Apparently it is only 29 days until Thing 2’s birthday. She is the most organised child when present-giving occasions are looming, providing all about her with wishlists ranked out of ten. These are regularly updated via Google Docs, when she remembers that she really, really wanted some black flared leggings or some obscure Japanese snackfood. One year she put a cake mix on her list to make sure she got the right cake. I think she feels slightly cheated that she has an autumn birthday so all her present opportunities are squashed up at the end of the year, bless her. Welcome to my October, everyone: a daily countdown to B-Day. At least it keeps her mind off Christmas.
Speaking of October…
Autumn is definitely peeking its head over the horizon, with some spectacular thunderstorms rumbling around the place and cooler mornings. I took myself out for a walk this morning and while the trees are still green the rosehips are glowing and the blackberries are almost over. Seedpods are replacing flowers and the fields are being ploughed in, resulting in clay platforms on your trainers where the footpaths have disappeared. I was an inch taller by the time I got to the flood meadow.
I also took the opportunity for a sneaky peek into one of our local pillboxes, which sits aloof in the middle of a field near the airfield. It’s in pretty good nick and the local farmer seems to be furnishing it with a carpet of old tyres for some reason. Thanks to the airfield, which began as a Royal Flying Corps base in 1917 and then played a crucial part of the Battle of Britain, we have a good collection of military bits and bobs around the village but this is the only pillbox not badly overgrown. There was a mushroom pillbox on my walk too and at the top of the hill behind the house the old Victorian Redoubt boasts a couple of Allen-Williams turrets, also from WW2, which protected the radio station there.
Other things making me happy this week:
Launching the schools campaign for National Illustration Day
Banana and Malteser cake – my signature dish, according to the kids
The weather being cool enough for crocheting the Hydrangea blanket I’ve been working on for two years
Crocodile stitch trees on the tube
Same time next week?
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Racing the Light – Robert Crais
Soul Music – Terry Pratchett (Audible)
The Lost Apothecary – Sarah Penner
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain – John O’Farrell
The Fine Art of Invisible Detection – Robert Goddard
Yesterday I got to spend the day doing one of my very favourite things: talking to random people about history, and London’s history in particular. Even more particularly, New River Head which will be transformed into Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration over the next couple of years.
The occasion was Open House Festival 2023 – a two week celebration organised by Open City when buildings, homes and spaces usually kept behind closed doors are open to the public.
New River Head has been out of use for 70 years, after the New River’s terminus became the reservoirs at Stoke Newington instead of the Islington site and the engines were removed. There’s a lot of interest in our half acre of patchy concrete, cobbles and industrial buildings tucked away behind bits of Thames Water infrastructure, from local residents, illustrators, architects and engineers, historians both amateur and professional, and ex-Thames Water employees. It’s a derelict site in the middle of a conservation area, mostly built by the New River Company itself, and several attempts to redevelop the space have been resisted.
My job today was mostly floating about the place, delivering the odd tour and ad-hoc potted histories of the site which changed depending where I was standing. Having fallen down the Google rabbit hole when reading about the site, and from reading Nick Higham’s excellent The Mercenary River, there’s a lot of trivia bouncing about in this head of mine. There’s an IPA called Five-Inch Drop, made by the New River Brewery and named after the gentle gradient bringing the New River from Hertfordshire to London along the 100-foot contour. The river still provides 10% of London’s drinking water via the Ring Main. Water from the New River was used to fill the tank at Sadlers Wells for the re-enactment of sea battles (and the punters would jump in at the end). A cheeky fox likes to lie in the sun under the buddleia.
The area around the site has its moments too: Myddelton Passage, named after founder of the New River CompanyHugh Myddelton, is known for a whole range of anti-social behaviour across time. These days it’s a quiet corner for local youths to conduct some illicit activities, to the horror of the residents, but even way-back-when muggers would lurk in this quiet alley. This meant Victorian policemen on the beat also had to lurk in the area, and a number of them indulged in some ASB of their own in the form of graffiti. A section of the wall is carved with the initials of policemen of Finsbury’s G Division: you can read more about this here. Talk about setting a bad example!
