Woven mostly during a Dorset Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers workshop with the lovely Riita Sinkonnen-Davies, my “Weaving New from Old” project was woven on a little old Dryad 4-shaft loom, still with metal heddles and tied together with various rather random bits of string.
(Spot the error where one shaft had dropped…)
The fabrics I chose were all old duvet covers, three of them pure cotton but the other two 50/50 polycotton. I wasn’t sure that the rainforest print, with the orange/turquoise/green colours, would work with the dominant pinks & purples of the other fabrics, but in the event, it brought the mix alive. I’d intended to make a simple table runner, something we didn’t have & would use.
Although I warped the loom as I would my knitters loom, by running round the dining table and a tucked-in carver chair, it somehow ended up several inches longer than the 6′ table! So I decided to cut it & use two thirds for the table runner (now about 4′ long) and one third to make a bag; I can always use another bag. The table runner is already in use, although I have yet to back it. Every mealtime I spot another mistake, but I love it anyway. As do the cats, needless to say… On the bag, I have “laced” in the row where one of the shafts had fallen out of play, hence only half of the warps are there; it will get hard use carrying various projects around, and that would form a weak point, so I decided to lace it down in a different colour to the two warp yarns. (I’ve used the same colour (blue) to stitch the handle on.) Once the table runner has a backing, I will probably stitch a pattern quilting-style over the weave to stabilise the other place where this had happened, and a few places where the shuttle had skipped a warp – it’s likely I was nattering, not concentrating!
(Spot the “corrected” error…)
The bag is lined with some old canvas that I’d rescued, probably originally part of an outdoor cushion cover, thinking just to stitch a tough bag from that. There is, of course, a pocket inside. The handle is finger-woven (or braided?) from the duvet fabrics, ripped in 2″ strips as I would for a twined-weave project. The “fastening” is finger-woven from narrow strips left over from the workshop, and I’ve used an old mother-of-pearl bead from a broken pair of ear-rings, secured by a little ribbon rose found by my sewing machine. These were fastened on with old button thread, even though it’s not the best colour; my aim was to use what I already had rather than buy new, which seemed most appropriate.
Finger-woven edge/handle…
I’m very happy with the results, however many blunders I made and however dubious my choice of colours, and can’t wait to tackle more projects – or to find a bigger loom (again) now that we have a little more space…
Poppy & Jingles appreciating my efforts, and wondering if it’s teatime yet…
A couple of days ago, at the recycling warehouse, they had a number of large (2.5m x 1.45m) !KEA pure linen curtains in a mustardy brown colour; I paid 50p each for five of them. Four were pretty much pristine & went straight off the next morning with a re-enactor friend (“A perfect medieval colour! This stuff is about £27 a metre new!”) But the fifth has some biro marks in the centre, which haven’t washed out. So I’m making myself a Japanese-style cross-over apron from it, with BIG pockets, decorated with some shibori I did on a course last year that’s been waiting for the right project.
Needless to say, there’s a reason why I’ve never done anything much with linen before; it’s tricksy stuff. Quite open-woven, with tendency to fray like mad, and it creases in seconds unless starched, which would be a bit OTT for a working apron. (But I know that with use, it softens & drapes like almost no other fabric woven from natural fibres does. And under the right circumstances, it can outlast entire dynasties – see the pleated linen dress/smock in the Petrie Museum.) I was also not sure that I’d really got my head around how the aprons actually work, so I drew up a pattern on brown wrapping paper & made up a rough toile from an old curtain lining that was just hanging around in the sewing room (actually the spare bedroom) waiting for something useful to do. The various “patterns” & instructions garnered from other makers’ blogs & Y0utube do actually work & make sense, it’s just I can’t always “see” things in 3D straight off.
Anyhoo, after idiotically forgetting to cut the “pattern” on the fold, deciding to overlock the edges & accidental centre seam for saftey’s sake and sticking pins into myself several times trying to place the pockets to best effect, I did have a wearable apron. But I wasn’t completely happy with the way that it hangs… partly down to my own shape, but partly because there’s not quite enough “body” to the fabric.
So I thought, should I have lined it? Which would be a considerable faff, making up a lining… hang on, where’s that toile? Needless to say, even adding in a pre-made lining isn’t going to be that easy… put that on hold for now.
