Curtains and a visit

I really wanted to have a finish of some kind before the end of the year and I decided the best option was to make the curtains for the french windows in our dinning room. This window is tall and narrow. It's tall because it has the added window above the doors. This is fabulous during the summer as the room is flooded in light but even though the windows are double glazed, the extra glass can drop the temperature when it's very cold outside.

That boxes and fabric in the right bottom corner is where my sewing box got moved to so the Christmas tree could be put up. The boxes hold my doll's house and once the tree goes down we'll buy the table that the house will stand on. The sewing box which is a large wooden box will go upstairs and there is a cupboard being built into this corner that will house my fabrics.

I had already cut the lengths of fabric for the curtains but hadn't done any sewing on them so yesterday morning I got them out, pinned and then stitched the lining to the curtain fabric. I also added the header tape. At this point we decided to head out to see an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. That left me the hems to do later in the day.

The exhibition was of Tove Jansson's work. Jansson was a Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author.  She was born in August 1914 and studied art from 1930 to 1938 in Stockholm, Helsinki and Paris. In 1945 she started writing the Moomin books for children. She wrote 9 Moomin books and it was the second of these books that made her famous. The exhibition covered aspects of all her work but quite a lot of space was given to the illustrations for the moomin books and cartoon strips. Our children, particularly Richard had enjoyed the moomin stories when he was a child and we'd wanted to see more of her work as a result.

Although you can take photos in the permanent  collection of the gallery, this was not allowed in the exhibition so I found this picture of Tove Jansson taken from her biography written by Kate Macdonald on google. You can read more about her here We really enjoyed the exhibition even though it was very crowded.



After the gallery we stopped at a cafe for a toasted ham and cheese sandwich before taking a walk through Dulwich park. The wind was bitter and the weather couldn't make up its mind to rain or be sunny but it was good to be out in the fresh air.

I'm not sure how the rest of the day panned out but I didn't get back to my curtains. Later in the evening I was sorting out my scrapbook, adding a few bits and trying to finish up 2017 before putting in a title page for 2018. It was slow work as I decided to watch 'Maigret' which I had recorded from Christmas day. I love the freedom to record programmes you want to see so you can give your full attention to visitors. As a child I hated visitors as we'd miss the programmes we's looked forward to watching since the TV didn't get turned on and of course there was no repeats or recording the programmes.

This morning I had a few jobs to do including posting my thank you cards. Lucy and I received a lot of gifts from the girls at Brownies and Guides and it took a while to write and thank them. 

There was also some household chores but then I was free to get back to the curtains. having pulled up the header tape I hung them so I could do the hems.

I'm not sure why it looks as if there is a mark in the middle of them just up from the chair as there isn't. Hem done I took them down and tweaked the header tape to make it fit better, sorted the pleats and pressed the curtains. Finally the curtains are up and looking good. Great job and an end of the year finish, yippee.

I also received another present today. Lucy had ordered this journal but it hadn't arrived in time for Christmas. I am looking forward to using this in the new year.

This evening I plan to work on my hand stitching and work out my objectives for next year but for now I need to go and cook dinner. 

Lyndsey