What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

This was a very busy week! I had quilts to do at work and a couple of staff members were away so there were more than usual phone calls, demos, admin plus a full 2-day class with umpteen cups of tea to provide.

In addition, I did 2 evenings of overtime for the Singer Helpline. Since the weather has cooled down it appears that people are dusting off their sewing machines (or not!) and hoping that we will solve all their problems.

I had a good attempt at packing up the sewing room / spare bedroom. I am trying to vacuum ...

I had another unusually busy week long arming which makes me happy! There was a house quilt, postage stamp squares and a Kaffe Fassett diamonds one. In addition, there was class preparation to do and sewing machine demos plus an interesting phone call where the customer was irritated by me asking what brand of thread she was using – all she could tell me was that it was “cotton”. 

So now for some Big News… I am moving to Norfolk! It all boils down to Big Family Stuff and I want to be around so I can help out. Plus Nella ...

I made all sorts of different things this week, not all of them easy or useful. At work I have made some ruffled samples to prepare for a forthcoming class. People seem to have mixed feelings about whether ruffles are IN or OUT;)

I tested out the new 790 Ultra to see if it did all that it claims to. It performed very well but I think if I had several thousand pounds to spend I would still opt for the top of the range 990 which has a camera and can do pretty much anything.

I gave 2 new ...

This weekend I have been recovering from working 12 days straight, including FoQ. When I worked for myself I could unwind gradually and last year I headed up to Glasgow. This past week was far too long and I did very little at the weekend, even going for a Sunday afternoon snooze.

Nessie went for a hair-do but the groomer insisted on leaving her ears shaggy so she now looks like a gremlin. 

I made some mindless Hama beads to finish off my kitchen doorway but when I move I will have to repaint because I stuck them up ...

Another Festival of Quilts is already over! I first attended as a visitor with 3 small children in tow in 2006, represented APQS for a few years and Bernina UK Q-Series long-arm machines for the past 10 years. I think I missed 3 shows in all those years, possibly 2007, 2009 and 2020 (like everyone else). I do not have a complete set of pin badges for every year and this year they were sold out by Day 2. I took quite a few photos of competition quilts and their labels and decided to put them in a Flickr album ...

My week at work was mostly spent being involved in FoQ preparation. I long-armed mini quilts pieced using the Accuquilt system, packed up 2 sewing machines for demos, tidied up ruler quilting samples, and helped stuff leaflets into envelopes. I have selected some camera gear, hoping that I might do some filming at FoQ. I really want to take the mini Hover drone but its battery is dead!

Garden report: I have ONE hollyhock flower… I bet the rest won’t mature until next year. I have quite a few tiny tomatoes, raspberries that show no signs of fruit, very ...

Nella graduated from Norwich University of the Arts with a degree in Textiles. We could not be prouder of her achievement!!! We had a lovely celebratory week with her friends and family, wishing her well for whatever future she chooses after a well deserved break:)

I spent all of last Sunday working out how to put my patchwork coat together which was not technically difficult at all, apart from me not getting my head around how to get the sleeves together. I had to unpick the cuffs because I created a closed tube somehow. Basically everything got “bagged out” apart from the sleeves which I finished with binding because I can do that. I topstitched all the way round to hold it all together. I believe there should have been some under-stitching, whatever that is but I thought that was too much effort. I think ...

I consider myself to be a problem solver or a fixer, without the dodgy associations of crime or MI6.

My children have often commented that they just want me to listen sympathetically, rather than come up with ingenious solutions to whatever problem they have. 

This week a non local customer, who was on a fishing trip, came into work first thing to present me with a lovely bunch of flowers. I had helped her to fix her jammed longarm machine remotely by telling her how to get everything unstuck. 

Someone brought in a battered vintage Bernina that she had inherited ...

Before I left on my Norfolk mini-break I completed a lovely customer quilt, an Irish Chain with silver metallic thread. The Q24 did a beautiful job – a thread net and slower speed helped.

I have been having a long weekend in Norfolk with my girls because I wanted to see Nella’s final year textile art exhibition (and meet her new boyfriend!) I will actually be back in July for a slightly longer visit to attend her Graduation. 

One of the days was unbearably hot so Nessie and I did not venture out at all. We had a cooler seaside ...

