Planning, sewing and enjoying life

On Wednesday evening Lucy and I usually run our Rainbow, Brownie and Guide units but last Wednesday we arrived at the church where we meet to find they had fitted new locks but forgotten to inform us or give them a new key. We cancelled the meetings and drove home. Yippee a free evening!  I spent the evening planning a new project and working through my WIP's. On Friday  I made a start on my plans. Some time back I bought a dinosaur quilt pattern and I wanted to get it started. This project is going to take some organisation and will take time to make.

On Friday I set about cutting the fabric. There are a lot of bits and the cutting is done in two stages. The fabrics required are background fabric for which I chose a grey solid and 36 fat quarters of bright fabric. The coloured fabrics are in sets of 6 from darkest to lightest. Just reading the instructions for cutting out left me confused! I took it very slowly and by the time I stopped I had cut some of the background fabric and all pieces required from the first two colour groups.

With so many pieces I made sure I labelled them all. The different sets are all in separate folders. The box on the left of the photo are the fabrics waiting to be cut up. By the time I finished my arms were aching.

Later on Friday evening John and I went to the Richmond theatre to see 'Wish you were Dead'. This is a story by Peter James that has been adapted for the stage. I took a photo of the stage set. The play was really good, the stage set worked well and the ice cream in the interval was delicious.

Saturday morning saw us up at 4 a.m. as we had booked places for a dawn chorus walk at Barnes wetland centre. We saw and heard a lot of different birds and enjoyed watching the sun rise. The walk ended with breakfast and then we did some more bird watching for 2 hours. Unfortunately the rest of Saturday was spent catching up with the household chores. I had a pile of ironing to do that was almost a high as mount Everest.

Today I set about stitching the dolls for the dolls house. I started the process by tracing the pattern onto the back of freezer paper. I then cut round the pattern leaving a quarter of an inch margin. 

The freezer paper was ironed onto the wrong side of the knitted fabric and I stitched around the pattern lines using a small stitch and a ball point needle. This was rather fiddly to do and involved a lot of stopping and starting. I managed to sew all the doll shapes. The freezer paper is then removed as I have done here for one of the patterns. It's odd seeing the outline.

 

Next I have to make a slit in the back and after cutting the raw edge down to one eighth of an inch I will need to apply flexible glue to stop it fraying. Only then can I turn the doll inside out and start the process of making them into mini people.

No slow sewing today as I ran out of time but hopefully tomorrow I will get some done when I get home from work. I'm driving to Reading tomorrow so I'm hoping it won't be raining.

Take care

Lyndsey