Welcome to my world

My older sister Julia, who comments on this blog as "rolleiflex", usually holding back the much funnier comments she has circulating in her head in case you lot think she's mean, has written a little insight for you all into my sewing room.  I should quickly add here that my first choice sewing room was hijacked by my husband as his study which seemed unfair at the time as I have to camp out on the dining room table but, as the dining room table is big enough to baste quilts on and as I can see the telly and shout at the kids from where I sit sewing, I am trying to make my peace with this decision.  Anyway, here is my sister Julia at our recent family party so you can see what she looks like.

And here you can see me (far right) and a ton of kids and my brother-in-law and my Mum and Dad at the same party.

And here is what Julia had to say about my sewing room: Walking into Lily’s Quilts quilting room is like walking into Winston Churchill’s war cabinet room. It is impressive, intimidating and obviously the place where ALL IMPORTANT DECISIONS are made. By Churchill himself, or rather Lynne. The table is at least octagonal, she has at least 8 chairs to choose from, a view of the garden or down into the sunken sitting room with the roaring fire and conservatory just beyond it. The walls are red and black (the previous owners liked colour in a big way) and there is even a secret staircase leading up and out to an unknown location.

On the table is the mother of all sewing machines with lights, a LED screen, an automatic bobbin winder (to die for when you still have an old hand Singer machine), and all sorts of accessories that mere mortals cannot possibly ever hope to learn how to use.  On the massive table are envelopes containing bee blocks arriving from around the world, envelopes containing bee blocks waiting to be sent around the world, snippets of material, a mini sewing machine owned by one of my nieces and lots of piles of QALs, UFOs, WIPs and scissors galore.

Behind the sewer (ie Lynne) there is an iron and cutting board set up on an old drinks cabinet. The drinks have dust on them. Who has time to drown their sorrows when there is this much work to be done?

And the best bit, even for a very amateur sewer like me, are the rows of boxes of all shapes and sizes piled up along the edges of the room FULL of fab material (fab fabric sounded wrong here). Tons and piles and lashings of beautiful prints from colours to solids to large pieces to minute centimetres of stuff. All waiting to be sewn into something else.  This is a little fraction of the boxes lining the walls of the room.

The rest of the house has quilts lining the walls, quilted cushions on the sofas, quilted mug rugs and children lounging under quilts.

The grand tour ended in me having a go at free motion quilting. I ‘wrote’ Lily’s Quilts in a style that looked like one of those photos of spider’s webs done by a spider sky high on dope. This was honestly my best effort.

 Then Lily did her best effort.

And that is why she usually writes this blog and not me.