All day sewing.

Monday was a perfect day. I had no commitments so the time was mine to do what I wanted. A few quick questions to self... do you want to take Scamp for a long walk? No he had lots of exercise last week. Do you want to do some baking? No, I'm trying to lose weight..again.  What I want to do is work on one of my projects. 

Last post I showed you my pile of blocks, some trimmed and some still waiting to be trimmed. 

I'd meant to trim these on Sunday but I got distracted by sorting out my fabric. My stash and projects aren't all in one place and as a result I  misplace or forget about things. In sorting through my 'in progress' projects I found some fabric I'd misplaced and decided to move things around to make it easier to keep track of everything. Anyway trimming the blocks was my first job of the day. The blocks have to be trimmed to 5 inches so my 6 and a half inch square ruler came in very useful. It took some time to do as the pointy ends (highly technical term) of the middle strip have to match up when putting the blocks together. Rushing could have left me with very messy joins.

Once the trimming was done it was a case of deciding how I wanted the blocks, stitching them into rows and then joining the rows. At the start the machine decided to play up and it took twenty minutes to sort it out and get the stitch right. After that it was stitching and pressing the seams until it was all together.

I was pleased with how the colours and patterns looked. I rummaged through my stash for some backing fabric and found this green piece that will do very well. Scamp decided he wanted to help make the decision about the backing plus he thought it was a perfect sized quilt for him.

Scamp is such a scruffy dog at the moment as he missed his grooming appointment. I've re-booked it but there wasn't a space until May so I'll have to trim his fringe to get it out of his eyes.

It was at this point that Katy phoned me and asked if I wanted to go to the Van Gogh exhibition at the Tate Britain with her. Having said yes I tidied all my sewing bits away and got ready to go and meet her.

The exhibition had over 50 of his works and looks at how Britain inspired him in his art works and how he inspired British artists. The following photos are some of the works that I liked. The first one is called  'The Oise at Auvers'.

Of course his Starry Night over the Rhone was part of the exhibition. The colours in this painting really popped

The first two pictures are more of the style everyone associates with Van Gogh but there were a lot of pictures using different styles and techniques. This one is 'Loom with weaver'. Weavers feature in two of Van Gogh's favourite books, Charles Dickens's Hard Times and George Elliot's Silas Marner. He made a series of drawings and paintings of weavers.

I also liked this one 'Woman sewing and Cat'. It would appear that a cat has always been important as sewing companions.

I really liked this one called 'Old man drinking a coffee.

In my final choice there is just so much detail and items to look at. This is 'Carpenters yard and Laundry'.

I'm pleased I went to the exhibition even though it cut into my sewing time. I didn't take many photos as it was rather busy. One or two of the visitors were very rude, pushing folks out of the way so they could look at the paintings. It wouldn't have been so annoying if it was in the last week of the exhibition but it doesn't finish until August.

Today (Tuesday) I had to take my car to the garage for a safety recall. There was a potential problem with the front passenger airbag and so it had to be changed. John and I took the opportunity to have breakfast out and to walk by the river.

I had several jobs to do today and that left little time for sewing. In between jobs I carried on cutting up my scraps. It feels good to be cutting them into useful sizes and slowly clearing the scraps boxes. Using the rotary cutter makes my arm a little sore after a while so this job is going to take some time.

The last few weeks I've enjoyed spending time reading. So I'm off to bed to read a couple of chapters of my current book before I settle down to sleep.

Lyndsey