Stitching and reading and sunshine...

I need to draw up a new map of the city. It would plot local branches of my gym relative to excellent fabric shops. Then I'd stick to my weight-loss plan, right? Work out first, THEN go to the fabric store. It's so much better than candy as a motivating impulse (the cunning reader will notice that I did not go so far as to say that it's better than chocolate. Hem.)

So, Amitie. Good move that, you're positioned directly across the street from a gym. But let's skip the gym bit and get right to the good stuff: the fabric shopping.

I was remarkably restrained. I went there to buy sashing: I bought sashing. I went to get cushion backing: I bought cushion backing. Nothing else (Can this be true? I assure you, dear reader, it is.) Of course, like Amelie fondling the beans in the sacks at the market, I sidled up to the Kaffe fabrics and stroked them longingly. And the new Anna-Maria Horner range, which I've wanted to see 'in the flesh' for a while now. I also love the quilts that they have around the shop on display as samples. They give me so many ideas and impel me to get on with it and finish the quilts and tops that are in various stages around the house.

Currently there are four quilts under construction:

- the Summer Quilt of brights and whites is being pieced and going at a rate of knots - speedy!

- a bright batik windmills quilt, started a year ago, half hand-quilted and living on the sofa again in the determination to get it done.

- a mostly-finished quilt top, one I'm calling 'City circle', because I completed about one square a day while riding the train to work.


- and.... oh dear, this one's embarrassing. A spring quilt I started at Easter four and a half years ago, and which has spent most of the last three years in the closet, wrapped in a sheet. I loved it but it's gone flat on me, probably because I used cream muslin, acres and acres of cream muslin, instead of fresh white. So I hand quilted 80% of it and then decided I needed to go back and add oddles of bright embroidery-thread quilting, and that stopped it all.


Oh, and while I was at Amitie, they were telling me horrible gruesome stories about what happens if a needle gets embedded into your leg. (Did you know it migrates through muscle tissue?) Ew, ew, eww. (Bet you didn't want to know that.)

I am in the habit of putting my needle into the seam of my jeans at the knee, when I'm taking a break - and I have been ADMONISHED by the health and safety department (in the nicest, scariest, motherliest way) that this is dangerous and that I MUST make a pincushion. Yes, Ma'am. I did.

Here's my new pincushion. The scrap is one of my favourite fabrics, alas, this is the last few inches I have left of it! And the scarab beetle bead on top comes from the British Museum, and is a little memento of our trip.

Happy (incident-free) stitching!

B

PS: OK, this is annoying. My camera has decided to allow me to download images only one at a time. ONE per download. Yessir, what a fun time I've had downloading each one and then wiping the lot. Let's hope its little brain wipes that idea off its face, too.