Other things making me happy this week:
Thing 1 starting her new college course
Rewatching the brilliant Sex Education in preparation for the new series
Hiding out from the pouring rain under a gazebo with lots of interesting people
Still crocheting mandalas
Cinnamon buns made by Thing 2
Discovering that our daft pigeons have built a Nerf bullet into their nest
Looking down instead of up when walking in London
This week will be focused on National Illustration Day – watch this space!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Story Collector – Evie Gaughan
The Keeper of Stories – Sally Page
The Lost Notebook – Louise Douglas
French Braid/Celestial Navigation – Anne Tyler
The Wanted – Robert Crais
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain– John O’Farrell
After a summer of reasonable temperatures, it’s typical that as soon as the new school starts we have a heatwave with the thermometers hitting high twenties by the end of the week. Central London has felt like a sauna, especially when stepping out of the airconditioned offices and training room* where I have been lurking.
Over the last couple of years I’ve seen a few news articles talking about the impact of green spaces on city temperatures, most recently this one based on research published by Friends of the Earth. Apparently green spaces like the parks, with all their trees and grass and things, have a cooling effect of up to four degrees on their local areas with the posh bits (around Hyde Park, Hampstead Heath etc) benefitting most while areas like Islington (with the lowest amount of green space per head of population), Tower Hamlets and the City of London are the hottest. This year is the first time I have worked in the City itself and the difference is noticeable – there was very little difference this week between surface temperature and the Central Line, for example, which is usually my reference point as in heat waves the Central Line is its own little circle of hell. Even in Bethnal Green – where the museum was close to Victoria Park, Museum Gardens, and Barmy Park (officially Bethnal Green Gardens, but the memory of the old asylum lives on) – the air was noticeably cooler. Leaving London by road, even in the cooler months, shows a two degree drop as you hit Woodford and the real start of Epping Forest.
18% of London is green space – more than the area of the roads and railways combined – and London was officially declared the world’s first National Park City in 2019. The ambition is to make more than 50% of Greater London green through green roofs, more trees, greening buildings and so on. However – with my cynical head on – I wonder how many of these projects will result in genuine greenery at ground level where people can go and sit under trees in green spaces, especially given the premium placed on land in London. (For what our contribution to Islington’s greenery will be, see here.)
For more excellently nerdy maps, visit Mapping London – here’s one from a 2018 heatwave to start you off, and a Cool Spaces map too.
*What was I doing in a training room? Qualifying as a Mental Health First Aider (I hope – there was an exam and everything!). I did this St John Ambulance course which was quite intense, but really interesting and gave the cohort a chance to discuss lived experience. I still hate role plays though.
You find me at the end of a week off, in which I have achieved many things, not least some excellent siestas and a lot of reading. I even managed to leave the house a few times, accompanied by various permutations of children.
On Sunday we insisted that all three of them accompany us to the Copped Hall Open Day – I confess to bribing them with the promise of ice cream. Copped Hall, a Georgian mansion on the site of an Elizabethan mansion on the site of a 12th century hunting lodge etc etc (history and lots of it – not too far from the Iron Age hill fort at Ambresbury Banks, so there’s even prehistory), is being restored by the Copped Hall Trust so the open days are fundraising events as well as an opportunity to recruit volunteers for the garden and so on. My Beloved loves the walled garden and we always come away with many plants. I come away with hollyhock envy as they have loads and I do not. There was indeed ice cream, luckily, and a jester with an impressive codpiece which horrified the teenagers – always a plus.
Monday saw us at Ashlyn’s Farm just outside the village with Things 2 & 3, both Timeshare Teenagers and their little boys, TT2’s partner and a friend, and my Beloved’s brother and his two boys. The Things are now – blessedly – too old for soft play so we joined them for the farm park bit. Grandthing 2, at four months, is a bit too little for the animals but Grandthing 1 (five next month and starting school) was extremely impressed. He was also very taken with the giant air cushion trampoline things. We were pleased to see the animals in situ, as the farm has a history of escapees, leading to some very odd posts on local social media – the porcupine on the A414, the capybara on the golf course which made the Daily Mail, raccoons coming in through catflaps and most recently a civet cat in a back garden.
