Titled Book

The title is on Chris Fletcher's book - not done by me. I know my limitations. I think this looks rather smart.

 

I have had a busy two days and another busy two are in front of me. On Thursday, I spent the day getting ready for Friday for reasons which will become clear. On Friday I was on the road at 0815 driving to the NEC in Birmingham for the annual Sewing for Pleasure show. I met Ruth, my daughter there and we had a great time. Last year I went by myself and was commissioned by Ruth to investigate sergers. This year, we inspected every serger  in the show and had several demonstrations. We settled on a Janome which will be delivered in a few days to me!! It is a shared purchase but Ruth is off to Manila so I get it first.  I spent a lot of time looking for a suitable silky lining for some green velvet I am about to turn into a waistcoat. It is a yellow green and I could find nothing suitable. Then I realised that it did not have to be silky as there are no sleeves and I could use cotton and then there was no problem. I bought a substitute for JetFx which looks really good and will enable me to deal with the concertina book I have woven in double cloth. And other useful bits of haberdashery which were on my list. What was not on my list was the length of Linton Tweed I have fallen for. Oh well. Ruth bought lengths of cotton fabric for summer tops and a lot of lengths of Jacquard ribbon. Very nice. They came from The Cotton Patch who are in Birmingham.

 

Then home and getting ready to have a load of bookbinders round for supper. One of them brought round a copy of Gerard's Herbal!!!! An original which is 17th century!! The textblock is good shape but the covers are awful, very badly worn. You can hardly see the decorative tooling. I have never held anything like that in my hands before. Washing up late at night. Today I go to a bookbinding course all day and then race off to Stratford to see The Jew of Malta.

 

Tomorrow I need to deliver the Coptic Shroud so it can be displayed in the Coffin Works in Birmingham. As I said a busy few days. And in all of this, I have started knitting the sleeves on the Aland Island jerkin .