is low.  Lots of stories online of coeliac tourists really struggling to find things to eat, in a country where soy sauce (which contains gluten) is used in so many sauces and marinades, and so many things are deep fried in wheat batter, and even in supermarkets the food labelling for ingredients is apparently not great.  Coupling that with my inability to tolerate temperature extremes, which means I can really only visit in April or October, and the potential for altitude sickness in some locations. But it does sound like an amazing place to visit, so many stunning natural wonders and ancient historical sites.  It's also quite an affordable country to travel in.  So we'll see.  I'm building up a list of possible destinations for a first-time visit and how long people recommend to see each one.  There are of course organised tours but their itineraries are so whirlwind that it could be quite frustrating.  

Community?

 This weekend I am taking part, for the second year, in the 2026 virtual retreat for the Quilters Guild of the British Isles.  It's quite a big event, apparently they have 533 registrations, so at £50 a ticket, it is hopefully quite a moneymaker for the guild.  It's a mixed programme, ranging from quilt history through to charity quilting initiatives, with profiles of artists, a presentation from Schmetz needles and more. So quite a variety.  Only one 'make' this year, which was arty one-inch cube boxes which didn't appeal to me so I didn't do that one.  I've spent most of the day working through my five quilts waiting for binding while listening.  For the first half of the day, I was feeling good about the sense of community: having some company in my sewing room; finding out more about the UK quilting scene; learning about what other quilters are doing and how they do it, some social contact, seeing glimpses of people's work in the background.  Quilting can be quite a solitary hobby.  

However, in the second half the day, possibly because I was growing tired, I started to feel a bit depressed.  I think it's partly imposter syndrome from seeing all the amazing things people are producing, and how productive they are, and they have the energy to make quilts with a million tiny pieces, and they are putting things in shows and holding exhibitions and taking part in guild challenges etc.  And partly it is the relentless focus in the UK on design, contemporary abstracts, quilt art etc. which I don't relate to at all as I come more from the American design tradition.  It doesn't appeal to me to do, for example, a series on leaves - one woman was collecting leaves in the garden, photocopying them, using design software to extract graphic elements from the photocopies, then creating needlework of elements of the leaves in a variety of styles from boro to applique to crayon art, hand dyed interfacing etc etc.  So no actual product at the end of it, just lots of samples.  That sort of art/design activity is very admired in the UK - it's not for me.   But it does make me feel like I'm just pottering away, making bed quilts I don't need and not often stretching myself.  So  exposure to the community today has been a bit of a double-edged sword.

But as one woman said earlier in the day, and the internet says it is a quote from Katherine Hepburn: “If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.”  Quilting, and crafting in general, has always been as much about protecting and improving my mental health as it has been about producing anything, or being artistic.  There's another full day of programme tomorrow, hopefully after a night's sleep I will be refreshed and feeling more positive.

So today I was tackling the three bed quilts, large wallhanging and small wallhanging all waiting to be bound. Two of them were already pressed and trimmed.  I pressed and trimmed the other three, and made hanging sleeves for  both of the wallhangings.  Then there was just lots of machining on binding.  I've done four of them, one more bed size quilt to tackle tomorrow.  Now I need to do all the meters of  handsewing to finish the bindings - I can't manage stitching binding down on the machine, I never get a tidy result.

I finished quilting the baptist fan design on the Checkered Dresden Fan quilt - this is a picture before I washed it - and it was one of the quilts I sewed binding on to, today.  I'm definitely getting better at the stitching, in person you can see an improvement towards the end compared to the beginning.  I'm not entirely happy with how big the fan is compared to traditional handquilting, that's a function of the rulers I'm using, but the design has good coverage and a nice texture. The quilt is huge, and I don't know what I'm going to do with it. It's too big to donate to Quilts for Care Leavers or Project Linus.  I've now loaded  the Fat Cat Ruler Dresden Plate quilt onto the frame, ready for it to get the baptist fan treatment as well.

I also finished weaving the almost three meter strip of sock wool woven cloth.  My ball of weft yarn ran out just a little short of the end of the warp.  Since taking these photos, I have hand-fulled the weaving in the sink which has given it a softer, fuzzier texture and closed up the weaving.  The plan is to cut it up and use it to sew some small items.  My niece is coming to the UK  in a few months so I plan to make her a few things with it as gifts.

Continuing to whittle down my stash of mini kits.  I attempted a wheelbarrow of cardboard which I think was another old club project, but it was just too crude and a bit out of scale, so I ended up throwing it out.  The next one out of the basket was a Pat Cutforth Cancer Research kit to cover a cardboard trunk with faux leather - but where was the trunk?  After looking through my cupboards, I eventually located the cardboard trunk in a collection of boxes and mini baskets.  The faux leather had become rather brittle with age, and the cardboard trunk was a somewhat crude base to work on, but it turned out alright in the end.  It doesn't really fully close nor fully open, so would have to be displayed as it is.