Luckily there was plenty of curtain left to cut out another one. I removed the shibori pocket from the first effort & adjusted the “pattern” a bit; made it a little longer & a bit narrower over the shoulders. Then fetched my 505 spray – this is a light spray-on glue, much loved by quilters for stabilising layers while you work – and smoothed the rest of the old curtain lining onto the linen, then cut it out, remembering to cut on the fold this time. I decided to leave the pockets on the first iteration and cut out some more from the left-over layered bits. Hemming the bits just seemed far too much like hard work, so I edged them with some herringbone tape left over from another project. I also stitched a few lines around the neck & straps, to keep the layers reasonably well together, knowing the pockets would sort out the lower half. Some beads & stitches found their way onto the shibori pocket, too.
So, here’s my new work apron:
Which looks better on than hanging, but my assistant is off working on her knitting machine… So now, of course, I need to get that toile stitched into the first iteration, and I’ll have a fine work apron for my second allotment…
Second allotment? Yes, a half-plot has come free on the site just up the road from our home. It’s small but enchanting; it was a flat-dweller’s garden previously. There are some beautiful things there & I’ll try to keep as many of those as I can, although some are too big & hungry to continue grow alongside food plants and others will need to be moved into little areas set aside for pollinators. I’ll struggle to fit everything I want to grow in, BUT it has a wonderful half-greenhouse/half-shed that will allow me to grow far more of the tomatoes & chillis that we love, and it’s only a moment’s walk from our house. The other plot is a good mile away, which means driving if I have things to carry, and a twenty-minute walk each way when I don’t. Not to mention the constant onslaught of very determined agricultural weeds (brambles, blackthorn suckers, nettles, creeping buttercup) and pests (rats & rabbits, mostly) from the field boundary & ditch along the long edge. Also not mentioning my raspberries, which have gone feral & spread like a (very tasty) plague… So although I will miss that space, and have some crops in the ground (garlic, onions, beans) & perennial plants over there that I will miss, I will gradually wind that one down & eventually hand it over to someone with more grit!
New challenge!
Although I have yet to sign the lease & pay the rent, some of that rosemary will be flavouring our dinner tonight…
Six months between posts? It won’t do… but there you go. I just didn’t feel I had anything interesting to say, but I did have far too much to do, as usual. And here we are, at the end of a cold winter that seems to have ground on and on; my head thinks it’s time to start planting this year’s food, yet my heart misgives me, as another, vastly more talented, writer once put it. Instinct tells me we’re not quite there yet… though the signs of spring are slowly increasing with every passing day. My propagator is full of things that need a long growing season, like tomatoes & chillis, but it’s still too cold to transfer them to my little greenhouse.
All sorts of interesting thoughts have wandered across the wrinkled surfaces of my mind in the last six months; most of them have promptly exited stage left, never to be seen again. (Can you tell we went to the theatre last night?!) Today’s random distractions are the scenes depicted on old Japanese china, some of which has ended up in this household; I’m not in the slightest bit interested in financial value, and these battered old bits probably don’t have any. But what are these guys (and gals) doing? How are they doing it, and why? Are there well-known & familiar stories being depicted on them, or are they just pretty scenes dreamt up in the artist’s imagination? Enquiring minds (well, this one, anyway) wish to know! More images will follow…
Who are these guys? What are they up to? One of three pictures of them on this broken vase.
What else has happened? On the creative front, I’ve made a number of items; from new-bought material this time as I’m struggling to find secondhand stretch fabric that’s sturdy enough for re-making. I was very fed up with not being able to find tops that fitted & suited me, in fabric I liked, so when I found a pattern that had the right neckline, the right mount of simple shaping, and variable length sleeves so a sensible result was actually possible, I leapt into action, visited the fabric shop down West, purchased some good-quality stretch cotton jersey, and have duly made myself two ¾-sleeve tops, and two short-sleeved. Plus three simple nighties that might last longer than a couple of months, cut out round an existing one that fitted well but was long overdue for ragging. Three straightforward vest-tops from the (ample) offcuts; the nighties were cut from the edge or the fold & there was a lot of fabric left in the centre. All the fabrics I used had enough left over to make some more “underthings” too. I’ve started another rag-rug on the twining loom, using up an old favourite duvet cover that had worn very thin. I’m continuing to reduce the mess in my sewing room; I shouldn’t have “rescued” so much stuff when my mother went into her care home two years ago, as I still haven’t managed to sort it all out & move it on!
