Quilting until your fingers blister

It's not only unfinished knitting projects that I have in abundance. Oh, no! There are several unfinished quilts, too. Some are half-quilted, others have the top finished but haven't yet been sandwiched together with the backing and batting, and still others consist of cut-out pieces waiting to be sewn together.

While I like the piecing aspect of patchwork, and usually get the component bits sewn up pretty promptly, I lag when it comes to putting it all together. The process of laying the various layers out on the floor, smoothing them out nicely, centring them and then grubbing about on the floor with nose down and bum up while safety-pinning them all in place (trying not to pin the whole shebang to the carpet in the process) is frankly a drag, especially in a small flat. One day, I tell myself, I will have a whole room devoted to craft, with a massive table on which I could lay out quilts of quite unwieldy hugeness. But in the meantime, procrastination rules.

On Sunday I dug a quilt out and had another go at it. This is not the oldest of my unfinished quilts by any means – I started it only a couple of years ago, so it's positively youthful by my standards  – but it's for a not-far-off occasion, and I'm at last feeling some urgency about it.

First I needed to mark all the quilting lines on the top. Then I marked out a right-angled cross affair on the floor so that I could centre the back, which has a panel in the middle. Then I sandwiched all the layers together, and lo, if it wasn't like doing my tax or going to the dentist – not fun, sure, but a whole lot less painful than I expected or remembered. I did need to go and sit on the balcony for a while in the middle of the process, to let the blood drain out of my head and back to the rest of me, but I finished it in a couple of hours. As with the tax and the dentist, relief and a sense of achievement followed.

I started quilting it that night too. I love the look of hand quilting, but I'm not all that enamoured of the process. I don't mind it, so long as it doesn't take too long, but I can't imagine ever making an heirloom quilt with an intricate pattern of tiny stitches. Life, my attention span and my temper are all too short. I'm quilting this one with quite long stitches, partly for expedience, and partly because I'm sewing through four layers (the top is appliquéd) with No 5 pearl cotton, which is thick and takes a fair bit of dragging through the fabric, as I'm finding. My fingers are quite sore from four days of on-and-off quilting, but I'd rather put up with the pain than use a thimble – they are just too cumbersome and I've never been able to get used to them. I can't use a quilting hoop either, so I sew with the quilt flat on the dining table.

What do you think, dear readers – enough quilting, or should I echo some of the lines
and do more? Comments and opinions welcome.

The stitches are getting a bit smaller as I go along and get used to the rhythm, but that's okay. I like the way it's turning out – both the rustic look of the stitching and especially the fact that it's looking closer to finished. I've been working from home most of this week, allegedly – in truth I've been ducking out to do some sneaky quilting from time to time. I still need to decide what to do in the border, but at least now I feel confident that the worst is over and it will be finished in time. More photos once it's all done.

Just before I wrote this post I was idly examining my sore fingers, and found that they are actually blistered. Does quilting until your fingers blister put you in the realm of extreme craft? I'd like to think so.

Brand new year, same old procrastination problem

If only I'd made a new year's resolution to neglect my blog. It would have been the sole new year's resolution in living memory that I've kept. This blog could be in danger of becoming my latest unfinished project (an irony too shaming to be borne).

Since I last posted I've started more new projects without finishing any of the old ones – why break the habit of a lifetime now? – although there's not much photographic evidence of any of them as yet. I've got one very large (and I think rather exciting) new project on the go, which I'm not supposed to blab about yet, so more on that later. Suffice to say that that's the main thing keeping me away from the blog recently.

That and work. I could get so much more done if I didn't have to go out and earn. That's one reason I like period dramas so much – the ladies seem to spend all their time swanning about in fetching frocks and doing craft. Never mind the likelihood of dying in your twenties from consumption or a two-day labour; before you popped your clogs prematurely, you'd at least have time to do a whole lot of quality needlework. Oh, the bliss. I've got all the right accomplishments for the wrong century.

The first new project that I've finished lately is a scarf for a friend's 50th, in Paton's Jet and 1x1 rib in two-row stripes. Subdued but rather handsome, I think. I hope he does too.

For the life of me I couldn't style this thing. I took about forty shots before I got this.
Yes, this is the best of them. Note to self: don't give up the day job to become a photographer.

And the insomnia project is also finished.

