I have really struggled with the heat this week, not least because my work room is upstairs in our timber framed old cottage and the sun blazes at it from early morning until afternoon, so it heats up and the walls retain the heat – phew! Having checked the weather forecast for the week, I wasn't worried because I knew I'd do my usual thing and get all my cutting out and interfacing work done on Monday, machine stitch all day Tuesday, and then retreat to the much cooler downstairs rooms to do my hand sewing by the time it got really hot. However, by 11am on Monday morning, it was clear that I should have ordered a new roll of interfacing the previous week…
So I bought a couple of emergency metres of interfacing which arrived on Wednesday and had more interfacing and machine stitching to do in the upstairs room on Wednesday and Thursday – the hottest days of the week at 38C or so! I never do well in the heat anyway, but standing over the hot ironing table and sitting at the sewing machine in my little oven of a room just about finished me off! None of this was helped by a lack of sleep due to the overnight heat and a little old man cat who likes to rise at 4am and chatter in my ear until I get up. Complaints aside though, I was super happy with some of my finishes this week, including a little collection of Liberty lawn notions pouches:
I had been fabric swatching for these in my head over the weekend and was SO excited to get them made! It's really a bit scary how excited I can get about fabric, but the obsession is real! 😀 I've tried hard to pick my favourite from this little crop, but I can't quite do it. If you threatened to take my whole fabric stash from me if I didn't choose one, I might be tempted to pick the golden Capel one with the metallic lining. Always the magpie!
My foxy purses have been popular this week again, as have cuddle whales. The hottest Liberty purse has been this super pretty Emma and Georgina with a cherry red lining:
I also made one of these textural woven Ikat wristlet purses, which I haven't made in a while:
This is lined with a luxurious dupion silk in a rich golden colour, which I love working with. I have some of this silk in a lilac colour too, which I haven't found a project for yet:
Among the project bags this week was this Liberty Lodden print in blue and green:
This was the last of this print apart from a small piece that's gone into my "too small to make anything very big with" box. Whenever I make my last bag with a fabric that's still available, I always struggle with myself about whether or not to buy more of it, but I haven't decided on this one yet.
I thought that it might be fun to add a section to these weekly 'making journal' entries about what I've been listening to while I work. When the sewing machine is going, I tend to have music on, but the rest of the time, I'm listening to Audible and the book I'm listening to this week is particularly good:
Such a simple idea to look at Victorian life through the lens of the victims ascribed to 'Jack the Ripper', but nobody seems to have thought of it before! Hallie Rubenhold has managed to explore so many facets of the Victorian woman's life by telling the stories of these five ladies lives, or what we know about them. In documentaries and films on the subject that I've seen to date, they're portrayed as unfortunate cardboard cut out cliches, whereas each one had a very different life experience, from exhausted wife and mother, to writer and singer of ballads at executions; even if all those lives were to end the same violet way. If you have any interest in the period / history generally, I'm sure you'll enjoy it as much as I have – it's so absorbing and totally focussed on their lives, rather than their deaths.
I'm looking forward to a cooler week next week and am happy to say that my new roll of interfacing arrived on Friday, so I can start the week right 😀
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