Tuesday, April 27, 2021

April 2021

 These past few weeks I have been working on ICU, with Covid patients, and a few others thown in, and it has been a challenging time. I was glad to have a three-times-a-week distraction as I was working myselft through a whole series of design options, possibilities, ideas for the #gildemodernburgoyne that is based on the Burgoyne Surrounded block. It has been an enlightening activity as I kept stumbling over new combinations, focus points etc.

 As I was preparing a short report on this (as ov yet still ongoing project) last week I asked the board members of the Guild which were their personal favorite designs. That was reason for yet another surprise. Because of the 20-something participants in the vote, very few chose the 'same' as a favorite. The array of one-vote-designs was very large (a number of people gave three or more votes), the number of quilts that got more than two votes very low, and so instead of chosing a three-piece-set of favorites for publication in the Guild's magazine I had a five-piece set. All of the five below got two or three votes.






 Interestingly, my personal favourites were not among them...

These are - so far, two more days to go! - 


This is an "oops" from the one above, but I find it very interesting.

And:


Amongst many others - don't get me wrong, I do like the board members' selection a lot, too!

Apart from that, I have started to study for my exams (coming up in July), done some spinning.


And started stitching on my contribution to SAQA Europe/MiddleEast's project "Orient Express".


It has been a rather cool April, and it was only the other day that we saw the first butterflies.


I tried my inexpert hand at cutting back the apple tree (which probably will make people who have more knowledge in this than I do gasp with horror) - but I figure if it survives, in the fall I will give it another trim to bring it into real shape, and by then I will have looked for more information about how to do it 'right'.

We did it in two instalments, and this photo
was taken after the first phase. A lot from the
top still went down the next day.

And, as my longarm is taking its way out my door, I caved in to temptation and got myself a little toy, a very small elna machine which I found on ebay. My husband doesn't know about this yet, and I am still keeping it a secret as both guys keep teasing me about sewing machines and accumulation and I had actually said I would not need another machine in my life. Which is true. Need is not what I would have called the feeling prior to/in connection with this purchase. Greed is more like it.



2 comments:

  1. Elna Lotus! An ingenious travel machine. My mother-in-law had one, and I used it to sew my wedding dress in 1975. Years later, she gave it to me for Christmas. It is the best thing for travel, BUT, like all Elnas of that vintage, you have to hold the thread tails for the first few stitches, or they get sucked inside and tangle up.

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    1. Thanks for telling me, but that goes conform with my usual practice of having little sew-on-sew-off pieces anyway. Learned that from Kathleen Loomis, and it's become an addiction.

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