Ta! Da! (Whew)

Ladies and um, ladies; coming down the catwalk now is an elegant evening dress suitable for a Debs Night. Made of layered satin and tulle, with a flounced underskirt, it should suit the most exacting of Barbie wanna-be's.
On the right side of the tulle overskirt are nine tiny bows each made from silver ribbon and one pearl bead, and if they hadn't been such a pain to make there would be a darn sight more of them.

A patchwork satin and tulle clutch bag nicely completes the emsemble, small enough to be discreet but large enought to hold camera, mobile-phone, money, make-up repair kit, safety pins, handkerchief and three types of lip gloss. Please admire the magnificent patchwork- a masterpiece born of necessity.

Turn aroud my dear and show all the ladies the enormous tulle bow on your rear end; only a truly madly fabulously confident young lady could carry off such a monstrosity of dolly frou-frou.

And a round of applause for our model? Thank you! Thank you!

So! THAT'S what I've been doing for the last fortnight. Big night is tomorrow, so I'll take one more photo of Sos all dolled up and then lay the subject to rest.

In honour of the guests coming tomorrow the girls cleaned the fish tank, and were astonished to discover Sally and Fishfinger lurking in the murky depths. Told them, but would they believe me? So now that the fish can see out we are back to covering the tank with a tea towel at supper time so they can't watch us eating their cousins.

D'you remember what the spare room looked like at the start of the summer?

http://hecketyathome.blogspot.com/2009/07/of-sewing-shed-and-sorrow.html

Well, now it looks like this! Carpeted, painted, curtained (thank you my amazing Mother!), furnished (upstairs bunk-beds separated, at present)- in fact altogether clothed and in its right mind! And just to amuse you, here are five of the weekend's teenagers playing 'Twister' with a lot of shrieking...
I have about a weeks' worth of ironing to do. I had to wear my Sunday shirt to School today because there was nothing else decent in the wardrobe! There is some hoovering needed too, all the threads and trimmings which get eyerywhere when I sew, in fact I need to pick pink pinking snips off Bertie, he's so fluffy he's like a fabric magnet! Well, a fridge magnet too, but that's another matter...Sos is upstairs planning tomorrow's hair-do, much muttering and stomping and loud music!

But first of all I am going to make like Mma Ramotswe and sit back with a nice cup of rooibos tea and read the quilting magazine I've been keeping ready for the end of The Dress! Happy Days!

Booooring...

No photos as I have laboured over the sewing machine all day. This evening I finally got 'The Dress' sewn together at the waist. Now the skirt and bodice have officially met! I had it all pinned together on Sos after taking in the bodice (again) this afternoon and she is worried that the weight of the skirt will pull the dress down, so is considering spaghetti straps. Mum told her about an evening gown she had many years ago which used to swivel around alarmingly, and Sos is anxious this dress might do the same!!
Tomorrow I start on the zip- which is always a disaster, on Sos's Grad Dress it took me eight goes to get the zip satisfactory. When its sorted I'll take a photo for yous.

Mum delivered two of the four spare room curtains today- ALL MADE! I thought she was pinning them together, and as I couldn't afford to buy lining this month, was going to hang them and then tack on lining next month. She went and bought lining and they are all beautifully finished! I am just so thankful and grateful! What sort of present do you give a mother who does that?

Busy, busy!

You can tell how much Sos wants her Deb's dress done in time since she has been working hard at making the place ready for a string of expected visitors. Yesterday she finished the first coat of varnish on the staircase, which has been waiting for several years!
Then she varnished the guest bedside table, and three quarter shelves for the sittingroom, which you can just about see behind the table.
She has also been dealing with a lot of laundry (goodness knows where it all comes from) and somehow managed to get her head stuck under the sideboard when reaching for a new bottle of fabric-softener! Mum was sitting at the kitchen table pinning the guest curtain hems, heard a squawk and a giggle and looked round to see Sos wriggling out backwards, very red in the face.


The garden has gone to pot since the Hub has been finishing the shed, then painting the guest room. I haven't been out to weed this week as I've started doing battle with the Deb's dress, which is proving a slow, tedious job. There are a few poppies and cornflowers in between the weeds... This is how bad it has become, but as soon as the dress is done I'll be out there.
The onions look about ready to keel over and then they can be harvested I think.
This is the lining partly pinned together. I have sewed on the under flounce now, and also the bones into the bodice. I started the dress bodice with the overlays of net and satin, but it was 8 o'clock and I was getting tired. I worked on it for six hours today, but there seems to be some sort of dressing in the net which is making my skin go numb, hands and face. Have you ever heard of that? Weird. Sos and B are shouting at the TV at present, I guess they don't like the way the programme has been done! Either that or they are having a cushion fight. They have been doing chores and tidying and cleaning upstairs all afternoon, so they've earned their 'down time'!

Sorry for the boring post, chores and dressmaking just are boring!

Home again!

