Postcard nostalgia

A postcard of Dovecote Street, Stockton-on-Tees, from the High Street - c. 1960? No, it's a bit later - I've spotted a mini outside of Collingwoods on the far right*. I love the array of parked cars at the front of this card! More or less as I remember it from when I was little. It is now pedestrianised and you can't park on the High Street either. I'll take a photo to compare with this next time I visit.

I am planning a project for vintage postcards for sometime next year, although I am going to use cards from the Japan British Exhibition (1910), held at White City, London. The juxtaposition of the Japanese gardens and buildings with the slightly surreal Asian architecture of the White City, the terrifying fairground rides (like the Flip Flap, the V-shaped contraption in the background of the second card) and the hordes of Edwardian visitors in their best holiday outfits creates an interesting effect. Wouldn't it be interesting to travel back in time to see it?


*UPDATE - I did an image search for the Dovecote Street postcard and found it on the Frith Collection website (it is a Frith card). The site dates it c.1965. So about the same age as me!

Plastic Bags

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8123521.stm

Looks like I will have to start buying bin liners again!

If people were more responsible in their re-use of plastic bags (i.e. not littering the countryside with them), the whole plastic bag issue wouldn't be so much of a problem.

Last year, our wheelie bin collection became fortnightly. The bin was last collected on Wednesday. It already stinks. We bin very little food waste, but leftover cat food, fish skins, bones, etc. have to go in the bin. Unless we switch the cats to dried cat food (they refuse to eat without some wet food) and start living on ready meals (i.e. no waste) this isn't going to change. Wrexham County Borough Council's suggestion to stop waste smelling in the bin? Put all your rubbish in a sealed up plastic bag first...

So, if there are to be no one-use carrier bags, I will have to buy bin bags, which have far more plastic in them - even the small ones are larger and thicker than a Sainsbury's free carrier bag.

I don't like a lot of the "eco friendly" bags sold by supermarkets. The hessian ones can't be cleaned or sterilised and some of the plastic "bags for life" are quite flimsy (handles that tear off) while others use many, many times the amount of plastic used in an ordinary supermarket carrier. The calico bags that we use, bought years ago, can be washed on a hot programme. But is it really more eco-friendly to have to hot wash your carrier bags every month? They start to smell if you don't. Or do you just keep using that hessian bag until you finally do get salmonella poisoning via that chicken you carried home in it last week?

I might get a roll of bin bags next time I shop and insist on opening them at the checkout so I can pack my groceries in them!

Pontcysyllte Acqueduct becomes a World Heritage Site

Click here for story.

More photos here.

"21 Sensational Patchwork Bags" - the very last hardback copy...

I thought I had sold the last one, but there was one more in the sales box. I have listed it on an eBay charity auction, with 20% of the final auction price going automatically to the British Heart Foundation.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270416715393

It is a 10 day auction... so good luck bidding!

Thoughts on tacking quilt layers

I don't usually tack (baste) quilts using diagonal lines nowadays (as seen in the scrap quilt photo in my previous post). This method, using a slanting diagonal stitch on top and a horizontal stitch underneath, in lines radiating from the centre, was something I learned from Japanese quilt books, very like a tailor's padstich. There are some advantages over tacking in straight lines - the stitches hold the layers together quite firmly and there is little chance that a whole line of tacking is going to clash with where you want to quilt. It takes a bit longer to remove though!

When I laid the quilt flat yesterday, the borders definitely looked a bit wavy, like there was slightly too much fabric in them. This illusion was caused by having tacking the centre quite densely and also starting quilting in the centre (about a third of the centre panel is quilted). As I tacked the borders, the waviness started to disappear.

If I am only going to quilt straight lines, it can be as effective to tack fairly close along each line, and not bother to tack at right angles. That is what I did yesterday. It seems to hold the layers just as well. I try not to have the stitches going in and out of the fabric in exactly the same rhythm, as that makes the quilt seem wavy.