Tuesday took us to Harlow in search of school shoes: not to Clarks as I still have childhood trauma to work through, but Sports Direct where we had to buy size 10 shoes for Thing 3. Size 10. He’s 12. I had to have a siesta to get over it.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
It’s been a while since I’ve made any of the Big 4 pattern company’s pieces but my Beloved came home with some fabric samples that were about to be discarded and sent off to landfill. One of them was a 2m length of cotton twill in navy, and being a short-legged person this was enough to make a pair of trousers. I’d had McCalls 7907 in the pile for a while as I keep meaning to make a pair of cargo pants, so I chose the slightly cropped balloon leg option as it needed less fabric. I still had to shorten the legs by 3″!
There may come a day when the prospect of constructing a fly front fills me with joy, but this was not that day. There are SO many steps to it, and so much potential for disaster – I’m still not sure I got it completely right but they’re my trousers and I don’t care. They fit really well, they’ll be great for work and I’ll have a crack at the cargo pocket version next.
Other things on the table this week have included a kimono and a Thai blouse, both from Folkwear patterns. I haven’t posed in those yet!
Other things making me happy this week
Apple cakes and blackberry cake – the garden is fruitful!
Back to work on Monday, kids back to school on Wednesday – this week I am doing my level 3 Mental Health First Aid training, which will be interesting. See you on the other side!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater: Essays on Crafting – Alanna Okun (I wish I’d written this)
Miss Percy’s Travel Guide (to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons) – Quenby Olson
Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
The Lost Girls – Sarah Painter
The Lost Bookshop – Evie Woods
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain, or 2000 Years of Idiots in Charge – John O’Farrell
I have had much more of a grip on reality this week – whole sentences have tripped off my tongue, tasks have been completed, and the world is a less fuzzy place entirely.
This is just as well, as there have definitely been days this week when I’ve had to use all (both?) my brain cells to thwart the machinations of Transport for London.
On Wednesday I had an appointment to meet Enfield Museum Services team. Enfield is one of the boroughs on the New River between our site at New River Head and the source springs at Great Amwell in Hertfordshire. In 2013 they held an exhibition celebrating the 400th anniversary of the river and they’d kindly offered to show me some of their objects relating to the river.
The closest station to their object store is Brimsdown on the Hertford East line – geographically a 25 minute drive from here, but as a public transport user it appears to located somewhere north of Alpha Centauri on the astral equivalent of an unclassified road. Options provided by the TfL journey planner included two buses and a 60 minute walk from the next town; a bus, a tube, two overground trains and a National Rail train; three buses and a twenty minute walk; two buses, a short unicycle ride and an extra-dimensional portal; but not – whatever tweaks I made to the planner options – the very simple route I eventually took which was the bus to Epping, the tube and a single change for Brimsdown. I got buses back – all three of them – which was simple but still took the best part of two hours to go 12 miles.
There is currently no joined-up public transport equivalent of the M25, or even the North and South Circulars. There are plans for a series of ‘Superloop’ buses which basically follow the circular roads, but these won’t solve the problem of the lack of connection in places like Essex, where to cross the borough by public transport inevitably involves either travelling into Central London and out again, a multitude of expensive buses with limited timetables (Chelmsford only exists once a week on Tuesdays, apparently) – or driving, as although the ULEZ extends out almost this far, the London transport network with its cheaper fares doesn’t.
Thursday morning also demonstrated how disconnected the public transport system is at this end of the world. Epping, my closest tube station, is the end of the Central Line and is essentially a dormitory town for London. The station car park holds the dubious honour of being the largest on the TfL network, and so many people drive in from all over north Essex to access the tube as it’s cheaper to park and ride than it is to pay £25 a day peak-time return from Harlow, our closest national rail station. The car park’s 538 spaces are full by 7am Monday – Friday. It doesn’t help that since the line beyond Epping was closed in the early ’90s there has been extensive residential development in both North Weald and Ongar, which used to be served, and a steady erosion of an already erratic bus service.
