2019 Wk 28 - EPP Sewing Machine (and bird seed cakes!)

 Since I last blogged I have pieced this!

I was 'on duty' with M-i-L on Friday: hairdresser's appointment, visit to the Town Hall and a few other places on our list so I brought a new hand sewing project with me.  Clearly having the rainbow hexie flowers to finish piecing (just half a dozen flowers left) and the Plus Blocks (to *start* piecing) isn't enough EPP to have on the go at one time . . . , and Sharon gave me this FP so it would have been rude not to!  The colours, while muted, are brighter that I can photograph them.  No idea why!

Having done a couple of FPs in the last months, I wasn't feeling the love, so I decided to cut all the pieces out and EPP it instead.

On Saturday I had a break from the sewing machine as we had a family party: 20 or so of us at S-i-L's.  Three munchkins (well two plus Niki!) thoroughly enjoyed testing a paper-plate-weaving project me for

I then carried on with the EPP on Sunday.  There was a problem converting from FP to EPP: each thickness of fabric (as it wraps from front to back) adds maybe a mm to the width of the card template, so when a piece with lots of fabric pieces tries to match up with a piece with hardly any pieces the first is longer than the second.  Mostly the pieces can be eased / persuaded / bullied into fitting, but there was one place where it just couldn't - so I unpicked and trimmed 1cm off one template and it all fitted brilliantly!  I had already adapted a few pieces as they would have been two small.  I re-drew one and merged another two and abandoned another but I'm rather pleased with how it turned out

The lines here are shadows: I'm not yet sure how to quilt it.  Maybe just running stitch in muted pearle in the sewing machine and white for the background or maybe a mix of machine stitch and hand stitching?  Any suggestions?

Monday saw us spending much of the day back with this game old bird!

This is my gorgeous M-i-L who still lives alone without much help at 91.  The appointments of Friday, and the family party on Saturday took it out of her so she had a day in bed on Sunday.  However it also turned out that she hadn't eaten, had hardly drunk anything, had developed a hernia, had been sick . . . but hadn't wanted to bother anyone.  We finally got the Dr out to her who was very concerned about the hernia & sickness combination and packed her off to hospital.  They operated this morning and we are waiting to hear what they found.

My other making has involved bird seed.  Along with the plate weaving and a few other crafts, I am teaching bird seed cakes in a few weeks time.  Pinterest has loads of recipes but sadly they do not seem to work as well as the posters suggest!

Here are my samples: I used lots of different bonding agents: gelatin (to bloggers instructions 1:100), jelly (orange flavoured!), suet, gelatin (to my instructions - 1:10), flour and water, egg whites - and hope that (a) one of them sets enough to work and (b) I can remember what I did on that one as I didn't think to write anything down!!!

Finally - just looking at this puts me into a very happy place!  It's a quilt that Jackie is currently finishing and I just love the calm colours and the beautiful blocks!  Well done Jackie!