Padded jacket from old curtain fabric…
I’m currently working on some “visible” mending projects and have made another simple jacket from an old curtain, a cheap throw & a duvet cover. So yes, still busy on the upcycling front, and back trading every now & then.
Embroidered bees hide stains on a beautifully-soft child’s pure wool jumper.
Off now to hunt for some more intriguing scenes from old Japanese china! Here’s one from a lovely necklace created by a friend:
What’s going on here? Are those “prayer flags” hanging from the “washing” line, on their way to Heaven? Is the presumed supplicant asking the probable-scholar to write a prayer for him? And – which volcano is that, erupting in the background?
Suddenly I seem to have some time to myself again. I could, maybe even should, spend it catching up with 30-odd years of neglected housework. Or there again, I could do something creative…
Creativity wins hands down! I went down to the recycling warehouse, thinking I quite fancied making a Japanese-style padded jacket out of old shirts, in the spirit of make-do-and-mend (see also my “Great Shirt Project“) to keep me warm around the house this winter, as the heating will only be on for a short time each morning & evening to keep the house from becoming damp, thanks to the enormous rise in fuel costs. I was rootling through the bins full of discarded clothing when a piece of red chintz quite literally bit me; it was an old curtain pelmet, complete with tacks still in place, as my poor scratched hand can testify. Underneath it I found another piece of pelmet, and two cut-off curtain ends, each about 18″/45cm by 6’/180cm. These had clearly been part of beautifully-hand-made and very expensive interlined curtains, probably in the 1970s; the cotton “bump” interlining was exactly what I needed for my jacket padding. But the chintz also spoke to me, and has ended up being the jacket lining & details, such as the cuffs, belt (I know, not in the original!) and pockets.
It wasn’t difficult to make; there’s no tailoring involved. I kind of followed the “Hanten Jacket” pattern from Susan Briscoe’s inspiring The Book Of Boro, but the cotton bump was lightly stitched into the curtain ends & pelmets, so I left it that way and just stitched the pieced-shirt outer onto it. The thread came from my existing stash. Flattering it isn’t, and it’s a bit big for me, but warm it most certainly is & I’ll be very happy to wear it around the place, at the cost of something around £3; 50p each for 5 shirts and another 50p for the curtain bits, and there are still plenty of oddments to use up. Now I know it’s not hard, I’m planning at least one more, from an old linen curtain, a cotton duvet cover for the lining, and a lightweight blanket as padding, which I’d picked up intending to sell on, before I noticed the stained fringe. I could just have cut that off & sold it anyway, but it’ll make great padding that I’d otherwise have to pay for!
The finished article, made entirely from “thrifted” bits for very little money!
Now I’ve started, there are at least 20 more ideas for creative recycling projects jostling for space in my head. Not to mention other simple ways to add to our comfort this winter, with fuel prices through the roof. Though we do now have double-glazing, some of our curtains aren’t lined; now there’s another use for redundant sheets and duvet covers! So the poor neglected house may get a look-in and a spruce-up too. Watch this space…
Well, spot the sometimes-blogger who completely lost her blogging mojo… I don’t know why , I just felt that I didn’t have anything interesting to say. Or, for that matter, do… But having just annoyed myself intensely, please forgive me if I give myself an online talking-to!
So I decided to make a rag rug for our eldest son and his lovely partner, who are about to move into their own first-bought home. I know that they will be choosing their furniture & decor carefully, and of course it’s hard to gauge what might “fit” until you can see how their plans are working out – and if they’re anything like us, things don’t so much go according to the masterplan as just fall into place. They’ll do… I thought I’d just go along with something completely practical, which can be used anywhere – a bathmat, a door mat, a sleeping mat for their adorable dachshund, a boot-liner for the car. There was already a warp on the loom; I’d intended to make a mat for the back seat of my van, but kind of lost my way over winter with that as well. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the warp was made from leftover bits of an old sheet that had been cut into strips for a completely different project, several years ago.