‘Peak time’ service between Epping and Loughton has been steadily reduced: pre-covid we were told there would be ‘temporarily’ reduced service while they replaced tracks. We regularly have 20 minute waits for trains to Epping at peak times – stealth obsolescence, according to a friend, who is TfL-adjacent. If enough people are driven back to the roads by poor train service, they’ll have an excuse to close the line due to lack of use. At one point we were given hope by one of the proposals for Crossrail 2, which would have seen this branch picked up by that service and linked to Harlow and Stansted, but our optimism was misplaced. Crossrail 2 was paused in 2020 and the route will eventually link up already existing stations over the border in Hertfordshire, leaving us still disconnected.
A casualty on the tracks shortly after 7am on Thursday meant the line was suspended from Liverpool Street to all eastbound destinations, and unlike further into London there are no alternative lines. If you’re in London and heading east at the end of the day your heart sinks if the line goes down anywhere east of Stratford: the Elizabeth Line has made it marginally easier but there’s still an hour’s bus ride to reconnect with the Central Line (which you hope has been restored by then) and two more buses home if not. This was the route I used on Thursday morning: bus from Epping to Loughton, another to Ilford and then the Lizzie Line – 2 hours and 45 minutes in total. This was only because the 167 arrived first – otherwise I’d have gone via Chingford or Walthamstow. Equally long times for a 25 mile journey into the City. If the government at various levels want us to use public transport and get cars off the roads, there needs to be a joined up piece of thinking that genuinely works for underserved areas which connects up the different services – and we aren’t even particularly rural.
Luckily my day improved immensely: my first meeting was about the new heritage/STEM session that I’ve asked the wonderful Chris Bailey to develop. I first met Chris when he stepped in to cover a Victorian sailor session at Museum of London Docklands and we hit it off over a wide-ranging conversation covering ladies of negotiable affection, Doctor Who, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, how to demonstrate gravity and the dome of St Paul’s with a trampoline, and the wonders of STEM in museums. This week’s conversation covered gravity with the help of a tumble-dryer hose, Samuel Johnson and the variety of beards required for historic interpretation.
In the afternoon I joined Isabel Benavides at Finsbury Library for a family illustration session as part of the Summer Reading Challenge. Issy has just launched her first picture book, Yogi Duck and the Little Chick, inspired by RSPB Newport Wetlands and utterly charming. It’s the end of the summer holidays and parents are in survival mode, plus the weather was very changeable, so the session was quiet. The people who did attend stayed for almost the whole two hours, and we had some wonderfully fantastical conversations about our crafty creatures in yoga poses.
Either a duck in half-moon pose or me hurling myself into the lake.
Other things making me happy this week:
a site visit with illustrator Toya Walker to develop a spotter sheet for families at our Open House event and beyond.
Mooch round the market followed by coffee with Miriam.
This week I am off work and intend to do some serious pottering, with a side of mooching and and some siestas. Tomorrow is the Copped Hall August Open Day and we’re dragging all the Things this year. There are also school shoes on the horizon but I am trying hard to remain in denial about that.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
Asterix omnibuses volumes 3&4 – Goscinny & Uderzo
Open Sesame – Tom Holt
Miss Benson’s Beetle – Rachel Joyce
Unseen Academicals/Pyramids – Terry Pratchett (Audible)
Rivers of London graphic novels – Ben Aaronovitch etc
Miss Percy’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons/Miss Percy’s Travel Guide to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons – Quenby Olson
This week has passed by in a haze of nothing very much at all: so much so, in fact, that I have no idea what, if anything, I have achieved. It’s been a bit of a brain-fog week, where sentences have wandered off after getting lost in the middle of a conversation and things have been left half done, like making cups of tea or sorting the laundry. My butterfly brain is in full flight – the joys of menopause, eh?
I do know I went to a lovely workshop with Toya Walker at the Museum of the Order of St John where lots of families came and explored their garden of medicinal plants before learning about botanical illustration. I also had a great chat with Andrew from the Museum of Walking about one of their new projects. There’s been a lot of crocheting of tiny mice on the tube and the odd cactus, and yesterday was a jewellery making day.
This weekend I have been pet-sitting for a neighbour, and basking in the reflected glory of Bella who bears more than a passing resemblance to a TV character called Waffledog. We’ve been for some long walks around the Common and chilled out binging Chuck on Amazon Prime in between. I love Bella, as she’s always pleased to see me. Her one fault is raging jealousy of the car she lives with, so when Ziggy decided to come home at 3am after hanging out in my garden with the wildlife last night I was rudely awoken which I could have done without.
