Summerhouse barge boards and roof trims

This weekend, we are hoping to get the barge boards designed, cut and added to the summerhouse gables, and get the home made onigawara roof finials on too.  Like this large onigawara ("demon tile" - photo below) near the Sanno Club, Sakata city, it will be wired in place as well as secured at the bottom.

We always intended to do something decorative with the barge boards and I am taking my inspiration from these old barge boards I saw displayed in the entrance to the kura storhouse at Kyu Abumiya, a nineteenth century merchants house in Sakata city which is now a museum (and was used as a film location for the recent remake of 'Oshin').

 

Our boards are white upvc, so the design will be cut out rather than carved into the boards.  The clouds are the same kind of motif as I used for the onigawara.  Apparently, having clouds and water swirls on the roof protects against leaks.  First we will need to make a note of where the rafters wil touch the back of the barge boards, so we don't end up with any rafter ends showing through the cut outs.

This is the back of Kyu Abumiya.  I am not sure where the boards in the kura porch came from, whether from the house itself or off the ends of the kura.  The model of the house and kura shows a traditional style of roof weighted down with stones.

Other ideas have come from temple architecture.  The gate at the shrine at Mount Iwaki has some beautiful carving, again mainly on a theme of water.

I liked this leafy detail, but I think it might be a bit tricky to do as a cut out.  Or maybe not, if the circles could be drilled straight through?

We won't have these rather magnificent elephants on the ends!

  

We will do something similar to the central section under the eaves on the gatehouse at Hirosaki castle, as we need something to hide the join at the top of the bargeboards.  This could work out quite well.

 

I took a lot of photos of roofs and gables on my last few trips, so I would have plenty of reference material for this.  The following roofs are on the gates at the Honma Honya (the former official residence of the Honma family) in Sakata city, which dates from the eighteenth century.

1718 coverlet book talk at the AGM

I gave my talk on the making of the 1718 coverlet book at the Quilters' Guild AGM and Conference "A Celebration of Quilting" on Friday morning. I was only the second speaker of the day, after Katie Chaplin's excellent kimono dressing demo and talk, and the first using the projector screens, so I'm happy that everything technical went perfectly.  My audience seemed to enjoy the talk and we had a flurry of book sales on the Guild's sales stand over the weekend, so hopefully we have inspired a few more quilters to have a go at making some of the blocks, or at least enjoy the eye candy in the book.

I used some of the block images as my slides, showing how fantastic the high resolution photos were we had taken for the book, and (with their permission) I also included lots of screenshots of the lovely new blocks being made by members of the 1718 Quiltalong on Facebook.

 

I had Maureen Poole's 'Cantata' wallhanging displayed just to my right, but I haven't got a single photo where you can see it!

On the Guild sales stand later in the afternoon, with the digitally printed 1718 fabric banner hanging behind us.

There was so much more to the weekend, and we enjoyed all the lectures we attended, including talks by Gillian Travis, Phillipa Naylor, Isobel Hall, Angie Hughes and Stuart Hillard - this is a link to the original conference programme for 2015, so you can see how much was on offer last weekend.  The best part is meeting up with quilting friends from far and near.  I have so many friends that I would never have met if I hadn't joined the Guild (I've been a member since 1998).  For anyone interested in any aspect of patchwork and quilting or textiles generally, it really is the most amazing social network to be part of, and you don't need to fit a particular stitching niche in either style or standard to join.  You can join online now too.  Val Shields first told me about the Guild in the 1990s and at the AGM meeting on Saturday, she was awarded Honorary Membership for her services to quilting - very well deserved and a complete surprise!

While we were away, I started planning my 'Micra Mystique' quilt properly, and have decided that it will feature a Mariners Compass centre.  The two tone silk satin I ordered from eBay arrived on Thursday afternoon, just before I set out for the AGM, so I've been working out various details now I've seen the fabric.  I think it might end up being a magazine project too.

Car repair and quilt inspiration

We put the replacement door on the Micra last night, removing the one that was very badly dented a couple of weeks ago.  I want to make a small quilt (or perhaps a couple of back seat cushions) capturing the amazing 'Chromaflair' paint, with the car done in applique.  I've got some two tone silk on order and might mix in some shot cotton in the same mixture, and I think I should take other fabric ideas from the door panel trim - I think the middle one could be recreated on fabric with wax crayon resist.

The door I managed to track down on eBay had already had the internal trim removed, otherwise it would have been a much more straightforward job.  Glyn had the knack to prise off the door panel.

The central locking works via the plug in cable in near the hinges, so that wasn't too hard to do.