I should have known that a cut warp was never going to be as satisfactory as a torn warp for a twined-weave project; it hadn’t been cut completely straight on the “grain”, so the warp was constantly “shedding” threads, which stick up in the finished weaving. And enough came away as I went along that I became slightly anxious that it wouldn’t be as strong in the middle as it needs to be, to take the ferocious tension. Luckily – it sufficed.
A very tangly warp…
The weft strips were a few bits of my husband’s old, torn jeans, an old, frayed turquoise seersucker tablecloth and two-and-a-half reclaimed duvet covers from the recycling warehouse. Total expenditure, £2; 50p each for the 4 bought items, with half of one duvet cover and a few strips left over.
So they picked up the keys today. And I really wanted there to be a parcel for them on the doorstep, so I carried on “over, under, twist!”-ing ’til late at night on Tuesday. I was aware I’d made a bit of an error at one point, but thought, it’s never going to be completely symmetrical, it’s in the nature of the beast to be a little bit chaotic – it’s a rag-rug, it’ll do. So I carried on.
I came down on Wednesday morning, took one look, and oh my goodness – NO!!! It would NOT do. The error shrieked and glared at me; I knew I’d have to undo half of what I’d done the evening before and put it right. If it was anywhere in my sight, the wrongness would just leap out at me, even though I’m no perfectionist. So I spent a merry couple of hours twisting backwards.
No, no, no, no, no! 4+ rows of turquoise where 3 would be enough…7 rows+ to unpick, half-done when pictured.
The moral of this story being – STOP when you’re tired, and start making mistakes! I have known this for many years – go off & do something else, sleep on it, come back to your project when you’re refreshed and not before! But once again, I carried on long past the point where I should have stopped… Despite the setback, I still got it finished and posted in time, and it arrived today – the day they picked up the keys for their own first lovely home. Phew…
About to go off to make itself useful…
Just asking – has anyone else out there struggled to get going with projects lately? In the unforgettable words of a dear friend – are you feeling, like I was, somewhat oomph-lacking?
For several years now, I’ve been working on a one-woman challenge: to find as many uses for old shirts as I can! Every quilter knows there’s a whole lot of good, still-useful fabric in a decent gent’s shirt, often in lovely colours and nicely understated patterns, and so many of them just get chucked away when something frays, or a button falls off, or the owner gets larger or just goes off that colour. I’ve been paying 50p for superb quality cotton or linen shirts down at the recycler’s warehouse-shop, chopping them up and using the fabric in little quilts, and weaving the side-seams into bags and rugs, and making hanging “pockets”, needle books, mending kits and laptop covers, to name just a few of the ideas that have occurred to me. A few of the resulting items have even been sold.
Yesterday I experimented with some cuffs; I’ve been steadily selling lavender hearts made from the embroidered bits of old stained table linen, but they are delightfully feminine when all’s said & done. I wanted to make something that a guy would be happy to hang in his wardrobe to make his clothes smell fresh & deter moths, too. So now I’ve invented the Lavender Cuff! Time will tell whether anyone will ever actually buy one, but it’s got to be worth a try…
Lavender-stuffed cuffs!
But the thing that I really, really wanted to make was a hat. It struck me some time ago that the stiffened bits of a formal shirt, i.e. the collars and cuffs, would be ideal for making a hat, if I could just get them joined together somehow. But before I had my big Pfaff machine serviced, all my attempts came to nothing; I broke a number of needles and wrecked several collars trying. It could always have been done by hand, but that might have taken rather a long time, so it didn’t happen.
Anyway, I tried again yesterday, and to my delight & surprise, I succeeded. The machine ran perfectly, I squared the collars & cuffs off to make even joins, and found an elegantly simple pattern to try (pattern & instructions here) and – it worked! I am now the proud possessor of a shirt-collar-and-cuff hat… This one’s a bit big; I made the bigger size because lots of hats feel too tight for me, so there’s another, slightly smaller, version in the making, but I’m actually really rather proud of it and will certainly wear it!
… to July, and any day now I’ll be a Grandma! A little quilt has duly been produced:
A little quilt for a little chap…
I even got to use some of my tie-dyed fabric on the back. All the fabric is reclaimed, rightly or wrongly.