At some point I’m going to have to bring my brain around to the idea of school uniform and (oh god) shoes for Things 2 and 3, but that can wait till the week after next when I’m off.
I can’t say I’m overly impressed with the weather this week, to be quite honest with you all. It’s August and I have had to wear actual socks and actual shoes and think about whether to take an umbrella. And then it gets hot but it’s cold in the morning so I have to think about layers. It’s like being on holiday in Wales and having to be prepared for all eventualities, up to and including hurricanes, tornadoes and the Central Line.
July was cool, as can be seen in the temperature supernova update – last year was all hot reds and oranges; this year cool greens and yellows dominate. September will probably be tropical. Huh.
There have been many good things about the week, however:
Getting to go to a workshop at All Change Arts with Alaa Alsaraji, one of our Community Illustrators, and poet Rakaya Fetuga
A creative meeting with storyteller Olivia Armstrong about a Quentin Blake inspired session
A new haircut
Barbie. I loved it. I really loved it. I may never listen to Matchbox Twenty in the same way again.
Getting round to making this pair of extremely dramatic self-drafted trousers from a tutorial by Tendai Murairwa in Simply Sewing magazine in a gorgeous teal and purple wax print fabric. I even made a toile for these to test the fit.
Jukebox hero
Robbie Robertson, ex-member of The Band, Dylan stalwart and solo musician died this week aged 80. I’m not going to pretend I’m a massive fan, but rather I’m someone who sings along when his songs come on the radio – apart from his first, eponymous, solo album which I love. Featuring collaborations with U2 and Peter Gabriel, among others, it yielded his biggest hit (this week’s title) and also the gorgeous Broken Arrow which Rod Stewart had more success with.
Somewhere Down The Crazy River was a fixture on the jukebox in a village pub I used to spend a lot of time in, usually selected by one particular person. A few times in your life, if you’re lucky, you meet someone who fills a space in your soul that you don’t even know exists. They are the folded beermat underneath your wobbly table leg (and there have been times when my tables were very wobbly, believe me); someone who gets you on your level. I’ve had several of these people in my life and I thank my stars every day for them. I lost touch with this one for 13 years but reached out (with a Blues Brothers birthday card) on his 40th and we remained in contact for the last couple of years of his life. I’d bought and written a card for him every year but never sent them until this one, and I will forever be glad I did. I still raise a glass every year on his birthday – yesterday would have been his 51st. Hopefully he spent it duetting with Robbie Robertson over a lager with a lot of lime.
Same time next week!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
The Echo of Old Books/The Last of the Moon Girls – Barbara Davis
Amongst Our Weapons/October Man – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)
Paint Your Dragon – Tom Holt
The Mercenary River – Nick Higham (I keep dropping in and out of this one)
Yesterday was my Beloved’s birthday and so despite the rain we all trooped off to Toot Hill Show – once he had dragged the Things out of bed at noon, anyway. Toot Hill is a small village over the next hill, and they have a proper village show (this year is the 70th anniversary, in fact) complete with local handicrafts, home grown fruit and veg and flower displays like ‘three dahlias in a vase’. My friend Jill’s Victoria Sponge was highly commended – she’s been threatening to enter for several years now and there may have been a riot if she hadn’t got some kind of mention. I’d thought about entering the handicrafts section but forgot. I’ll remember next year. Probably.
I was very taken with the alpacas, but apparently they weren’t for sale. They make the weirdest noises – quite like a whinging teenager, come to think of it, but quieter. There were the usual motley crew of rescue ferrets and a fun dog show; a sheepdog demonstration and allegedly BMX riders but we missed them. In previous years there have been Indian Runner ducks being herded by the sheepdog, and the local hawk and owl sanctuary display, but Storm Antoni was making its presence felt.
My Beloved brought home enormous quantities of interesting cheese, and I did not bring home an alpaca. Not even the little one.
The rest of the day was spent taping and cutting pattern pieces out ready to add to fabric. I’m going through a dramatic trouser phase at the moment and at some point my beloved paper bag waist black ones from H&M are going to give up the ghost. Possibly I need to learn how to do that thing where you make a pattern from your existing clothes, but there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day. I am off to see the Barbie film this morning and hope to get some sewing in this afternoon.