This week at work was all demos, teaching and customer quilting as well as cracking out the machine inventory, preparing the classroom and all of my usual dashing about. Every evening I did some extra hours for my Friday job because they were short staffed. I was glad when the weekend rolled around and I did not have to set an alarm.

Consequently, last week’s laundry still has not been folded, my “sewing room / office” is in a muddle and I have been eating the same thing every day to save time. 

The Slug Pub was not a success ...

First I tried straw, then I teased out wire scourers to apply as mulch, splitting open the end of my thumb but NOTHING seems to stop the pesky slugs that are trashing my strawberries. I have been out at dusk with a trowel, waging war against the slimy pests. My next strategy is to put out beer traps, otherwise I will not be able to eat a single homegrown strawberry without biting into something vile and squelchy. 

It was all-systems-go at work with customer quilts. I think 4 different ones were on the frames this week ranging from brightly coloured ...

Last week was hot – it got up to the mid 30’s C and was just as warm inside at work which is not ideal for making quilts. I even missed my old workshop which rarely went above 10 degrees C and was always colder inside than out. All I wanted to do after work was sit very still in my cool cottage with a cup of tea.

Apart from watering my plants every day, trying to keep the tomatoes alive, I planted some flowers and seeds in an old paddling pool. Slightly foolishly – I climbed down a ladder to ...

I used to be somewhat addicted to a Nintendo game called “Animal Crossing” where I would run around planting, watering and weeding on my virtual island. That was ME in real life this weekend, planting up a veritable farm in containers, taking over any unclaimed patch of ground. If it was my own garden I would probably put in lots of raised beds but Nessie crashes around on the grass playing footie and when I eventually move on I will have to shift an awful lot of plants in pots!

Last week when I had visitors it was unseasonably cool ...

I had a lovely week with all 3 of my children coming to stay in my tiny Tavistock cottage. We love being with each other, doing outings and just hanging out together. It is a pity we are all so far away but at least none of them lives in Australia!

We visited Cotele and Killerton House National Trust houses, had a day out in Falmouth and Totnes then an evening watching Beltane Morris dancers. 

We cooked, had many cups of tea, sat around a bonfire and laughed a lot. Nessie and I will really miss them when they all ...

It was a short, quick week at work and varied with an overlocker lesson, a videography tutorial, customer quilts and everything in between. 

In my garden a naughty dog made a wee hole in the greenhouse playing footie and I planted a row of hollyhocks on the other side of my rotting fence. My trowel broke in the stony ground so I had to resort to using a screwdriver and a spoon. I was advised that slugs might enjoy my new plants so I put pot scourers around them to put them off. Hopefully my neighbourhood hedgehog will eat all ...

I only managed one small customer quilt this week as I was busy doing other jobs, including stock taking many varieties of calico…

It was a bank holiday weekend! I have been helping Jo to jazz up her back yard and we started on painting the walls and fence which always takes far more paint than you can imagine. I watered down the pale lilac masonry paint to get a base on the roughcast walls. There should be a law against those, particularly ones done in black granite. I am hoping that Jo might be able to find a sprayer ...

After driving from Norfolk last Sunday, I attended the welcome reception for Nicholas Ball’s retreaters prior to their week at Quilt Direct. They worked on their improv fish all week, ending up making them twice the normal size in their enthusiasm. 

As well as making sure the retreaters were fed, watered and happy I had a customer quilt and lots of teaching. There was a day of 1:1 overlocker, another day of 1:1 Bernini Aurora and 770QE, a B990 zoom session, then my new Friday job. 

My evenings were also busy – Nicholas came round for tea, we ...

I was in Norfolk last week to attend my dad‘s funeral. He died rather unexpectedly, but it was not a shock since he was 89 frail and had dementia. 

The funeral was actually quite a happy affair with many friends and family travelling from all over the country to honour his life. There were some great photos on the slideshow and many anecdotes about how he would buy livestock from a man in the pub or decide to dig a really deep well in the garden and about his times as a deep sea diver. 

All three of my ...

After a long Bank Holiday weekend it is easy to get confused about what day of the week it is. Nella is still staying and I only worked for 2 days before going to Cardiff on a 2 day training course for a new job working remotely on Fridays. I will be answering emails for the Singer sewing machine helpline and trouble-shooting problems. Singer and Bernina are actually part of one UK distribution company so it is not that weird for me to have a side hustle involving a different brand. 

I brought home a “heavy duty” model to familiarise ...