Pickle me grandmother!

Does anybody except me remember Ted Bullpit?  Not that I ever watched Kingswood Country, you understand, Gentle Readers, as I believe it was on TV at a time when I didn't own one (and didn't miss it either, I might add) ... the most memorable thing about it was the way Ted treated his son-in-law, who, in real life, was Greek, but who played an Italian in the show.  Apparently the producers thought nobody would notice or care...


Anyhoo..., I have been somewhat unwell today, and yesterday, in fact, and spent most of the past 24 hours prone, in the dark, bucket close to hand.  Got up at 4.00pm to make some cushions (as you do), and to try out this little demon:

which snuck into the house after the craft show.  1100 stitches a minute makes it perfectly suitable to use for upholstery and the best part?  It's the same size as a normal machine, so I can make cushions & stuff without having to find a new house for something this size, 1.25 metres long, 60cm deep, 90cm high (read: needs a large space)... 

Anyway, I whipped out some Amy Butler home dec fabric I've had lying round for quite a while, which MGF Kaz waits patiently for me to make into cushions for her, and thought "oh, why not?"

So, here we are.

I had to fiddle a bit to get the tension right, but I think she'll like them.  Now, what's next?

Ciao!

Friday night too drunk

That's part of a movie title, you know, Gentle Readers.  I think it's an excellent title for this post, which explains quite a lot about my weekend.  I wasn't really too drunk, just pleasantly happy.  MBF Deb invited us up for homemade pizzas, and boy, were they delicious?  Yes, of course they were.  She's a fabbo cook, far more interested in the creation of beautiful meals than I'll ever be, and she knocked up the pizzas in about 20 minutes flat, making it all look so easy.  Mind you, there was a very small amount of pre-work eliminated, in that she used pre-made bases, but, hey?  Who cares?  Is there a pizza-base police in the house?  No indeedy.


I woke up on Saturday morning with a bit of a headache, easily fixed with two aspirin & a bowl of cereal (aspirin in a glass of water, not the cereal.  Things weren't that bad).  I spent a slightly uncomfortable half hour at the beautician, remembering all the while the story my mother used to tell me - when she was a girl, she had long, thick, beautiful hair, and one of her great-aunts, of whom there were a number, according to the family tree, used to comb it with a fine tooth comb, and say "you must suffer in the cause of beauty".   Ouch.  No wonder she wouldn't let us have long hair as children.


In other news, I got very inspired to make the cushion covers long promised to Miss Lyndsey. I threaded up the machine with white cotton, cut, pinned, stitched and got all the way to the final stitching of the side seams before it dawned on me that I needed to make buttonholes.  I whipped an empty bobbin out of my jar, filled it with lemon yellow thread and dragged the buttonhole foot out of the drawer, and off I went.  Well, kinda. 

Image courtesy of Paradeofapples.wordpress.com.  

First of all, the machine thread snapped.  Then the bobbin thread got tangled up in itself & I had to take the whole bobbin race out to get it clear.  Then it did it again.  And again.  Then the needle started making funny noises.  So I got a new 90 needle out of the magic box, and popped that in.  Nope.  I rethreaded the machine.  Nope.  I tried sewing something apart from buttonholes.  Nope.  Eventually, and ever so slowly, Gentle Readers, I thought, "perhaps this is not the right bobbin?".  Yep.  Took it out, moved all the thread to another bobbin and rather quickly tossed the old bobbin in the bin.  And guess what?  Sewing like a dream, aren't we?   


There's a lesson in this, Gentle Readers.  Rethread machine, change needle, rethread machine, check bobbin, rethread bobbin if necessary, toss bobbin if all else fails.  Actually, if all else fails, walk away & have a nap.  That's what I did.  Next blogtime, I promise pictures of the finished cushion cover.


