What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I have said it before – Time in Norfolk is elastic. The days pass quickly doing very little. Nella and I had a couple of wanders in the City, admiring the spring blossom. We stumbled upon a textiles exhibition in the Forum, including an entire knitted model of Great Yarmouth!

I took my Mother on an outing to Southwold, despite the squally weather and spotted an amusingly titled beach hut (Star Wars reference).

I did not even open the sewing box that I took with me but I did some of the slideshow about Q-Matic that I am working on.

My ...

Yet again, I have had a week when what I was meant to be doing (on paper) was not what I ended up doing, not that those things were not valid in their own way;) I did get 2 customer quilts done before Nella pointed out that she would like to spend some time with me in the last week of her Easter hols. The custom quilt had to have a few thread tails sewn in and the red flying-geese one was a bit of a challenge because the customer wanted the echo quilting to look exactly as it did ...

I have huge admiration for people who get up super early and crack on with their days. I wake up early in order to make a cup of tea to take back to bed then waste time reading the news, checking social media and browsing Ebay for vintage cameras that I don’t need. If I could get my days off to a brisker start then maybe I would find time to keep on top of my To Do list or even make some more Lego plants. 

In my defence, this week I have had some late nights, spending time ...

No need to be alarmed – the title does not refer to a sad music album that I have written! It has been a week when I seem to have lost and broken more things than usual. I hunted high and low for some Swiss Army knives, blaming everyone else in the house for hoarding them then eventually found them at the back of a drawer where I had put them. When I was unspooling some thread off a Bernina bobbin it jumped out of my hand and disappeared under a really awkward cupboard. I looked everywhere for a quilt that ...

After I finished teaching in Tavistock last Saturday, my friend, Mel who moved from Banchory to Looe in Cornwall, picked me up and we had a lovely couple of days exploring the area. The sun even came out – everyone told me that it seemed to have rained every day since last autumn. I met some lovely people who said, “Proper Job!” a lot, sampled pasties, fudge, and had fun seeking out the filming locations in the light-hearted BBC detective series “Beyond Paradise”. I really had a lovely time, just like being on holiday. 

Unfortunately there was Drama waiting for me ...

I was so determined to make a good impression at Quilt Direct that I got everything organised and was pretty much packed by Monday! I had got all of my customer quilts out of the way so I had to give myself something straightforward to do for a couple of days. I received the new Bernina 475QE that I intend to take with me on teaching trips when I go by car. It is smaller and more modern than the 710 that I have set into a table. I had coveted the turquoise Kaffe Fassett version but there are no ...

I have not done much social media since pre-Pandemic and I have not missed it! With courses to promote at Quilt Direct in Devon, I have really had to push myself to get back on Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube to remind quilters that I still exist. It is more time consuming that you might imagine, searching for photos, coming up with a caption and checking back in for comments. Freya told me that I needed to learn how to make cool online posters as well as making short movies about what I am up to. Hopefully, my classes will be ...

I have embarked on a childish challenge to grow my hair as long as possible. I was never allowed to have long hair as a child and my Dad recently disparagingly asked how long I was going to grow it for to which I replied, peevishly, “Until it reaches the pavement!” I don’t go to the hairdresser very often because they usually want to chop 6” off but every now and then I have to trim my fringe (bangs) with dress-making scissors, sometimes pinking shears, usually in the reflection of my workshop window. I have been getting it remarkably ...

When I was little if you were “At your Auntie’s / Granny’s House”, normal rules did not apply. My sister and her boys came to visit for their half-term hols and they were allowed to do pretty much what they liked;) Luckily, we had decent weather almost all week so we went for long walks with Nessie and had a trip to Aberdeen on the wet day. Other than that it was very relaxed with video games, crafts and snacks. The boys thought my cluttered house was great as it contains every known gadget, book and musical instrument yet ...

As a person who owns several cameras, these days I take very few photos which does not adequately document my week. I had a huge customer quilt that took 2 days and a DIY quilter who spent 2 days here custom quilting. 

I considered starting on my Tula Pink butterfly quilt kit but that would require my full attention so I decided to dip in and out of the Art & Stitch manual. I think I am absorbing it more easily and it was pointed out to me that I don’t actually need to know it off by heart – I ...

