A Day out in Somerset

Not the best photo of the Quantocks perhaps - but it was a winding valley bottom road and I had to just try and get a pic out of the car window . . .

Whilst our eldest daughter T was here with us, we decided to have a One Day Holiday, and go and check out the Quantocks, an area of Somerset we don't know very well, but is under consideration for relocating to.  Unfortunately, on the day my husband wasn't feeling very well, and I was still recovering from the Pleurisy and an early start helped neither of us!

We stopped at Taunton to check out the town, never having been there, and to sign on with some estate agents, who promptly gave us a sheaf of property details, of which only two were remotely of interest. ("This is a lovely bungalow . . ." - we don't "do" bungalows! - and we were thinking, well, you might think it's lovely but we couldn't possibly comment . . .)  We decided to do a drive by of the two cottages we DID like, and followed directions, leaving Taunton and heading what WE assumed was North, but they meant a different small side road and not the A358 and so we missed them entirely.  I thought perhaps we could see them on the way back, and my OH agreed . . .

So we carried on driving along the A358 towards Watchet, and I saw a sign for West Bagborough, where Edward Thomas found spring (in his book "In Pursuit of Spring".)  I said, "Oh look, West Bagborough - that's where Edward Thomas went," and my husband drove on by . . .  I kept quiet.

We decided to have lunch near Kilve/East Quantoxhead, so we could look across at Wales.  (Edward Thomas got to Kilve too . . .)

As you can see, not a SANDY beach!  The land you can see beyond is Minehead.

But an interesting beach, with its layers and tilts.

Just to prove there is nothing new under the sun, this is the remains of a failed business enterprise to extract oil from shale . . .

Sorry, I missed a bit off the bottom of the board.

The chantry is right next door to - and once served -  the Manor house (now a farmhouse serving cream teas).  We stopped for a cup of tea, but all the photos we took were on my daughter's camera, for some reason.  An interesting place, and nice to think that ET had been here too!

Then we drove on to Nether Stowey, famous for being the village where Coleridge lived for some years . . .

The Cooty quilt - and friends

Well, I DID say it was past hope . . .  Absolutely rotten at the sides and nothing much savable at all except I shall try and use part of the quilting patterns on something.

Bits of infill quilting on the previously-purple material.

One of the Elder leaf patterns - as you can see, some of the stitches have already disappeared.

You can just about see a large 4-petalled motif.  I think it is closely related to the four-leaf motif in the bottom quilt piece.

OK - this is shabby and has seen better days with its patches of wear, but I love the scalloped border (even the puce flounce!) and it has beautiful quilting and patterns.  The flounce borders generally date from the 1920s and 30s, and I think this may well have been a wedding quilt from that date.

The central motif in slightly more focus.  Note the hearts in the corners of the central block.

Part of the edge quilting, as shown from the reverse of the quilt (which is actually a slightly bronzey colour, but different in the shade).

Detail of how the corner was worked, and you can just see the heart and scrolls and flowers in the central square block.

This is a detail from half an old quilt which was wrapped around a piece of furniture we bought from auction. The filling on it is lambs wool and its lovely and light.

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Detail of one of the joined-leaves quilting motif and showing the basic cable border.

The central medallion - you can just make out the design and surround.  As you can see, it had a lot of wear over the years . . .

I will try and photograph the red Paisley quilt tomorrow, but I don't think that the quilting pattern will show up very well.

Kaffe Fasset (and friends) Quilts

This was made by one of his friends.  I just loved the way she had used the colours - it just glowed.

I loved the log cabin effect on this one.

This was called Seahorses, if I remember correctly.

This had an interesting combination of colours, but I have to say, the Welsh quilts called me louder . . .

I think this is another one I forgot to turn.  I am envious of the curved seams on some of the blocks.  (The darker border inside of the lime greens one.)

A bright quilt for a winter's day, though I'm not usually keen on orange.

A close up of one of the blocks from the quilt above it.

This one is even better for cheering up a winter's day.  I don't think I could be as bold as Kaffe Fassett with the colours.

They were all very beautiful, and very colourful, very skilfully designed and my daughter loved them.  If I could take one home, it would be this zig-zag one above.

BTW, the cooty Welsh quilt had its soak last night.  The colours - beneath the dirt I could see it was a dark red material matched with a purple - didn't run, but oh my GOODNESS, the water was like black tea within seconds . . .  Anyway, I soaked it overnight and dried it on the line today.  The blanket in the middle had just rotted completely and some of the top too, but the back shows enough of a pattern for me to photograph tomorrow.  I made out a central medallion with Elder (?) leaves, and fan type pattern, and elsewhere more leaves and various geometric infills.  The stitching has disappeared in places, along with strips of the material on the front!

