Sunday 16 January 2011

Gone to Gowings?

Well, not quite, but gone just the same.  The Really Stinky Lavender Bags, that is.  Sold. Dunno who too yet, because I haven't had an email from the conveners of the Etsy shop, but when I do find out (and I will, Gentle Readers, I will), you will be the second to know.


Anyway, I've sent off another listing to the lovely peeps running the shop, so there'll be another lot available in case you wanted some & missed out.  I haven't actually made them yet, but when I find out where & who, I will.  Following?


In other extremely exciting news, I have made the first 5/8 of the quilt top that's been languishing as a Layer Cake in the Small But Perfectly Formed Room since August 2010:





Part The Second is to turn it 90° on its head & do the slashing & sashing thing again, which I think will make it look really nice - and since I worked out that the foot with the little red lines on my sewing machine is an actual quarter inch, things are a lot more accurate.  Well, that and the fabulous new cutting out table Mr Golightly whipped up for me - did I mention this before, Gentle Readers?  

I'm 5'6"/168cm, but the dining table is just 4"/10cm too low for me to cut out on.  I get a sore back just looking at dropping the cutting board onto the table.  So, in a fit of the genius that reminds me why I love him, he cut out four 4" square feet, made brackets, and attached it all to a custom sized sheet of MDF.  Then, we attached the 24"X36"/940 X 640cm cutting board to the MDF with liquid nails, and there you are, Bob's your Uncle.  Best part?  The feet pop off so I can store it upright down the side of a storage unit in the SBPFR*.

Anyway, it's now super easy to cut WOF fabrics using a proper quilting ruler on a big cutting board, which was the downfall with the first version of this I made - I tried to cut it by eye, because I couldn't find a big enough space to do it properly.  I feel like a real quilter now.  L'Orrore!

You can also see that I was super careful to match up the blocks this time too:


That sashing isn't really bendy, it's just an optical illusion.  Honest.

What else?  My Best Friend and the Kidlets have returned from the damp North, with tales of food wastage and the intransigence of supermarkets.  Turn away now if you're prone to fits of righteous anger... This is the story - they wanted to buy two onions.  There were two loose rotting onions.  The only non-rotten onions were in a bag with one rotting onion also in it.  When they asked if they could open the bag & buy the non-rotting onions, the supermarket responded by throwing away the whole bag of onions, because one of them was rotten.  Too bad if that had been the last onion in the world.  

How did we get so tangled up in rules and regulations that we can't think "oh, there's a shortage of food items, there's some onions available in that bag, let's break it open & sell them off to people who only want one or two".  No, we have to throw the whole lot away, good onions and all.  Honestly.  It's enough to make you cry.  No pun intended.

And that's it for me, I think.  It's been a sticky day, but the sun is going down and the air has cooled sufficiently such that I think I might sleep tonight.  Yeehaw.  I hate Summer.  Did I ever mention that?

Ciao!




*Small But Perfectly Formed Room