It's been a bit of a running joke in this house since I retired, that I have trouble remembering what day of the week it is - since I don't have the framework of a working week/weekend any longer.  I saw a clock on Facebook for elderly people that says the day of the week, and joked about it to DH.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realised it would actually be useful.  So I have bought one - embarrassingly it is marketed as a clock for dementia sufferers.  I'm not that far gone.  But I'm appreciating being able to easily see the date and date of the week at a glance.  I probably don't need to be told that it's afternoon or early evening or whatever - not yet anyway.

Airing of the quilts

 The UK has been in a prolonged cold snap, and even where we live, it has been dropping down to minus 2C on a few days  - we even had a dusting of snow which lasted a few days.

 It just makes going outside very unattractive (so no garden tidying) and even the cold basement is not appealing (so not much sewing or dollshousing), and in general I feel a bit sluggish.

I did however stir myself to empty out the attic quilt cupboards for the c. biennial airing of the quilts.  The quickest route to the spare bedroom is to dump all the quilts down the stairwell first, and then start carrying them along the hall to spread them out on the spare bed to relax flat for a few weeks. DH helped me spread them all out and only asked once how many I have.

The answer probably is 'too many', and I am guiltily conscious that this isn't even all of them - there are three more in the quilting queue, and at least three downstairs waiting for binding, plus the ones we are using on beds etc.  Yes I have given quilts away to DS, and to Project Linus, and have sold a few. But basically my output vastly exceeds my needs.  Which makes me feel conflicted, but then nobody tells a painter that they can't paint any more paintings because they have too many already. Making quilts is a process of creativity and artistic expression as well.

I'm almost finished the Baptist Fan quilting on the frame, I just have one more partial row to do.  I have once again run into the issue of the ruler balancing on the row of attachment pins, but I've rolled the quilt as far forward as possible which is helping.  Meanwhile in the sewing room, I pulled out the big bag of vintage embroideries that I collected several years ago after seeing some quilts online made from vintage linens.  I put them through the washing machine (no colour runs thankfully) and ironed them all in preparation for starting the project. First I'm thinking I am going to sash the Gail Pan embroidered blocks quilt, and am waiting for a delivery of a Tilda solid that I hope is going to work. It would be good to get that all finished before taking over the sewing room for the vintage linen quilt.

I did finish the Japanese decorated fan kit that I was working on, it's so colourful with so many Japanese motifs.  A lot of fiddly work but I'm pleased with the outcome. It's a nice souvenir of Japan.

I finished the Christmas sampler I was stitching. By chance I found an old frame in a skip that was just the right size, which I sprayed grey and then applied some crackling medium, before painting white over that.  It makes a nice 'frosted' setting for the stitching. Very festive.

I've done a few bits of papercraft this week.  I followed a video tutorial to make a small journal out of four business envelopes - which I tea-dyed and then ran through my little embossing machine. It has a single signature of mixed pages from my natural dyed stash.

I also made a desk organiser from another video tutorial, along with a loaded pocket of tags.

I've started cross stitching a border for the handtowel that I bought in Salzburg.  It's been a bit of a rocky start, trying to work out where to start in the chart repeat, and where to start on the towel border.  Initially I started at a good spot in the repeat, a few inches from the edge of the towel. But that just looked stupid floating in mid-air, so then I had to stitch backward in the chart until I met the edge of the towel. I also have to be conscious that the wrong side of the towel will be visible, so I'm having to try to keep all the reverse lines either horizontal or vertical - no travelling diagonally to get to the next stitch.

Hope you are either keeping warm, or cool, depending where you live!

It's a new year

 It's a new year, 2026 is upon us, and all the usual rituals have to be followed:  start the new planner (I use Kindle Scribe now since last year) and fill out all the recurring events, hang the new wall calendar, book the next summer's caravan holiday, take down the tree, hoover up all the needles I can find (we still come across some even months later) and put away the christmas ornaments etc.  The house seems rather bare with all the ornaments gone, and I can see that I need to dust.  We didn't do anything on New Year's Eve but we did stay up to stick our heads out of the attic skylight at midnight to watch the tremendous amount of fireworks going off all over town, very impressive.

DS has gone home so I have reinstated my weaving station in his old room.  I've woven about a meter of the sock yarn fabric and am wondering what I was thinking when I warped on 3 meters. I am planning to sew with the finished fabric but do I need three meters worth of identical bags and pouches?  I will keep going for now.  The fabric is fairly narrow, only about 30 cm wide.

I've been stitching on my Christmas cross stitch sampler most nights and have reached the bottom half.  I also found an empty frame in a skip which I think will fit it nicely.  I've already seen another Christmas sampler design that I am thinking of doing next year so perhaps this is going to turn into an annual tradition.  

I am almost to the toe of my first Christmas sock, it was nice to have something seasonal to knit when my eyes got too tired for the cross stitch.  This yarn has an amazingly long repeat.

And I dismembered my old red spool wreath that had lost its shape and managed to pull most of the hot glue off the ornaments.  Then I re-glued them onto the star wreath that I bought at Hobbycraft last week.  It turned out pretty good, it actually looks more festive than the old round wreath.