Unbolting the hinges, with me holding the door up.  We got another set of hinges with the 'new' door, just in case the dent had twisted our hinges, but they were fine to reuse.

The 'new' door.   It has some very superficial scuffs which should polish out.

So, from this...

 

... to this!  You really can't tell that the door came from another vehicle - the paint job is identical.  I've sometimes needed to match out of print fabric but, until this happened, I had no idea that matching car paint finishes could be even trickier.  So the little car is ready for me to drive down to the Quilters' Guild conference this weekend, where I'm one of Friday's speakers.  And it has given me an idea for a quilt exploring that colour effect.

Summerhouse - window sills and trims

Today has been lots of fiddly finishing off jobs on the window sills and trims, with Glyn doing a lot of whittling and shaping with a craft knife to get the parts to sit tight together.  The shingles are finished and painted now, but I will add another coat of paint before the outside is complete.  We got two more tins of the Cuprinol 'Garden Shades' paint yesterday, in the closing down sale for the Perth branch of Homebase (the one in Dundee is staying open and, in any case, I've found their usual prices are a little higher than B & Q for many things).

The sides of the windows are finished with an architrave strip which slightly overlaps the join between frame and wall board, which was already sealed with a bitumen strip.

We sourced the hardwood sills via eBay.  They have a groove routed out underneath so rainwater can't run back against the wall.  I guess because most times people buy a door or a window with the sill as part of the complete piece, there isn't much call for sill as a stripwood, which is why we couldn't get anything locally.  They also needed to be slightly wider than usual - most sills are just the width of a door. Glyn screwed them in place and we will seal across the top edge between sill and window with a silicone sealant.  The side windows are not very exposed to the weather, due to the large overhang on the eaves, but the gothic window on the back is a little more exposed.

Glyn trying the sill on the gothic window for size.

Drilling the pilot holes for the screws.

The side window trims finished, with lots of screw holes to fill before I can paint them.

What remains of our Ferret Fabrications workshop pencil!

The Micra Mystique - a future classic

 

We got one of these cute little Nissan Micra cars (they were called the Nissan March in Japan) last Autumn, after spotting it for sale second hand at a local garage that we often drive past.  The two tone colour is amazing - orange and pinkish purple, designed to appeal to quilters - and it had very, very low mileage for a car that was nearly 15 years old.  It was also in amazing condition.  We didn't know much about it when we bought it, but spotted that things like the aircon and hifi systems were much higher quality items than you'd usually find in a small car.  It is easy and fun to drive, and I've even managed to cram a full kimono talk into the back.  We like it so much, we decided it might be worth keeping as a future classic.

Unfortunately, some idiot managed to drive into it while it was parked near Glyn's office just after the Easter holiday.

 

It must have been a van or a truck to hit the rear door so high up.   It is even higher than the Land Rover bumper.  We haven't found out who did it, but the police have been looking at CCTV camera footage in the area, so there is a chance they might find the culprit and they are looking to charge them for driving away from the scene of an accident if they do.

We were sure the car would be written off by the insurers, as the bodywork repair would be expensive and it is an old car = not worth a lot of money.  It seemed a real shame for relatively little damage, as it was only the door that was hit (luckily!)

I started looking for another door, with the idea of having it resprayed.  I quickly found out that the paint job could cost more than the cost of the car!   Apparently, the paint added about £1500 to the cost of the car when new, and it is done with metallic particles in clear layers.

The paint is called Chromaflair.   There's a real paint sample on the back of the brochure, although it didn't scan very well. It looks more purple here - the colour of the car under street lighting.  The orangey gold shows up better in daylight.

eBay came to the rescue.  I found a seller who was breaking the same model for parts, via a listing for another part, contacted him and we drove down to Birmingham to pick it up on Friday morning, before setting up for World Textile Day.  The replacement door is slightly scuffed, but there is no deep damage and it should polish out.  We are feeling very, very lucky.  It has all been a series of bizarre coincidences, starting with me finding a pot of acrylic craft paint with exactly the same colour effect when I was teaching at Tudor Rose Patchwork just before Easter - I bought it thinking it might come in handy to retouch a small scuff on the bumper.

While I've been hunting, I also found an original sales brochure up for grabs on eBay so, with a view to starting to show the car in a few years' time, we got that too.  Searching around on the internet, I found out that only 1000 of these cars were made and, as of Autumn 2014, there were only 341 still on the road.  There must be a few less now, including the one that provided the replacement door.  We've decided to look out for another car the same, with the idea that we'd gradually morph the two cars into one, as necessary to keep a Mystique going for another few decades at least.  So if anyone spots another of these for sale, please let me know.

With the two tone effect, it would also make a fun subject for a shot cotton quilt!