Despite my initial resolve, I ended up doing most of this in daylight. I did do some of it at night, with varying degrees of success. Trying to knit in only ambient light (that is, the light from the carpark next door) on the balcony at three am, while unable to sleep due to the insufferable heatwave we had about a month ago, resulted in a big fat mess of dropped stitches and general wrongness that all had to be unpicked in the cruel light of day. And then I ran out of the very expensive cashmere yarn about two centimetres from the end and had to buy more. Annoyance.

But the result is pleasing, I think – even if the styling, once again, leaves much to be desired. Still, I'm sure it will look much better on a human being than plonked awkwardly on the table.

The yarn is Morris & Sons cashmere. It's undyed. The colours you see are those of the goats who used to own it, and one of the brown skeins was slightly darker than the others, but I like that there is some natural variation to link it back to the animal that it came from.

This yarn was just lovely to knit with; so soft it has to be felt to be believed. Although 'felt' seems an inadequate word. 'Fondled' is much better.*

Scarves are great for in front of the telly (I'm watching The Tudors at the moment, and alternating between admiring the costumes and tutting at the often frankly silly dialogue), but now I need to get back to a real unfinished project – some quilting this time – as I'm on a deadline.  


* I just looked up synonyms for 'fondle,' and two of the suggestions were 'embosom' and 'inarm'. Don't you just love English? This is why I like working with words; there are so many interesting ones around that even after 22 years as an editor, I still come across unfamiliar terms all the time. (Especially when reading John Banville. He makes me feel like Uma Thurman's character in The Truth About Cats and Dogs, in the scene where she's reading two books at once: the book she's reading, and a dictionary so that she can understand the book she's reading. Try The Untouchable and see what I mean.)

Knitting in the dark

It's been a couple of months between posts, but I'm starting off a new year of craft with an experiment: knitting in the middle of the night. No, the summer heat has not turned me; it's an anti-insomnia strategy. My usual response to insomnia is simply to lie there waiting for sleep to come. As I've been a rubbish sleeper all my life, clearly this isn't working.

Recently I read that chanting 'Om' to yourself can be effective (not aloud; that kind of thing performed in the middle of the night can get you a reputation as your building's resident weirdo). The idea is, presumably, that if you do it long enough you will bore yourself back to sleep. I've given it a go and it's HARD (and boring. And pointless. My mind keeps wandering to more interesting thoughts). Another strategy I've read about is to get up and do something, which is supposed to help break the sleeplessness cycle. I tried this a couple of times a few months ago, getting up and knitting for half an hour or so. That was much more enjoyable than silent chanting, and much more effective than lying there hoping in vain that cruel sleep might relent and take me.

So I'm going to give it another go. It needs to be something that can be done in dim light (as bright lights will persuade one's already confused bodyclock that it's daytime). That means pale colours. It also needs to be easy enough for a semi-fuddled brain to grasp, which means a simple pattern. I reckon this might be it:

This is a scarf that a friend requested, in beautifully soft cashmere. I'm not being disingenuous when I say it's easy; although it looks busy, it's just some cabling every fourth row. I tested it while watching Spooks last night, and as I managed to understand the plot machinations while not putting a stitch wrong, I reckon it's simple enough to do while only semi-conscious.

I knitted this much of the scarf in daylight, as I wanted to test out the pattern and also make sure its future owner liked it. But now that it's been approved, this project will be strictly nocturnal until I've finished it.

How long does it take an insomniac to knit a scarf? I'll tell you in a few weeks (or a few days, depending on how badly I'm sleeping).

The blog paradox

'If you'd told me five years ago that you'd one day have a blog, I wouldn't have believed it,' said my friend Tracey recently. Five years ago I wouldn't have believed it, either. I'm not interested in computers for their own sake, I find surfing the net more tedious and less useful than cleaning the bathroom, and I used to think blogging a waste of time – why would you blog about something rather than actually doing it? Not to mention that it seemed rather self-obsessed and self-indulgent.

That was before I started blogging on a whim. The Unfinished Project Project is now three months old and I've discovered that although blogging takes time, it doesn't waste time. It has actually made me more productive; I've finished off three major millstones that have been hanging around my neck for years, which feels like a considerable achievement. I've also been more inclined to plug away at other things that are lying about the house, and I've had more ideas about what I might usefully do with some of the rest.