Stars for a little star…
They have a night-sky theme going on in the nursery so the shapes & colours were chosen to fit in with that; they look darker in the pictures than they actually are, thanks to the seemingly never-ending gloom in June. It’s not meant to be an heirloom but a totally practical, wash & wear everyday item. There are a few touches that I hope will please the little man; some chenilled seams to intrigue little fingers, and it’s bound with satin ribbon, remembering how much his father loved labels and other smooth textiles as a baby & small child. That and some of the thread – I ran out! – are the only things bought new.
In the meantime, our house has filled up with stuff again; we had a massive last-minute panic to empty my mother’s bungalow. It had sold previously, but the chain collapsed at the last minute and the sale fell through. The estate agents marketing it asked us to leave her stuff there, as it’s easier to sell a home that looks lived in. But as the Stamp Duty Land Tax holiday tottered towards its end, we suddenly got a really good offer for it, provided the sale could go through within a week. Legally it was entirely possible; the new buyer didn’t need a mortgage and the paperwork was all ready to roll, but it was still full of a lifetime’s possessions; you can’t fit that much into her room at the care home, lovely though it is! So some of those possessions have ended up here with us; some will be sold, a few bits used (proper glass lemon squeezies! Oh yes!) but others I will have to make space for until various offspring have homes of their own to house them in. And yes, the lawyers pulled it off and the sale went through a day early.
The weird weather has left me with another space problem; things that should have come out by now over at the allotment are still in the ground, only just starting to go over. So I have several sets of plants ready to go into the ground, but no ground to put them in! And my “first early” potatoes & my maincrops are clearly all going to be ready at the same time. Needless to say, the weeds have galloped away; one minute they were tiny, hardly worth hoeing off, then it rained for weeks and now they are thigh-high. Some serious work called for over there! But some actual potential crops are thriving; I planted Greek Gigantes beans for the first time, and despite the deluge they seem very happy & are racing up their wigwam.
I’m sure there was something serious I wanted to witter on about, but I’ve entirely forgotten what it was, thanks to finding most of a treasure at the recycling warehouse earlier this week. A 1979 Rappard Wee Peggy spinning wheel, originally from New Zealand, but alas, she’s missing her flyer, whorl & bobbins. So that will be a Quest for me over the next few months; I either need to track some “orphan” parts down, or find something that can substitute for them. Without them, sadly she’s just expensive firewood; with them, she’s a beautiful and genuinely useful tool.
Most of a Rappard Wee Peggy…
So now I’m wondering how to gently tell the house clearance people that sometimes, bizarre-looking bits of wood & metal with odd protrusions, often stashed in baskets of brittle, age-old, moth-eaten fluff, are actually vital parts of something. And remembering the lady who found one merrily chucking parts of a loom into a skip, because he couldn’t work out how this “bookcase” fitted together…
…we have a son returning home! Son no. 3 has spent most of the last ten years studying & living away, though he’s been home for holidays when in the UK. But he’s finally run out of stipend, hopefully having completed his thesis, and will be returning to the family fold imminently. And the bedroom required for a 28-year-old academic is not the bedroom that the 18-year-old student left behind…
It’s a different room, for a start. He used to have the smallest bedroom at the top of the stairs, but now the bigger, downstairs room that’s functioned as the guest room for the last ten years is more appropriate. He has a large collection of academic reference books to accommodate; my poor husband has already remarked many times that our elder daughter & I should just go & live in a library, so there isn’t much spare bookcase-space available. He will be job-hunting and keeping up to date in his field, so the room needs to work as a serious study as well as a bedroom.
