Fabric update

Thank you, internets. It seems that admitting to the world (and Gnomemade - thanks, K!) that I needed to work on the quilt has done the trick. I've now finished the back (which I LOVE and I think might be promoted to "front"). I just need to email my choir buddy the dimensions (she owns Quilting Solutions and has lots of great wadding/batting) to get some warm & white batting, since a Flickr search for "natural batting + white quilt" led to a whole big pile of "DON'T DO IT!"

And then on with the quilting and the (orange - squeee!) binding and into the post.

For your crafty pleasure, here is some (unrelated) V&A Liberty fabric that I picked up last time I was in town. The V&A? And Liberty? Together? With fabric? Oh, my.

I want to work at Liberty

Ok, have you guys seen these scarf-tying tutorials from Liberty of London? Where have they BEEN all my life?

I went looking for the new Mollie Makes and couldn't find it, even though it's supposed to be available from WH Smith and Sainsbury's and I tried both. Bah...Ipswich.

I did come across issue 1 of Handmade Living, which I liked - it wasn't the Best Magazine Ever but I'd probably buy it again.

I made rhubarb crumble again, with the Rhubarb Pear Crumble recipe from BBC good food (their website is having a grumpy), without the pears this time. We ate it, hot from the oven, with toffee crunch ice cream. BLISS.

And to answer JaneRowena's sneeterdoodle from the Paula Deen Banana Bread post, I kinda just eyeballed the cup of butter. My mom used to smoosh butter into a cup-measure, and then wrestle it out again. Weighing is much better. If I weren't so lazy, I would have converted for y'all.

A Grand Day Out

I had an exceedingly stressful week at work - taking on a huge pile of new work, with very little handover. Lucky me! It'll all sort itself out at some point.

The Husband decided on Friday evening that I needed a mini-vacation, so suggested a trip to London on Saturday. Woot. However, spontaneity and National Express East Anglia do NOT mix. John checked the NXEA website for the train schedules (rather than creating a "journey" on their journey planner), and announced that the trains departed Stowmarket at half past every hour. So we drove to the station, paid for our parking, and walked over to the ticket office.

Hmm...what are all those busses doing there?

[epic rant] 

As NOT mentioned anywhere on the National Express website, they were doing engineering works AGAIN, so there was a bus replacement service to Ipswich, where we could catch the train to London. Since we had the car anyway, we figured we'd just drive to Ipswich. I was checking my Trains app to see when the next train was due to leave Ipswich, and tripped over the curb and skinned my palm and my knees. OW. And I blame the evil Train people for mucking us about. See? My injured palm? (I'll spare you the pictures of my skinned knees.)

Skinned knees be damned...let's still go to London. So we drove to Ipswich, where they announced that the normal trains weren't running and we'd have to take a puddlejumper to Stratford and change to the Central line. We'd already gotten this far, so figured we'd go for it. Plus, I still REALLY wanted to go to London. The final insult to (actual) injury was that our two tickets to go 70 miles on the Slow Coach cost us £73. That's over $120. Granted, the puddlejumper took FOREVER, so maybe that's why it cost so much. National Express East Anglia, I hate you. Especially since you've raised my commuter ticket (one way) from Bury to Stowmarket to £5.10. ONE WAY! And there's no way to buy a ten-trip. Can we borrow some Dutch train-experts to come sort things out, please? Thx.

[/epic rant]

Anyway, we DID eventually get to London, where we proceeded to have an excellent time. We stayed on the Central line to Chancery Lane, where we got off and walked up towards Lamb's Conduit St (great name, btw), on our way to Persephone Books. More about them in a minute.

John said, "I'd quite like a coffee and a bun." And magically, Bea's of Bloomsbury appeared out of the mist. (Yes, I look like I weigh 400lbs in my green jacket, but it was FREEZING yesterday). We knew the cake was going to be good when they asked us if we had a reservation. We didn't, but they found seats for us anyway.