And as an anti-procrastination tool it's had an effect on more than just my craft projects. Okay, my last two tax returns still remain undone, so my reform isn't total, but at least I do the washing up and the vacuuming more often now. Even small steps are steps!

And most of all, it's been fun. I've enjoyed writing my posts and finding that people as far away as Sudan, Argentina and Egypt have been dropping by. Who would have thought?

But as to whether blogging self-indulgent and self-obsessed … the one-woman jury is still undecided on that point.

Announcing the winner!

It's time for the stripey scarf to go to a new home. Thanks to the very exclusive field of six people who entered the competition. (If only my chances of winning Lotto were as good as yours were of winning this scarf, I'd probably be blogging from somewhere much more exotic than Sydney as we speak.)

So without further ado – the winner is the anonymous wannabe boyfriend impresser. I hope you're more impressed with your prize than your boyfriend was with your efforts (he sounds like a bit of an ingrate, frankly; are you still with him?).*

Anyway, make yourself known to me and receive your prize. Congratulations!

I'd quite like to know who the other entrants were, too. India, your writing style is unmistakable, but the rest of you have managed to camouflage yourselves well. Anyone care to fess up?


* I've since found out that the winner was my friend, colleague and original crafty kitten, Amanda. And yes, she ditched the ingrate boyfriend.

In search of the perfect peg bag (the world's most trivial quest)

Ignore what I said in my last post about not being a domestically obsessed perfectionist – I've now made not one but three peg bags. I realised as soon as I finished the first that it could do with some modifications – the opening was too big and also a bit low – and also that it would have been more sensible to make my prototype out of scrap fabric, not the real thing, in case of such stuff-ups. Oh well.

During the week I made a version with a buttonhole-stitched opening, which is okay but still not quite there. Yesterday I made a modified version of the first one, and I think it's a case of third time lucky. I even wrote down the pattern rather than just relying on memory if ever I want to make another. Unlikely – I think three peg bags per lifetime are more than enough. It's not as though I own three houses, after all (or even one) so two of these bags will be given away.

So that's three of the six finished rose bouquets from the chopped-up tablecloth accounted for. I have plans for the others – check this space.

Prettying up the prosaic

My crafty inclinations lately have leant towards repurposing neglected embroidery. Today's project was refurbishing my peg bag – a phrase that I realise might make me sound like some Martha Stewart wannabe domestic perfectionist, which I'm really, really not. However, I've had my old peg bag for several years and while it's perfectly functional, every time I hang my clothes out, one more tiny fraction of my aesthetic self despairs and dies. Mundane chores like washing should be jollied up as much as they possibly can, I reckon, hence my desire for a more pleasing peg bag than this one.

Before: plain, serviceable, dreary.

 Among my many unfinished craft projects is an embroidered tablecloth I started straight after either school or uni – in other words, a good long while ago. It had two bouquets of cross-stitched roses along each side, and the only thing I can remember about doing it was that I seemed to be at it for years, and it was tedious beyond belief. I finished six-and-a-bit bouquets before giving up about twenty years ago, having realised, I think, that even if I did finish it I was never going to use it as a tablecloth. It was another example of my tastes being much more nanna when I was young than they are now – and nanna in a daggy way, not in a cool, ironic, retro way.


So I decide to chop it up and give it a new life as a peg bag. I went slightly astray along the way – because I like doing things but not planning them, most of my projects are made in a fairly random and ad hoc way. So it was with this. I made a sort-of pattern from the old bag, but cut out the embroidered piece for the front of the bag before realising I'd positioned it so that the opening would cut away part of the embroidered design. That meant I needed to cut another piece. The binding and seams on the front needed to be unpicked and resewn at one point too – despite having the old bag right there, did I consult it for guidance? Did I bollocks.

But in the end it came together. I reshaped the top and used an old wooden coathanger rather than the nasty plastic number from the original bag. I even covered the wire hook with some bias binding (umm, what was I saying about not being an obsessive domestic perfectionist?). In fact I took a lot of care with the whole thing, despite generally being horribly impatient. Doing something properly, when I've got the time, ends up being so much more satisfying than just finishing it quickly.

After: bright, practical, bigger. And a bit nanna,
but in a good way, I think.

The final step was a rigorous pressing, because it's linen, which creases like a bastard. I'm rather chuffed with the result, and I'm sure washday will be a bit less dull with this hanging cheerily on the line.

And now it must be time to put a load of washing on.