He sent through a plan of how he thought it could be laid out, and as a little joke, included a wing-back chair, Sherlock-Holmes-style. It just so happens that I am always rescuing a certain make of old wing-back chair for an upholsterer friend, who re-makes them into the most fabulous, desirable & comfortable chairs going. But alas, all my usual sources are closed just now, so I put a request on Freecycle, not expecting anything as there were several listed locally on Ebay at exceedingly silly prices, i.e. more than my friend asks for them after she’s done them up professionally. To my astonishment, I got a reply within the hour, and picked up a modern, but very comfortable, reclining wingback chair the next day, for free. Joke returned! We may never get him out of there, though…
Free wingback recliner…
Then the hunt was on for serious bookcases. I answered an advert on Facebook Marketplace, for a tall painted wooden bookcase from a certain Scandinavian emporium. They did say it needed some TLC, but it was priced very reasonably at £10. We squeezed it into my van & bore it home triumphantly, but on closer inspection, though very heavy & originally very sturdy, it was actually particle-board and had been left outside for too long; the damage to the weight-bearing base was irreversible. But it hasn’t gone to waste; the shelves and one side have gone up into the loft as loft-boarding where there wasn’t any, and the damaged side has been trimmed to size & deployed across two (also Scandinvian) tall bedside tables to make a perfect, and rather stylish, laptop desk for my husband to work-from-home on, teamed with a comfortable office chair that came to us via Freegle. I also rescued the dowelling and other fixings from the shelves; they’re pretty standard across the whole range of their furniture, which we have a fair bit of, some of it even bought new. The only bits that went to the tip were the top & bottom trim and the flimsy back-boards.
I spotted an advert for all sorts of free furniture from a big Edwardian house being cleared only about 400 yards away from us. Old stuff, lovely quality, but mostly much too big & dark for modern homes. But there were two tall bookcases… I dashed off a polite request & heard straight back; the chap organising the clearance was upcountry, but thought they were a pretty standard size, i.e. 6′ tall x 3′ wide, so I replied that we would love to give both of them a home, please. So we went to pick them up from his brother the next day; they’re absolutely lovely in a shabby-chic sort of way, but actually over 7′ tall and well over 3′ wide! Only one would fit into the bedroom, but we’ve managed to make space for the other one in the hallway, replacing two smaller bookcases, one of which has also gone into the bedroom.
One free bookcase…
But he also needs a desk. And not the neat little desk that’s been in there all along; it needs to accommodate his laptop, a couple of big reference books plus notebooks, pens etc. and have plenty of space underneath for restless legs. However, add in the bed, wardrobe & a large chest of drawers (with small bookcase on top) and the remaining space is limited; 4’/120cm wide by about 20″/50cm deep is about all that will fit. Suggestions have been winging their way through the ether, but nothing ready-made has yet hit the spot in terms of style or size; he desperately doesn’t want white-on-white. However, a couple of days ago I picked up a Gumtree’d “Freebie” black desk top, also originally from the Scandinavian emporium, may their name be ever-blessed; I knew you could still buy legs to fit it very reasonably. So they’ve been ordered, and the desk top cut to size; it turned out to be easier to cut particleboard than I’ve always thought, given a decent jig-saw. I’ve added a board at the back to stop stuff falling off, as it’s side-on to the doorway. So, there will be a desk, which will have cost next-to-nothing, and ***It Will Do *** until he finds one of his own choosing, or the job of his dreams and moves out again!
After Christmas, when he announced he’d be returning home for some indefinable length of time, I was panicking mightily that I’d have to spend quite a lot of money on new furniture that really needs to be spent maintaining my van, as I’ve earned next-to-nothing over the last year & will need to go out & sell stuff on virtually every fine day this summer. But given time & access to a computer, I’ve been able to assemble bits & bobs that fit the bill for very nearly nothing. Thank you so very, very much, to all Freecycle/Freegle volunteers, Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace!
… or, a lament for the art lessons I didn’t get to go to…
I’ve spent a merry weekend trying my hand at a spot of dyeing. I’ve had an idea for the next lockdown stashbuster quilt; it will be a trial run for one I’m keen to make for another “real” baby. It involves hot air balloons, and hot air balloons generally float in the sky, weather permitting. I don’t have any fabric that would work as a summer sky, but I did have an old sheet I could dye to the right sort of colour.
