Thursday or Friday-eve

The week of ups and downs.

My wool batting arrived from the states and I was only charged 20% import duty. This was way cool on many levels as I did not know whether the batting would actually get to me and how much I would be charged by customs. Wool batting is very different from either cotton or bamboo which have a waddish fealing where as wool feel almost like  Polyester but with thinner strand and still scratchyish on the face. All the ladies that have written about it say that it quilts like a hot knife through butter, so I will have to wait and see. I am stitching furiously to get the Irish chain top finished. I have the whole thing in 122 blocks that now need to be stitched together do when I have sewn 122 metres of seam the top will be together.

The reason for me starting to stitch the Irish chain and giving up on the flower border for the swirl quilt is a very sad tale. I had finished the top border and had started on the one side when my stencil was thrown away. I say this with much sadness due to the fact that I had not packed the stencil away which is my normal practise but had just left it on top of the box that I use for my current project so that I can keep it all together. Then in comes cleaning and bye-bye goes my stencil. So much for enthusiastic tidying. Well none of the shops have any stencils so I am waiting for Hobby-x which is happening on the 3rd of March to see if I can find a replacement stencil. If I can't find one then I will either buy one from the states or set my hand at making 1.

I had a rethink about the back of the Irish chain and now I do not think that I will be using the pinwheels on the back as they may cause scratchiness. Well they have now gone into my box of almost made it onto a quilt blocks which Will one day be turned into cushions or something. 

With the quilting of my Irish chain in the wind my mind has been wondering about the next quilt I will be doing and although I still want to do a granny's garden and a postage quilt I have found the next quilt to excite my senses. this is the Dear Jane quilt. What a project. I do not know whether it is good to as so many have been done but the sheer extravagance of the pieces excites me. I will have to see how I feel in 2 or 3 months time when the Irish is quilted. I may just do a whole lot of prep work before hand such as printing the 225 patterns that are required and possibly sourcing the 225 different colours that I think I may want to use. Would that not be stunning, having each block use a different fabric, my stash quivers in anticipation.
The whole reason for the obsessing is the fact that I am trying to distract my mind from the work front. Soon I may have a whole lot more time to stitch. Watching people pack a box and leave makes me as a contractor not hold out much hope, and seeing as I would need to travel for 4 hours a day should i need to work in town, so the chances are that this would not work. I have a contract until the end of March so April fools day will show how things will be. It is interesting times that we are living through.

And finally, having thought I was hip and happening, but, I found out by doing a quiz this week that I am not. To be considered a Millenium person, you must rate your job highly, don't read news papers, but do have multiple tattoos and piercing. So yay on not being millennium. I have never thought of myself as being a follower of rules etc, so obviously if you live long enough eventually your version of rebel becomes the norm. At least I was not in my age bracket but the one above so I should be happy enough with that. So on the whole another week has gone by, I have stitched a bit and done a whole lot of other things a bit, which is a good thing. As they say keep on truckin...

Have a good one.