Mindless sewing to get back into it

Once the sewing room was cleaned up and the urgent mending out of the way, I did some mindless piecing, to get my hand and eye back in.  In my collection of scraps are many pieces I've cut into specific sizes.   

Here's the little box of  1/2" x 2 1/2" pieces.  I've sorted them into colours and am making small crumb blocks with them, each block with 18 pieces, finishing at 6"

I also have a small box of 1" pieces (what was I thinking?!!)

I've also sorted these into colours and have made 2" finished blocks from them, 16 pieces of fabric in each one.  Despite the large number of 1" pieces, any quilt made from them will be small.  There is a lot of piecing in each block.  

 

I'm just about at the stage now where my brain is ready to deal with "real" sewing and I hope to get some of the planned baby quilts finished in the next few weeks.  

Finally home and sewing

Home sweet home!  Finally back home properly, after first nine + weeks and then four + weeks away, with four weeks at home between.  In that four weeks home, I was so busy including a week in hospital, that I got no sewing at all done.   However, life is now back to normal and this week I've been  in the sewing room properly for the first time since May.  First I did some urgent mending then the fun stuff.  I could only cope with mindless piecing but that was fine by me.  Audiobook on and away I went.  Before I sewed though, I did clean the room - vacuuming all the cobwebs and dust bunnies, and wiping down major surfaces.  So I feel like a new sewist!

While overseas, I did see some amazing textiles and embroideries.  Since I don't have much of my own to share, I will show you a few of my favourite pieces.  

First - from the Raustenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne, Germany.  I do like ikat!  😍

            

Hardanger embroidery and knitwear in the folk museum in Oslo, Norway.  I quite like hardanger embroidery and have done a few pieces myself.  

 

Wonderful embroideries in the national museum in Reykjavik, Iceland.  

            

And some nice embroidered folk costumes in the Rupe Museum (the ethnographic museum) in Dubrovnik, Croatia.  

           

There were some great examples of lacework in Dubrovnik's musum, as well as in the lace museum on the island of Burano in Venice, Italy.  That is a great little museum, with some wonderful examples of various types of lace.  Disappointingly on this visit, there was nobody demonstrating lacemaking.  

I still haven't sorted all the photos from our two holidays, so what I've posted here are maybe not the best examples of the wonderful textiles I saw while travelling.