So I invested in a tub of Dylon’s Ocean Blue, which struck me as a fairly close colour to what I wanted. I decided to quarter the fabric & try tie-dyeing it, in a variety of patterns; I had a fairly good idea of how that’s done, and I was really pleased with the results, despite long ago having had to go & do battle with Latin and Physics in drab classrooms when my friends were having real fun dyeing & stitching in the fabulously-equipped art & craft studios at school. (That still rankles!) But I also wanted to try out stitch-resist/shibori dyeing; I have had a project in mind for years now, involving a LOT of old tablecloths of one sort or another, and shibori dyeing plays a big part in my plan. One of my fellow Guild members is rather expert at this, makes the most lovely things, and runs courses which I am keen to attend; I haven’t actually managed to get to one yet, though. But I have watched her tutorials…
I put out a plea on our local Freegle/Freecycle groups for some more old sheets to practice on, and was delighted to receive a big bag of lovely high-quality cotton sheets & linen tablecloths. I also ordered some more Dylon; I know my limitations and exact weights of chemically-lively substances are not my best starting place, especially not if my indefatigable feline assistant is in attendance. So I cut up another sheet, tied 3/4 of it in one way or another, quartered the remaining piece and earnestly stitched some patterns onto those.
Poppy “assisting” with the tying…
BUT I idiotically ignored Annabel’s advice about which thread to use. I had a big cone of very tough linen upholstery thread, and smugly thought, I’m sure that will be perfect. Not so! I should have realised, because it was very hard to thread needles & tie knots in it; the ply kept splitting, though it certainly doesn’t break easily. But I’m good at knots and thought they’d hold… Of course, they didn’t. My heart sank when I opened the washing machine & saw loose threads visible amongst the now-green cotton. The tie-dyes came out well, but all I have of most of my carefully-stitched patterns are needle-holes in plain green fabric! A few did hold in places, and there are faint ghostly traces of leaves and stars and spirals here & there, but – mostly not. The thread seems to have actually stretched, as well as un-plying & un-knotting itself; I suppose upholstery threads don’t often get wet & just aren’t designed to withstand a soaking. Plus the agitation in the washing machine was probably too energetic and worked the dye in too well once it had started to loosen.
A very faint undone-stitch spiral, and tiny traces of grass-heads, but a nice clear bit of tie-dye…
Ah well! A lesson learnt. Learning to listen to people who really know what they’re doing, and take good advice, and also how NOT to do something, isn’t really time wasted. But now I have to think of what to do with 4 x 1/16ths of a large sheet of pretty much plain green cotton…though I do have these to play with as well…
These did turn out how I wanted them!
Oh, and that “real” baby? The one I need to make a quilt for? I’m going to be a Gran…
How strange! I feel as if a beloved friend has just left us… the time had come to replace my Mac Mini. We’d had it for over 10 years and it had served us well; it’s been replaced with an updated version as that’s what does the things I need from a personal computer the best & fits the space available. It had become slower & slower over the last few months, and every now & then the fan would kick in audibly as it struggled; I suspect it had got very dusty inside. I opted to go for the trade-in option, as that means that anything that’s still usable inside the box will get re-used, and the bits that aren’t will be recycled rather than just sitting in a cupboard until I got round to chucking it out.
So I did the Mac-to-Mac transfer, which wasn’t as horrendous or time-consuming as I thought it might be, though there were one or two little blips. But Apple Support were great & smoothed it all out for me, and the New Mac Mini was up & running easily a couple of days ago. Yesterday I managed to track down all the bits of data that had wandered off to other folders, so today was “Wipe Mac-Mini-1” day. I followed the instructions on the Apple website to prepare it for returning to Apple, but as it came to clicking the “Erase Disk” option I felt a real pang of sorrow!
It’s very strange; I know I’ll feel the same when my beloved Mazda Bongo finally trundles off to the great scrapheap in the sky. Or if my 1909 Jones Medium treadled sewing machine jammed irreparably, something having broken inside. My head knows perfectly well that they’re just machines; they don’t have personalities, they’re not my “friends” no matter how useful they are, but somehow my heart “knows” otherwise. And I suspect that that’s one reason why I feel I have to do what I do; I see perfectly good old tools, furniture or books sitting in a skip or at an auction and somehow they seem to be begging, “rescue me!” But that does rather lead to an excessively cluttered home, despite my efforts to re-home stuff profitably.
I suppose the answer is, stay away from skips, scrapheaps and auctions. But please tell me I’m not alone, and that other people out there do sometimes feel the same, and that some of the good old stuff that’s tossed away in our wasteful society will also be rescued – just not always by me…
My beloved “rescued-via-Ebay-for-£2.50” Jones Medium treadle, still very much in use!
A recycled lifestyle... 