Post 155

I managed to find a spot on the wall of my sewing room for my mother's two bird paintings. The bird already there is one I bought from a sale of art from residents at Catherine House in Adelaide some years ago.  It works well, although I have to fix the hanging mechanism on one of them.

from my balcony.

The building work was full on today. On the whole, the activity is background hum, although there was a very annoying high pitched whine for a while this afternoon.

I have changed my Pilates class from Friday to Thursday, where the group in the studio is only three students. It was, as usual, a good session. Afterwards I went to North Adelaide Village to get more fruit and veg and also to see if the chemist had micropore tape to seal masks across the nose.They had plenty of micropore tape, but none of it was double-sided,which of course is what is needed. They did, however come up with this tape which will work.

It is for use on skin - its purpose being to put on the front of a low-cut dress to prevent a gap that exposes your bra - or worse! So if you need tape to seal the top of a face mask to prevent your glasses steaming up, this is an option! Perhaps not too far from the original purpose.

I took Niamh and Veronica to their choir practice after school and swung past Norwood to pick up a copy of this book. With my newfound interest in birds I thought it might prove interesting. I'm good at buying books, less good at reading them at the moment. I could have had an electronic copy but thought it the kind of book I might want to share with others.

Although it was getting towards dinner time when I got home, I decided to have a go at colouring the reverse side of the owl bag using my Inktense fabric pencils. The trouble was that you need water to fix the colour, so you can do one of three things, (1) colour it dry, then wet it, (2)wet the pencils, or (3)work on wet fabric. I couldn't be sure there would be no colour transfer to the other side if I wet it after dry colouring, so I washed the bag, then put both a wooden and a plastic chopping board inside it to keep the two sides apart, placed the embroidered side on a towel and coloured the wet fabric.

I didn't try any fancy shading - I was more concerned to get coverage without impacting on the embroidered side of the bag.

The result is now drying - with the boards still inside to minimise any colour transfer.

In between these activities I've been working on the box side from last weekend. I have finished one side apart from the four-sided stitch border. I'm working on that now. Then all I have to do is work three more sides exactly the same - plus the accessories.

It's a very elegant design.


Yesterday I had a newsy email from my friend Christine in Watford.  She has elastic envy. There must be something I can do about that...

Tomorrow Jennifer and I are going out to lunch. I'm looking forward to it. If I'm woken by the building work I might have time to make the masks for my brother.