I had an extremely large slice of carrot cake with cream cheese icing, which was delicious, and John had a seriously rich piece of chocolate cake with chocolate ganache icing and caramel and coconut filling.

Sigh.

I should have brought the big camera...

Newly fortified by our cake, we made our way up Lamb's Conduit Street to Persephone Books. According to their website: 

Persephone Books reprints neglected classics by C20th (mostly women) writers. Each one in our collection of 90 books is intelligent, thought-provoking and beautifully written.

I agree wholeheartedly. I bought a book, to be reviewed shortly. They also gave me a copy of the most recent Persephone Biannually, which featured a short story by none other than the wonderful Eva Ibbotson. Really? I couldn't have planned it any better. Run, book geeks, run to Persephone Books!

Since we were in his 'hood, we stopped by the British Museum to visit our buddy, the Horus. Unflappable, as ever, and most definitely still in charge of the museum. We had a little chat.

We meandered our way across Soho, to Liberty. Where I really wished that I had brought the big camera. [Camera geeks, any suggestions for a small-ish non-fugly bag that fits an SLR, a paperback or Kindle, and my wallet, phone, Burt's Bees and some kleenex? Thanks.]

Elephants!

And stairs!

And lots and lots and lots of fabric. Didn't buy any, but window-shopped extensively.

I checked Pinterest for London suggestions before we left yesterday morning, and found Tokyo Diner in Chinatown. It reminded me of the places I used to eat in New York - reasonably priced and very yummy. They had a power cut just as we were finishing, so we ended our meal by candlelight. How romantical!

We were pretty much zonked at that point, so we made our way back to the Central line and back to Stratford and back to Ipswich (on an express that only stopped in Colchester, Chelmsford and Manningtree, woot!), and then back to Stowmarket. A supremely Grand Day Out, once we actually made it to London.

Gulp...a real quilt

OK, so I've made quilts before. Gabi has two of them: a big one and this stroller one. But every time I've made a quilt, it's been more of a "make it up as I go along" exercise than an actual quilt. And I've never bound a quilt before.

In a moment of insanity, I've joined Randi's On the Road To Spring quilt-along on her blog,i have to say.

So, yesterday I went to Bury (well, we all went to Bury) and I went to Mill House fabric to buy my 10 1/3-yard pieces. And the batting (which was SO expensive). I like my fabrics, although the selection wasn't great. They weren't busy, either. I definitely got the sense that pulling ALL the fabrics I was interested in off the shelf was NOT the done thing, from the employees and other customers. And that they were doing me a favor by letting me shop there. Sorry, guys - I'm dropping rather a large amount of money in your store - I can move the fabrics around if I want to. I'll put them all back, I promise. The whole thing made me wish that I still lived a subway-ride away from purlpatchwork in Soho (although it wasn't there when I lived there, and I didn't have a sewing machine then).

In any case, I started out with my off-white "background" color and two Liberty fabrics that I've been saving for something. Since I've been saving them for at least 2 years now, it's time to get moving. So they were my jumping-off point for the quilt. They're the florals on the left in both of the little pictures.

I think it's kind of neat that I found similar fabrics to both in the fabric store - I especially like the red/blue florals because the flowers are exactly the same.

Anyway, this is my "favorites" pile:

And then, at the bottom, is the whole enchilada. The creamy one right at the bottom is my "background" color. The light blue and creamy florals (same fabric, different colorway) are the backing and binding fabrics, respectively. I got enough so that I can chicken out on one or two of the other ones and use them on the front as well. I also like them enough that I'll definitely be able to think of other things to make with them. I'm a little nervous after looking at the other fabric choices in the flickr group - mine seems a little...er...scattered.

It's funny - I keep fretting randomly about each fabric in the pile (except the one on the top right and the two at the very bottom). But all of the other ones pick up colors in those, and they're all pretty much floral or floral-looking (ahem snowflakes and dragonflies - where did you come from?). And that orange-yellow is pretty intense, except then you realise that it's in the dragonflies and the center of all the flowers. See - I've been at it all day.

Onward!