It was one of those mornings ....... I had just pegged out an enormous basketful of washing, when it started to rain. So I had to take it all in again (I may have said "Oh bother, that's annoying!"). Then I had just settled down to some work in the studio ........ when there was a power cut! (I may have said, crivens, crikey jings, help ma boab, that's irritating!").
Oh well, on with the work. Stuart and Alison had asked me to make curtains for their guest bedroom, and brought the fabric down with them last weekend. A luscious Laura Ashley fabric, to match the wallpaper on the wall behind the bed
Stuart had drawn a diagram of the two windows and all the necessary measurements (just what you would expect from an engineer!)
my drawing isn't quite so detailed! I am going to use the fabric sideways, which will give two very full curtains, and if they want, they can put up one long rail covering both windows and the space in between, so that the curtains will meet in the middle when closed. Once I get the lining and header tape, it won't take long to make them - although as always I shall have to get out the instruction book for the sewing machine to remind myself how to do blind hemming
then it was on with my own sewing. I have finished the next stitchery - this is number 13
I have been struggling with the hand-piecing for Mrs Billings - I simply don't enjoy it, and I'm really not happy with the way the last border strips turned out. Then, the other day, when I was blog-hopping, someone mentioned that as they didn't enjoy hand-piecing, they were going to use EPP (English paper piecing) instead. Woohoo, lightbulb moment!! I decided to re-work the borders using EPP, and use it for the remaining borders. I started by drawing templates for papers for the triangles and diamonds, which are a quarter of an inch smaller than the acrylic templates
I marked out some paper pieces, so that I could work a small section to check that the size were correct
the pieces ready to sew
this is the hand-pieced version
and this is the EPP version - much more to my liking!
it will look very neat when stitched on to the previous border
next I made up a master sheet
and after running off several copies, I had a pleasant afternoon cutting out the papers
to finish, there was annoying consequence of the power cut (the power eventually came back on after lunch). The smoke detectors in the studio are wired into the mains, so when the power goes off, the detectors beep, and beep and beep (using the back-up batteries) until the power is restored. It's just as well I couldn't reach this one, which was beeping away above my head, or is might have suffered a bash or two!