Sunday 21 March 2010

Quilting Trajectory

Quilting Trajectory

 

I was chatting to another Mother at school swimming, telling her about my week. She said that it was making her feel stressed on my behalf. I ordered my thread on Monday and asked for it to be sent by first class post. It still hadn't arrived on Wednesday so I felt obliged to shout at the Postie, although it wasn't his fault. I did apologise and I was actually shouting at him for leaving the garden gate open. Bloody Mabel spotted the opportunity to chase hens immediately but luckily I managed to run after her and grab her in time.

 

It suddenly occurred to me that I had an extra week to get ready for LLQS because I had convinced myself that it started a week earlier. This was very lucky as the DWR was taking much longer than planned with no sign of the thread arriving. I received tremendously exciting news that gave me something else to do. The American Quilter's Society has expressed an interest in the Yurt project and is looking into whether it would be possible to exhibit it in the USA - and I may have to write a book about it too! It is impossible to describe how shocked and amazed I have felt all week. I cannot yet mention what is planned until everything is all settled. I have started looking into the logistics of shipping and getting sponsors. I will have to complete the whole Yurt, drive my empty Landrover to the weighbridge at the local stone quarry, drive home, fill it up with Yurt and get it weighed again. I also have to get a certificate to declare that the wood was all treated to USA timber standard IFPW15. I have written an outline introduction to the project, trying to pull together all the reasons for doing it and all of my sources of inspiration.

 

Meanwhile, George the Builder has been working in the studio to put in the loo at last. This involved cutting trenches in the concrete floor and creating lots of dust. In case I had illusions of grandeur at the thought of becoming an internationally renowned quilter, I had to try and help find the missing stopcock, buried somewhere under the driveway, in order to turn off the water supply. This is the one that Mo, Tania and I were looking previously with the divining rods. We had found the general location but not the actual underground tap. George looked very sceptical as I wielded my rods in a gusty breeze. He dug 5 exploratory holes but found nothing. We eventually figured out how to use the outside tap as a temporary stopcock.

 

The DWR thread arrived at last so I was able to quilt at warp-speed to try and make up for lost time. When I could no longer feel my elbows, I wondered why I had thought it was a good idea to micro scribble around every wedge so that it would look like lace.

On Friday I almost broke my leg... I had put Bloody Mabel on a lead since she has now realised that Tania has a pet rabbit. I was thinking about what I could put into a Yurt book while clambering over the broken wall when Mabel jerked on her lead and my Welly Boot got caught. I had visions of falling over backwards onto some granite boulders so did an acrobatic spin around and landed very heavily on one knee, still holding the dog lead. I was quite dazed for a few moments and Mabel apologised by slobbering on me. Surprisingly, I got up and walked back home, cleaned out the hens, drove to the Post Office and it didn't hurt at all.  I still had a lot of work to do on the DWR so stood and quilted all afternoon but as the day wore on, my knee became rather painful. I took some Nurofen and rubbed on some Arnica cream but eventually I was lurching along the quilt frame like Quasimodo, muttering expletives of pain. I could hardly walk and a friend wanted me to go to Casualty. I declared that it couldn't possibly be broken just 2 weeks before I fly to America so decided to put up with it and I would just have to hire a mobility scooter to get around New York. After walking like a pirate with a wooden leg all weekend, it is finally feeling better.

 

I hobbled around the workshop on Saturday, eventually finishing the DWR and to my great relief, the customer was delighted with it. I managed to piece another Yurt panel, inspired by the winter colours of silver birch trees. I shouldn't admit to taking shortcuts to save time... but instead of using setting triangles at either end of each row, I simply chopped the end triangles in half and I seem to have got away with it. My last lot of backing fabric shrank drastically when it was dyed so it will have to have extensions added to make it big enough and I will have to order even more dye. I am getting to the last of all my Yurt fabric stash so the last couple of panels really will be a patchwork of what is left over. If I had properly worked out how much fabric was really required at the beginning of this project, I would have thought there was a fault on my calculator!







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