lifeaworkinprogress

Even quicker update – Abigail has just rung to say Gnome Day has been cancelled!!** and I have just made two pairs of baggy blue trousers. Never mind it gave me something new to think about, I can now stop thinking about beards and go and clear up the mess I made sorting through appropriate ‘gnome fabric’.  It’s an ill wind probably – I have realised that I have been saving crummy bits of fabric that I would never use in a month of Sundays. A lot donated, true, so it is time to donate them elsewhere I think.

** apparently they needed 570 to beat the record and only 500 showed interest. Still – 500 gnomes in one place makes the mind boggle doesn’t it? I wonder who holds the record?

Just a very quick update – I am busy making gnome costumes for Jacob and Carrie – seemingly for the Great British GnomeFest [no, I made that up]. It is for their school, who are going to take a picture of all the children who turn up in gnome costumes for the record for “the most garden gnomes in a picture”. I ask myself, is this what retirement means? I answer – yes please. Perhaps I can grab a picture eventually, at the moment I am wondering how do you make beards?

We are always told to listen to our Mothers, and as a Mother of five girls I am not about to dispute that.  However, sometimes we have to modify that advice based on experience. Always “to buy the best you can afford” holds good in many cases – in the ‘Case of The Red Coat’, it hasn’t. Let me explain; I’ve been hunting for good quality wool fabric in nice cheery child friendly colours for a good while, as I wanted to make my four great grandchildren Burda 2534 -as in this toile for Phoebe,my youngest grand-daughter. I eventually found some truly beautiful pillar box red wool with cashmere. It was a gorgeous colour, and as soft as thistle down. I was extremely pleased. Then on my hunting trip to Reading for fabric I asked for black velvet for the collars and cuffs. I was shown two bolts of velvet, One a firm, fairly soft pile and one with beautiful sheen and soft as silk – at twice the price of the first. Got the picture?

Now for the experience. The red wool was soft as only cashmere and wool can be, and as all true aristocrats, it had to be treated gently, that was O.K. I didn’t mind that at all, I bound or overlocked all the seams and all went reasonably and carefully well until it came to buttonholes! I wanted to do bound buttonholes. ‘Oh No!,’ said the red wool ‘not on me you don’t’. Practice piece after practice piece hit the bin, the results looking like the pillar boxes the colour represented. Never mind, we’ll use Plan B .My daughter Abigail has a super duper Pfaff that can do all kinds of buttonholes as beautifully as you would wish. What my red wool did to her machines still wakes me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat – we won’t go there.  We did eventually manage to do three nice buttonholes, but at what a price!

The velvet collars [ I use the plural] suffered a similar fate. The velvet was clearly designed to look and feel good, but not to be used for collars with curves that can’t be bound.

This was the result time after time; [you can see the back of the interlining here]. I finally gave in and made a final decision to go red – and made a self-coloured collar instead.

Now just in case you think the whole thing was an unmitigated disaster, let me show you the finished coat.

I put black piping round the cuffs as clearly the black velvet wouldn’t wear well on a child’s coat cuffs,  [I also added seam pockets, lined with wool and ladybirds] and with these black buttons and the bright lining, the whole thing came together and  looks very nice indeed thankyou! Whew!

          From [a] to [b] in three weeks! It may have been a long time coming but the I do believe that the Summer is finally here.

Now I may be wrong, I often am, but the sun is shining, it is almost warm today – but it is Bank Holiday weekend after all, so we can’t expect too much. To be fair we have had a couple of quite warm days this week and that is why I say I am feeling good, how can you not be optimistic when the sun shines?

I always said I never minded Winter and I don’t, when it keeps to its allotted time, but when it rudely intrudes into other times and Seasons then I do object. My poor plants have been in and out of the house like yoyo’s. The one time I left some out on what I thought was a warm Spring day – we had a frost and they bit the dust. But you can’t argue with this can you?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have been sewing the cheerful pillar-box red cashmere and wool coat for India – but I will save that for when I get the photos done. Enjoy your day.