March Madness

What an odd month we’ve had and it looks like we are in for another few of the same. The coronavirus restrictions mean that my sewing stuff has had to be packed away from the kitchen table so my husband can use it to work from home (how much tech does one person need?) while I work from home in the other room on a Victorian style writing bureau where I feel I should be wearing a bonnet and crinoline and using pen and ink rather than a laptop. We are trying to put everything away on a Friday afternoon so that weekends are vaguely normal and the sewing machine can replace the screens and keyboards.
 

Back before coronavirus, I made a small zip up tote bag upcycling an old pair of jeans and using a very small amount of my Liberty stash. This was supposed to be a sew-a-long with Leeds MQG but that wasn’t to be.
 

Instead of using webbing for the handles, I used more of the jeans and added a Liberty trim. The lining was more Liberty – a misprint from the factory shop which I got a good few years ago.
 

 
The other bit of sewing that I managed to do was to finish a Mystery Quilt kit. This was the first mystery quilt run by Lisa from Modern Quilt Club and started in March last year with the last section being sent towards the end of last year. Right until the last month I had no idea how all the pieces were going to fit together and now it is completed it is probably something that is definitely outside my normal choices for quilts.
 

 
I found some fleece that was an ideal colour match for one of the accent colours so that was the backing sorted and I quilted it using a diagonal cross hatch.
 

 
The binding that was sent as part of the kit was patterned and I felt there was lot going on in the quilt already and so I had to hunt in my stash for something plainer (this was the first weekend of lockdown and I didn’t think fabric would count as essential shopping). I found a navy border print that was just the right shade and there was just enough once the border had been cut off.
 

 
Now this quilt is finished, it will be heading off to Project Linus when coronavirus allows. At least all the shopping restrictions means that the next few months might see me use up some of my stash for new projects.


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