That's it for me.  Work tomorrow, then Tuesday off - upholstery school Monday & Tuesday night, with Lucas.  Thank the Upholstery Ghods for good teachers.  We're starting on some cushion making, so I expect to learn where I went wrong with the one I haven't finished yet ;-p


And now, I think I might even go & finish it.  It's only 9.30pm & I'm not really watching the cricket, and now that I know what the problem is... who knows?  Maybe pics tonight?  Wow.  And... ciao!

Did I mention...

That in the middle of all of this good fun, the three Upholstery Musketeers (Natalie, Caroline and me!) went off to Burnt Street Upholstery on Tuesday morning for an outing of sheer unbridled fabric porn?  


Caroline was looking for the perfect combination of pattern, stripe and plain for her Slipper chair's front, back & piping, and I was looking for some plain cornflower blue to match the Amy Butler Temple Doors, to use as piping... and also some aqua to go with the Joel Dewberry for the sprung footstool. That's why I walked away with 30 metres of powder blue cotton damask, at only $10/metre.  

And why, I hear you ask, do you want 30 metres of curtain material, when you're supposed to be buying fabric for a fracking chair???  Many years ago, when Mr Golightly and I first moved into this house, my lovely Ma and I went to a [much missed] shop called Hart St Fabric House, and bought metres of beautiful camel coloured cotton damask, in a very subtle print, which she made into curtains to hang in the guest bedroom.  They look fabulous, classic, subtle, expensive (but they werent'!).  So, I could barely believe my eyes when I spotted the very same pattern, but in a blue!  


Gentle Readers, the back of our house faces north, which is, of course, ideal in the Southern Hemisphere.  We get lots of lovely warm sun in the winter, and good shade in the summer because of the angle of the trees in the back yard.  But at night, when the sun is gone (oh dear, did I just say that?), it gets cold.  All that glass, you see.  So, we have curtains.  Lined curtains at that, which I made, this time.  


I confess that I bought the original living room curtain material in Spotlight, after spending more quality fabric porn time with Miss Cathy at KA International.  I had found my dream fabric there for the living room curtains, but it was $178/metre.  Ouch.  Given that we need about 24 metres, it was going to be mega-expensive.  So I bought this other stuff instead, cheap, from that store whose name starts with S and ends in ...light, and I have always regretted it.  It's the colour of cocoa, with a tiny little woven blue square in it.  Even with the lining, all you see is the lines of the blue weaving, so it looks like a horizontal stripe.  Icky.  Also, I didn't buy enough, and the curtains are not wide enough.  Curtains need to be at least three times the width of the window to look any good.  Having two drops just doesn't cut it.   

Note:  not my house!


Anyway, I squealed like a girl when I saw this powder blue Damask, and the nice lady gave it to me for $10/metre.  There's enough to make the curtains, nicely full, and have some over for cushions or whatever.  Which is just as well, because I think I'm going to have to sell off some of the more expensive soft furnishings in the house to cover it.

Anyway, it's 10.37pm now, I've been up since 4.15am (the coughing thing again, don't ask), and I'm pooped.  Off to bed, hopefully to sleep through until 5.30am, when I get up and do it all again.  I've got pics, tomorrow, of the progress on the chair, too, so stay tuned.  Same bat time, same bat channel.  (How old does that make me????)


Ciao!

Hunter Valley weekend...

So, we had our first visit to the Hunter Valley since Zeb.B.Dog went off to Doggie Heaven, and I have to say it was a bit hard... I kept looking for her every where I went, and of course, the house was lot quieter without her.  Poor Zoe Dog was also a shadow of her former self, off her food, drink, off her game, slinking around looking for Zeb everywhere she went...


Next time we're up there I will go & visit the spot where she's buried, but this time I couldn't face it.... give me a month or so.


In the interim, I made a couple of cushion covers for Kaz, who was looking to cheer up her living room a little.  I used up some of my nice Joel Dewberry Deer Valley from here:

and co-incidentally, I had a piece of Amy Butler Home Dec weight from here:

and the colours were amazingly in synch - needless to say Kaz was very happy with the cushions - and they were a nice easy birthday present - Happy Birthday Kaz!