Well where do I start? Ah yes, Birmingham, England!
The Festival of Quilts was stunning! I spent two whole days at it but am not entirely sure I saw everything. I did take 236 photos over the four days away, which goes to show you how much there was to see. The second morning I did a Workshop with Pat Archibald, using bondaweb applique and foil to embellish, which was very helpful as well as interesting. She's a good teacher.
There were wearable quilts as well as every shape and size of usual flat quilts, this coat was particularly handsome. Between the airport hotels and the National Exhibition Center ran these little sky-trains. I think they look like lego cars! I wanted to just sit and ride back and forth on them!
A couple of quilts, but I don't want to bore you. There were so many ideas to pick up, colour arrangement, workmanship, finishing, embellishment, traditional patterns, translation of ideas in picture quilts, machine quilting, hand quilting...
Thursday evening my uncle and aunt came to see have dinner with Mum and I which was lovely. Then on Saturday we returned to Dublin where we met with Dad and bro. Our sister had arrived safely from South America, complete with luggage, which was rather incredible as she has a bad habit of losing luggage! So we ate together on Saturday evening and talked for Ireland!

Sunday morning we met up, left all the luggage at a place near the train station, and headed out to Howth for the day, along with Dilly; six of us, three generations. On the way we bumped into another brother of Mum's and his wife, so ended up having coffee together before walking round the harbour. There were a lot of trawlers in, also some seals posing for photos! I though they had a look of our Ben-dog at dinner time actually!

Then home on the five o'clock train yesterday evening. The train got in at 8 o'c and the Hub met us and delivered the folks home to their place. I was in bed by ten to nine! Absolutely shattered!

It was a wonderful weekend though. You know when your head is so full of possibilities and ideas that you feel just about everything is possible? That's how I feel now! Actually the Hub had to wake me twice last night because I was telling him all about quilts in my sleep!!!

This morning I did some cleaning, and then started in on cutting out Sos's Deb's dress. I had to call Mum for help, and then realised I'd forgotten to buy lining fabric so she drove me out to Cliffoney for some. The dress is half cut out, but I've the tulle to cut tomorrow. I was too tired to carry on.

Lucifer and Astilibe!

I just did something really stupid- I pressed ‘play’ on the CD player without checking either the volume or the disc and was practically thrown across the kitchen…at a respectable volume, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ soundtrack is great, but at 40plus is mind -blowing…I’d forgotten the girls were playing it last night. Change to Enya, I think...

Once again I've managed to get photos in the wrong order, oh well, 'and the last shall be first and the first, last', but Jesus hadn't my computer inadequacy in mind when He said that!
Sos is on her final designs for her Debs dress so as soon as the Hub is paid there’ll be a trip to Cliffoney for fabric. She’s decided she wants two layers. Goodness help me! This is the sketch front and back, and the photo at the side is from the Nomads catalogue, she wants ribbons round the waist like that dress. I hope you can make it out ok.

The montbretia is beginning to flower, starting with my pots of hybrid ‘Lucifer’. Mum bought me the bulbs at the Chelsea Flower Show a few years back and I’ve always wondered whether there was irony involved in the choice or did she just like the colour?! I haven’t asked in case I don’t like the answer!!
I just went out to take a photo and in rooting round the pots found what I think is a white astilibe- I’ve been wanting one but they were 12euro in Horkan’s and that was too much for me. I also spoke to the sumac which is doing well (thought it had died in the winter), and to my delight I’ve just discovered that the mahonia is alive. I thought I’d lost it, it’s not very healthy but ok. As you can tell I’m a great gardener…

And here are my two partners in the garden- Ben who likes to dig things up...

And Bertie who lies on everything.
Dilly’s been having a frustrated day at work; firstly a visitor drank all the milk they had for the free teas and coffees in the foyer. Then someone phoned to book tickets for the play and couldn’t find his credit card so kept the phone line busy for a while. Since booking he’s been phoning to alter the booking at intervals, figuring that the various people are entitled to concessions. Dilly is going nuts although she admits that in between there are loads of really pleasant polite folks.
I know as a teacher, it takes one major run-in with a student to discolour one’s day, and Dilly says the same. I guess it’s the same for everyone; it makes good manners so important.

Sos has taken B to the cinema to see the new Harry Potter film. B’s birthday was during the final stages before Sos’s exams, and there was also a family Wedding happening, and Sos remembered this morning she had never got her a present, so this trip is it. Afterwards B is having her hair cut by a friend of Sos from school who is training to be a hairdresser. So the Hub dropped them off in town on the way to work.

I am reading a Nora Robert’s book, ‘Angel Falls’ and becoming rather engrossed. I lent the last one to Mum for her holiday. I ordered Jane Kirkpatrick’s book ‘Aurora’ from Amazon last week as her book don’t get this far west and the other evening on the internet I discovered there will be another Diana Gabaldon novel out at the end of this year, or thereabouts. Several somethings to look forward to,(unfortunately my book addiction started young, and shows no sign of abating, although I do try to keep it under control…)

Now, since I am temporarily girl-less, I am going to quilt some more.