School bags and horses

Last week was long awaited midterm holidays, so Charlie sat down and played with treadle for the first time. 

After I played a bit with sewing machine embroidery last month, Charlie was itching to try it herself. 

Design ideas were no problem for Charlie as everything needs to be about horses. She made several drawings, copied it roughly on the black fabric and off she went. 

She had wanted to make a bag for herself for a while, and week-long holidays were just perfect for such a project.

The densely quilted bag was a very good project to get treadle motions under the belt. It took several broken threads until she learned the smooth forward motion, but in two hours she was able to put the needle exactly where she wanted at exactly the speed she wanted. 

The bag also has several rather advanced inside pockets, densely quilted (the only black fabric I had at hand was very soft, so dense quilting was needed to make the bag hold the shape and the weight expected from a hard working school bag. 

In some places there are 18 layers of fabric and the batting – thank God for the durability of an old Singer! 

What impressed me – she just kept working, hour after hour, and in three days her bag was ready – exactly the right size, right design and all that. For a 12 yo  it is rather impressive. 

Blaming English breakfast

Past few weeks I had been very busy, stressed and tired, so I have done nothing. At least nothing good – I messed up the design colours on my February quilt. And decided not to bother about it. Instead I decided that the faulty bits will be a lifetime reminder of THAT English breakfast. 

It all started two weeks ago when DH rushed the breakfast. The full Monty. Bacon and eggs, hash browns and black pudding, sausages and mushrooms... (See - he is still very nice, not yet out of the honeymoon mode). 

The killer was the black pudding – it slipped and disappeared in the depths of the fridge. DH bent down to find the bugger, caught the lead of the deep fat fryer and spilled the smoking hot oil all over himself. 

Good job that DH is rather hairy and wears glasses thus face got only few freshly fried patches, not even worth mentioning. The right shoulder, hand and knee weren’t so lucky. I burned my hand just by pulling his clothes off (and it was at least 10 seconds later!). 

So he ended up with 6% body burns, some 2^nd, some 3^rd degree which means hospital and surgery, skin grafts and all other fun. He was bad enough not to be admitted at our local hospital but was sent to Burns unit at Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Birmingham. 

DH being a rather typical man decided that lying in hospital is not exactly his kind of sport, so he insisted on being released... Do you see where I’m heading?

Yes, he has been home since!!! Without functioning right arm...  On Sunday I even needed to change the advanced burns dressings (believe me, it’s not a light experience, for both of us, especially after our nosey cat decided to join the fun in the middle of the procedure!)

Codeine is my blessing as it throws a bit of a nice, fuzzy cloud over his extremely bored brains but anyway – as a result of all this fun I messed up with my design colours. Trust me, it’s so not me. My stitches aren’t perfect but keeping track of patterns in my head never had been a problem. So I blame English Breakfast (you can’t blame your own husband, right?)

What your husbands do when they are extremely bored and restless? Mine picked some shopping therapy (believe me, he is a man!). So... 

Last week he bought:

1)      a new car (Volvo),

2)      a caravan (with aircon and all that),

3)      a new laptop,

4)      a satnav for the new car,

5)      a new TV,

6)      10 tickets for Eurotunnel,

7)      2 Crufts tickets for me.

Actually I’m very happy about the Crufts tickets. Well, as a dog person, going to Crufts is some kind of a lifetime event itself. But the best for me is – it ends on the 8^th of March. So DH is planning to drive us to France (for nice holidays!) only on the 9^th of March, not this coming weekend as he was planning before ticket purchase. It doesn’t matter that he can’t walk, sit down or stand up properly right now, and his right hand (according to doctors) is at least a monthaway from any driving... He is planning to start light driving this week already (like a light trip to York and another one to Wales). No, he is not suicidal, and he is trying to convince me that codeine is not guilty either, so I can only blame that English breakfast again). It’s such a shame that we married just last year – otherwise I would consider taking really drastic steps to calm him down :D  

February quilt

This month quilt is just starting to take shape. I had been thinking about this pattern for a while and curious to see the final design. It's still a lot to do but you can see where I'm trying to go.



So far so good, but one thing I learned. The colours. With complicated pattern like this my main two fabrics are too similar in colur.

If I would choose something more bold, the pattern would stand out better. But, oh, well, you make mistakes. maybe this is the time of the year when I look for subtle colours, not so bright and bold as usual. Winter is pale, right?