I've pieced all six blocks of the Gail Pan embroidered blocks BOM now, and have been stitching on the EPP hexies that decorate each block - I just have one more block of hexies to do now.  And I have been plugging away on the Baptist Fan pattern for the Checkered Dresden Quilt.  There are 12.5 fans along each row, and each one requires picking up and putting down five circle rulers.  I am trying to do a row a day, it ranges from meditative to quite mechanically tedious, but it is looking really good.  Some of my overlaps are still pretty bad but there are more decent ones now.  I plan to stitch this pattern on three quilts starting with this, my least favourite, so hopefully I will be better when I get to the quilts I like more.

With the Gail Pan project temporarily off my cutting table, I have started work on one of the Japanese kits that I bought in Tokyo at Sakura Horikiri last year.  This craft may be called Kinusaiga but I'm not sure, it's basically wrapping precut foam shapes in synthetic silk fabric, then gluing the shapes together to make a colourful 3D picture or item.  This project is quite complex, it is a decorated 'hagoita' or wooden paddle used at New Year's.  The paddle is laden with all sorts of auspicious elements from Japanese culture.  There are a gazillion tiny pieces and it's all in Japanese, thank goodness for Google Translate.

In papercrafts this week, I made another cute little book from a free printable and video tutorial by VectoriaDesigns.  It is stitched and bound like a real book, very cute. It's not hard, I encourage you to download the printables and give it a go! I also finally finished the journal I was working on - now to see if I am actually going to write in it.

In dollshouse mini kits, I put together a 1:24 scale version of the same knitting bag I finished a few weeks ago, then worked on a 1:12 scale gingerbread house.  This was an inherited dollshouse club kit from about 25 years ago, with minimal instructions but luckily I still had the original house I made myself to copy from. Originally we used puffy paint for icing, but I didn't have any.  Luckily DH had a Games Workshop snow product and let me borrow it, I didn't need very much as the house is so small.

I've been collecting all my finished mini kits on a cookie tray, it is starting to look like quite a collection. The box of kits is a lot emptier now.

I hope you all had a good festive week, and best wishes for a happy crafty 2026.

Festive week

 I am finishing off yet another packet of festive sweets as I type this - far too many goodies lying around the house and filling up the fridge, not good for my waistline.  DS has been with us since Monday night which has been nice.  We had a pleasant Christmas Day together, then Boxing Day was spent driving down to the elderly in-laws for a few hours then driving all the way back.  Today has been a recovery day - lots of sleeping for one thing.  I hope your Christmas day went well also.

My Christmas presents included an eyelet setting kit, an embroidery book from a friend, a beautiful handpainted lace bobbin, and a 2026 Japanese woodblock calendar.

Today we made a short foray to the Boxing Day sales and I got a few things at Hobbycraft:  a star wreath as I need to rebuild the red and white spool wreath I made some years ago which has now lost its shape; some ribbons on sale; some half price Christmas FQs and some glue.

Between eating, cooking, visiting family etc. I haven't done a lot of crafts this week.  I did get in a few days of sewing and made up a neat little organising pouch called the Nightingale Zipper Case by Center Street Quilts.  It went together fairly well although I had to use my industrial machine for the final binding due to the bulk.

I calculated and sewed the fifth block for my Gail Pan embroidered blocks quilt. One more block to go.

I fought with the 1:24th scale chair all week, the one that wouldn't take wood glue nor tacky glue.  I have got it to hold together, barely, with 3-in-1 glue which is a solvent based glue but only after multiple falling-apart debacles. I think the moral of the story is 'don't pre-stain wood parts when the glue points will be so tiny'. 

After practicing the Baptist Fan pattern with my circle rulers last week, I loaded up the Checkered Dresden Plate quilt and started quilting across the top row.  You may remember that I had been practicing a bottom-up start because that was how the videos did it.  It became apparent fairly quickly that trying to stitch top down was not going to work.  The angle meant that the back of the ruler foot was hitting the ruler a lot of the time, and the circle rulers themselves were canting up from resting on the attachment pins at the top of the quilt so they weren't level, which made the ruler foot hit the ruler even more.  After persevering for four wobbly fans, I gave up and admitted defeat.  I had also noticed that I hadn't pressed the top very well before it went into the quilting queue.  So I unpicked the four fans over a couple of days and unpicked the side attachment, brought my iron up and pressed the seams better as I re-attached the top and then basted across it every foot or so.    So now it is all rolled onto the front beam and I can start over again from the bottom.  I've done the first row and it is working much better. The stitching process feels a bit mechanical:  there are five circles in different sizes to use, one at a time.  I've got them laid out on an ironing board to one side so I can pick then replace each circle in turn.  My stitching overlaps could still be tidier but I expect that will get better with practice. Overall it is looking good and I'm pleased with it now.

I've done a bit more on weaving the sock yarn on my loom, and in the evenings I have been plugging away on my Christmas cross stitch sampler.  There has been a certain amount of unpicking - even with the stitched grid to help, I still went wrong a few times.  But it's cute.

I've squeezed in a bit of papercrafting:  I made a couple of collages on index cards that can be used for inserting into journals, and I made some 'dangles' after watching a video on how to make them.  You can attach these to the journal or to tags inserted in the journal etc.

I hope you've squeezed in some crafting time during this festive week and that Santa brought you some crafty goodies.