Other things making me happy this week
A trip up to see the future home of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration – honey bees and butterflies galore thanks to the buddleia which abounds on site
A picnic lunch with Amanda – no cocktails or cemeteries but a ridiculously small dog to watch
A somewhat misleading title but does lead nicely into one of my work visits this week, which saw me heading to north London for a visit to the Emirates Stadium. It’s not often a single meeting puts me within a hop and skip of the 10,000 daily steps target but this one did, with a whistle-stop tour taking in the changing rooms, the press conference room, the post-match interview bit (which looks a lot more glam on the telly, I can tell you – in reality it’s a corner under a concrete stairwell), the stands and various corporate spaces, as well as the pitch and the Hub.
Not shown: any football players changing
The Hub was what I was there to see, really: having spent 17 out of my 21 years in museums knocking about Tower Hamlets, I’m now being let loose on Islington as we’re embedding ourselves in the borough while we develop the new Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration at the old New River Head site. Islington isn’t somewhere I know very well, other than sneaky visits to drool over yarn I can’t afford at Loop and hanging out at the Crafts Council occasionally. Islington, in my head, is a literary thing: Douglas Adams and Nick Hornby, Charles and Carrie Pooter in middle-class Victorian Holloway. As it turns out, it is quite literary, but also full of actual people as well. Who knew! So I am on a bit of a mission to talk to a lot of them in the hope that we can work together.
As well as the Hub, I found myself at the Museum of the Order of St John this week, where I was enveloped in an enormous hug by lovely Maggie, an ex-colleague from Museum of Childhood. Coming as a nice surprise to someone instead of a terrible shock is a good thing! If you haven’t been to this little gem of a museum, it’s worth a visit: full of interesting medieval things and housed in a fascinating building, and they have a lovely family programme. Time it right and on the same day you could do The Charterhouse and wander through to St Bartholomew the Great, tucked away behind slabs of modern brick and concrete, and the Postman’s Park.
A conversation with illustrator/author and fellow South Walian Isabel Benavides who launches her first picture book in August and who is coming to do a family workshop for me at Finsbury Library
A 90-page conservation plan for the site which was full of fascinating information.
An early morning walk with Thing 3
Far too much crochet and my new Banks jumpsuit covered in otters. I sewed it on my Aunty Jo’s old Singer Samba sewing machine, freshly serviced and a dream to use.
Not jumpingRear viewCovered button with otterShy cactusChrismouseCatcus
Things making me sad this week:
The death of Sinead O’Connor, who I loved as a teenager. The Lion and the Cobra is a hugely powerful album. Hopefully, whatever the cause of death turns out to be, she’s found some peace now.
Same time next week!
Kirsty x
Cover image: “The Laurels”, “a nice six-roomed residence, not counting basement” – Drawing of “The Laurels”, the fictional home of the Pooter family. First published in The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith. London, J.W. Arrowsmith 1892.
What I’ve been reading:
Heir of Uncertain Magic – Charlie N. Holmbury. Also started The Will and the Wilds but it was bloody awful so I stopped. Life is too short to read books you’re not enjoying.
Museum of Magic – Beth Revis
Odds and Gods – Tom Holt
Broken Homes/Foxglove Summer/The Furthest Station/The Hanging Tree – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)
It has been a busy couple of months, what with all that training taking up weekends and so on, and apart from the ongoing tube crochet I haven’t done a great deal of making stuff. I started a laptop bag using this free tutorial and a yellow waxed cotton to match my beloved Fjallraven backpack, and I really must finish it off just as soon as I find where I put it.
In May I answered an open call by Tauko, a Finnish/German magazine, to be part of the Make and Share community for Issue 8’s patterns. I’d bought a couple of their patterns before, as I like their aesthetic, so the opportunity to test a new design with a free pattern was pretty irresistible.
We were sent a digital proof of the magazine and asked to choose the pattern we’d like to make up, and the deadline (but a relaxed one, as tauko means to pause or take a break) was publication date on the 18th of July. I must admit it hadn’t really occurred to me how much of June’s weekends would be taken up with training, due to being deep in denial about how far 100k actually was, so in the end it was all a bit of a rush! Day one of this project was the Tuesday following the Long Walk, so I mostly did it sitting down and watching the Great British Sewing Bee.
