Coming back home, slowly...

I have been home for ten days now, and it’s not been an easy time. Re-adjusting to European time was particularly difficult, the weather has not been overly favorable (although we did have a few nice and sunny days) 

This picture was actually taken in the sunshine...  

– and all in all I have not really found my bearings yet.

I had ‘worked ahead’ before leaving, dyeing all the fabrics for the November fabric club shipment, which was due right after my return. I still had to cut the pieces, pack and ship them, but that was feasible even through the haze of jetlag, even after the second night when I woke up just after midnight, and could not go back to sleep again at all.

November 2015 Fabric Club selection

Now I’m fiddling in the studio, getting to know the transformed machine that waited for me upon my return. My Bernina is now a 770, and I hope with this one I will again become a satisfied user of that brand.

The first thing I made was a bag from a piece of fabric which my son once had insisted I buy ‘for him to make something with’ when I had made the mistake of taking him with me to visit a fabric store. In a weak moment I had geven in, expecting full well that he would probably never really do something with it, although we did try to start making a bag when we got home back then. He quickly lost interest when things didn’t turn out so easy as he had expected, and the fabric had been sitting there for ages. My husband has claimed the bag for himself, promising he won’t bring home plastic carrier bags anymore. The remaining piece of fabric was turned into a pillow case for the son, so both male members of the family have received their share of the fabric, and the first attempts with the new machine.

I am working on small collages on the completion of which I am way behind :

And I have tried to rescue a top which had undergone some accidental nuno felting right before I left, when I dumped the scrap quilt into the washing machine, not remembering that it had a wool batting inside. I’ve been picking the layers apart – each of which will be reusable. They just won’t go well together anymore. I’m planning to add to the top by an additional row each in the vertical and horizontal columns. The now nicely felted wool batting will eventually become the warm and cosy heart of some other scrap quilt. And the rear piece of fabric will just have to wait its turn...

I am also sorting through my boxes, choosing which fabrics to set aside for another ‘fabric give away party’ tomorrow night. Forty boxes is just a few too many to be harboring on the shelves all the time - definitely much more than I will ever be able to use up in my entire life-time! -  and the local patchwork group will be given a surprise. 

Hoping to add at least two more boxes
to this stack before tomorrow night!