I spent a lot of my week testing out the Tech that I needed to use to do my Zoom lecture and demo for the Scottish branch of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles. I was using the MacBook Air that I got from Music Magpie and a usbc hub since the MacAir hardly has any ports where you can plug in gadgets. It turns out that there is more than one version of a basic usb port! I wanted to use 2 Camlinks in order to livestream images from my 2 GoPro cameras but they needed a faster ...

While my kids were still at school, Life was pretty busy, getting them to where they needed to be, running a business and entering quilt competitions but at least there was a schedule. These days, I don’t have many time commitments so I can please myself how much work I do. The trouble is that I make myself try to get too much done, all at once, so I hardly ever allow myself any down-time. I felt so harassed that I dug out a planner that I used to have in 2019 up until Life came to a grinding ...

I was 56 on Monday which means it is almost 16 years since I started blogging! I have been thinking… do I have a good work / life balance? Am I creating enough? Am I having fun? Does any of it even matter?! I certainly don’t seem to travel as much, mostly due to Nessie, costs and probably the state of the world. I am trying to be more focussed as I am easily distracted and that can be overwhelming.  

I “allowed” myself some time off for my birthday and had a lovely lunch out with a friend but I ...

It was a snowy week – not that much snow to be honest, although the roads were bad but it was COLD in my workshop. I have just got a digital thermometer out there and yesterday when it was beginning to warm back up it was only 5 Celsius! I was not out there very much unless dressed like an Arctic explorer. I managed to quilt a second sofa cover from fluffy fleece and anti-slip-rug-stuff. I had a bit of a panic when I got an error message that the Q-matic system was not recognising its motors but I discovered that ...

I drove back from Norfolk listening to an audiobook which passed the time easily – Kate Atkinson’s “Normal Rules Don’t Apply”. Even though I had taken some craft projects with me I did not even look at them. I made a slightly rash purchase of the Tula Pink butterfly quilt kit and companion digital designs. I think it was due to a combination of not having a planned project and feeling that working with the digital patterns would be a good learning curve. 

Freya was home when I got back to get her broken front teeth fixed (again). I ...

This winter holiday seems to have gone on for while! I wonder if it is because the main holidays were on Mondays. I kept meaning to give my workshop a really good tidy and clean but the wet weather has gone on and on so there did not seem to be any point. I did eventually do some of my new 100-piece puzzle which seems to be quite tricky. It is funny how I can decide I will do it for an hour but still be fiddling with it 3 hours later. 

Nella crocheted at light-speed and rattled out a ...

Christmas with one extra person and a dog seemed more chaotic than usual. I did not get to do my jigsaw puzzle much because there was nowhere safe to leave it out. I have often accused Nessie of eating one piece so leaving set up with a curious puppy did not seem like a good idea. Nessie ended up mostly opting out of the sitting room – she and Fizzle kept out of the way, probably hatching plans for revenge.

Freya made me a cute little sconce from clay, Nella gifted me a non-alcoholic blood orange cordial and Fergus got me ...

I had to collect Nella from Aberdeen bus station so went for a wee wander around Union Square shopping centre while I waited. I went into the new Seasalt shop which already had a sale on. I stroked the velvet dresses to see if they were as wrong as the ones I had seen in Norwich and to my horror, I discovered that all of the nap was running in the wrong direction. When I helpfully informed the sales assistant, she insisted snippily that the designers would have requested that. It made me shudder to think that if I ran ...

When my children were younger Christmas did not begin until after Fergus’ birthday on December 11th. We have an artificial tree now so it has been up with only its lights on, waiting for Nella to “dress” it when she arrives home. I must admit that I sort of miss the frantic round of Christmas concerts and performances. The trouble is that since the festive season starts so early nowadays, the whole thing is spread out and there seems to be no definite Christmas period (for me, at least).  All of the Christmas Fayres are over already and I never ...

Nessie and I travelled back to Scotland by train which is a long way with a dog on your lap, sometimes the floor. She was very good, especially at Edinburgh Waverley where we had 10 minutes to change platforms. Thistle (Fizz) was delighted to see me and was especially pleased that she could get access to my bed. Meanwhile my room had been turned into a recording studio and Nella’s room seemed to have been filled with the junk that everyone else had decided they no longer wanted in their rooms. It seems that I will have some serious ...