Made in China

This will be a short post for all my quilting friends and the ladies of Bow River Quilters. As for all of he rest of you who tease me about being a quilter just move along, nothing to see here.

In my previous post I showed you my very sparse sewing space. I have since added a shelf from IKEA . I think it looks great and couldn’t have fit better in the space.

The baskets on the bottom shelf came wrapped flat in plastic and you had to unwrap them, square them up, fold down the bottom, secure it and voila, instant basket. So I did that and a couple of days later I was walking down the hallway and there was a cockroach! I just went OMG (Oh My God) and ran! Then I had this argument in my head…I can’t touch that…well you can’t leave him there…what am I going to do?…you have to smack him…and then what?…scoop him up and flush him! So I did, very quickly with with my eyes half closed and my teeth gritted. Then I shut the lid on the toilet because I read that cockroaches can hold their breath under water for forty minutes and could crawl out. Believe me when I say that I always check before I use that toilet now.

If you look on the top shelf there is a little iron. I picked it up at The Cat Street Market in Hong Kong for $10 CAD, after haggling a bit, of course. It is the cutest thing and I just love it! It has some writing on it that I want to get someone to translate and it opens up so you could put hot coals in it so it can be used as an iron.

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I have started to decorate a little and have a made a bed runner and cushion from fabric that I brought from home. Next up on the project list is to recover the bench and make a cushion cover from the grey fabric that I also brought from Canada. I just need to get my hands on a staple gun. That will require a trip to Old Shekou where there are lots of little ‘Mom and Pop’ shops filled with interesting things.

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As for quilting I have brought along a couple projects that will keep me busy for awhile. I haven’t started these yet.

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I did start on this project which I think will be absolutely beautiful. It’s a Block of the Month by Edyta Sitar, one of my favourite quilt designers.

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The only problem I am having is that the pattern calls for working with 1 1/2” squares, which are very small and do not lay flat after you iron them. I was wishing I had brought some spray starch with me. So what do you do when you don’t have access to something like that here…you make your own spray starch! A simple google search gives you the recipe. Two cups of water and 2 oz of vodka. I decided I didn’t have anything to lose and if it didn’t work out we could always drink the vodka. But it worked like a charm!

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Now only nineteen more blocks to go for the first month!