I chose the Kindling top, designed by Shannon McCann, as I like a structured top layer. I have a habit of working in historic buildings with erratic heating so a bit of quilting never goes amiss! I liked the wide sleeve option and the side ties, and the bias bound hems.
In my stash I had a double duvet cover in 100% cotton that I’d bought in a sale, which meant I could skip a step and cut out the lining and outer fabric at the same time. You can see the top fabric above, and the reverse is a pale sage colour. Also in the stash I had some sage green bias binding, again from a sale, and some toning grosgrain ribbon that had been handed to me as part of someone else’s clear-out. As long as I wasn’t too fussy about thread matching, the only thing I needed to buy was some cotton batting for the inner layer. I bought a fairly thin 100% cotton one to avoid too much bulk, and all the scraps went to my beloved to use either in the compost or to line plant pots. The batting was opaque which made it a bit tricky to line up the layers properly – one reason why you have a lining as well as a backing in other items, and if I make this again I’ll use an additional layer. I may make a sleeveless version, as I have enough fabric left from the jumpsuit I cut out today in a dark green otter-print fabric.
I started by cutting out the pieces and quilting them with simple vertical lines – my long acrylic quilting ruler made marking the lines easy, along with a heat-erasable pen. I spaced the lines quite widely, and stitched them with a multicoloured thread. Construction after this was very straightforward, the pattern instructions are clear and thorough, and the piece is easy to size.
Once the front and back are quilted, the shoulder seams are stitched and bound with bias binding, which gives a lovely clean finish. All the seams are supposed to be bound, in fact, but I confess I didn’t bind the inside of the sleeves as I was short on time. I used a zigzag stitch to finish them instead.
Marking quilting linesReady to constructSides bound, time to curse the neckline
Next up was binding the edges. The pattern calls for creating your own ties using the bias binding, but as I had this pretty toning ribbon I skipped that step as well and. Binding around the outside is a single straightforward step, though I did have to unpick a few times when I forgot to tuck the ribbon out of the way.
The neckline was where I nearly threw the towel in and the sewing machine out: this should have been a very quick job but my trusty Brother LS14 is badly in need of a service and the tension keeps slipping. I tried rethreading, changing the bobbin, swearing and all other known sewing tricks, but kept getting the dreaded birds nest on the reverse and having to unpick. I gave up for the day instead. As you can see from the image above, the sleeveless version is very wearable and I gave some thought to making detachable sleeves with poppers.
I was in a much better frame of mind a few days later, and the first thing I did was to wind new bobbins and rethread, which solved the birds nest issue and the neck binding went on easily. I was tempted to leave it sleeveless but I’d already cut and quilted them, so…
The sleeve hems and heads are bound and then attached to the bodice. This was the trickiest bit: I’d marked the notches with heat-erasable pen, as the snips had been bound over….and then I’d ironed it. It took a while to work out where to start and stop sewing as obviously I needed to be able to move my arms in it, but I got there in the end! Again there was a bit of unpicking where I’d pinned wrong, but the double bindings create a structured effect so worth the effort. A quick press and try on, and then it was time to nag my beloved to take photos in the garden. Apart from making a sleeveless version, if I make it again I’ll crop the sleeves and use a thicker batting, but I can see this getting a lot of wear.
Nice straight linesSleeve bindingSleeve headFrontBack. Trousers are the Lapwing trouser by Simple Sew.
In other crafts…
June updated on the Supernova – hottest June on record, apparentlySend nud…ibranch!Mushroom Sprite 1Impostor cactus Mushroom sprite 2
The nudibranch and mushroom sprite patterns are by Crafty Intentions, and the crochet round barrel cactus is by ZoeCreates.
This week I am looking forward to a belated birthday dinner with Amanda celebrating our 50ths, and another visit to The Museum of the Order of St John.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Good, The Bad and The History – Jodi Taylor
Queen Charlotte – Julia Quinn & Shonda Rimes
Whispers Underground/Broken Homes – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)
What Kirsty did next 