Gorgeous Welsh quilts from Welsh Quilt Centre exhibition

Recently my eldest daughter and I went to the Welsh Quilt Centre at Lampeter to see the exhibition of wonderful Welsh quilts and many by Kaffe Fassett.  All I can say is, it rekindled my passion for patchwork and quilting, but especially hand-quilted wholecloth quilts.  The close-up of part of the design above made me want to reach for needle and material then and there!

This beautiful yellow quilt with its scalloped edge shows the typical Welsh layout of a large central motif, and scallops interspersed with coils and geometric echoes.  Gorgeous.

And another with similar echo motifs.

The leaf pattern is on a part of an old lambswool-lined cream quilt I have.  I love the infill.

Rats!  You will have to turn your head sideways for this one.

Close up of the ivy leaf border and horse-chestnut leaf and scroll corner panel.

Another leaf close-up for you.

The whole quilt, and sorry for not turning the pic round!

I think this was made by the same quilter.

Gorgeous in scarlet . . .  

Lastly another sideways quilt, with a darker border, and totally different and unique quilting patterns.

If you are near Lampeter, DO visit the Exhibition.  HERE is the link.  I will do a post about the Kaffe Fassett quilts tomorrow.

Testing, testing . . .

Isn't this gorgeous?  It already has a new home, but it is SO vintage and retro - pure 1970s  - I knew it wouldn't hang around long . . .

A quick close-up of the pattern.

Note the sogginess of Little Whale, on the left.  He reckons the best way to dry out is to use your brother as a towel . . . and snuggle up close!

Enjoy!

Sunday witterings

 A Grecian urn filled with colour at Cothay Manor.

- or should that be Sunday gibberings?  This has been a busy week and things look like being busier, as I get my painter and decorator's hat completely in place to start going round in the wake of the builders.  At the end will be the complete window cleaning job, but as they are still painting with limewash, I have to stay my hand.

Old houses have to be allowed to breath.  Concrete render has been the death of many an old house, as it just holds in any moisture and you end up with galloping damp.  Lime mortar between the stonework is also essential, and lime render (3 coats) followed by 5 coats of limewash makes a house waterproof but breathable. Farmhouses used to have an annual coat of lime slapped on any old how (e.g. normally very thickly) but this is WHY they needed repainting every year, as the limewash needs to be slowly built up in layers  which don't crack as they do when thickly applied.

Of course, all of this comes at a hefty price, and over the years we have had to step up to the mark and abide by the Old House rules when renovating this place.  All internal walls with an external side have lime or clay paint to allow them to breath.  I prefer using the clay paint as it covers beautifully and applies like a good quality emulsion.  The limewash has to be built up with much thinner layers (gosh, I can remember doing that before clay paint was brought onto the market.)

Anyway, there is still SO much to do, and the garden needs a lot of work on it yet - mostly weeding, a bit of planting up and some mulching.  As for the veg plot, well we won't go there.  I haven't been able to dig, and cannot touch the waist length grass which is growing in part of it still.  My husband can, but hates gardening, tries not to eat vegetables and cannot understand why I want to grow them!  So it is difficult to get him to work out there.  I can only play the "We can't have it looking like this when the house goes back on the market" card . . .

Crafts have been temporarily abandoned.  When our eldest daughter was here, and then my Dorset friend, everything got put on one side, including the partly-done cane chair, so I must try and get back to this, especially as I have a child's high-chair to reseat in the same way (although the material is cut for that, and in balls).

I have an old Welsh blanket to put a small darn in, and a 1950s? Welsh quilt, ditto, so will try and do those today, and then do something with a couple of the old Welsh quilts which came part-and-parcel in an auction box of textiles bought this week (mentioned a couple of posts ago).  One looks totally beyond redemption, and is positively verminous and has been put out in the Back Place (store room off the kitchen) whilst I ruminate on how best to deal with it.  I may well have to trap it first though as it's practically moving of its own volition!!!  The design on the front is a large square of dark red cloth in the centre, and linked to smaller squares, one in each corner, and then with the very dull (or just filthy?!) backing material as infill.  Very old - Victorian - and very Amish in looks.

A 2nd - red Paisley quilt (always a Welsh favourite) has seen better days too, but I am hoping I can recover parts of it - perhaps turning them into cushion fronts, although with each quilt I want to try and photograph the quilting patterns first and possibly trace elements of them to use in future.  (I have harboured a dream to make and hand-quilt a wholecloth quilt ever since we've lived here.  I just LOVE hand-quilting. I even have the red Paisley material now which was put on one side for re-use after we bought some BIG curtains, though not a long enough drop for our bedroom.)

The 3rd quilt is clean but rather worn, and I would like to keep and use that.  One side is a bronzey colour, with a (nicer) backing of a golden satin cotton, and the scalloped edge has a puce ruffled border.  I think it was possibly made as a wedding quilt very early in the last century. 

Isn't it strange, I have come full-circle, as when we arrived here, I was so keen on patchwork and quilting, and made all sorts of things for the house and as gifts, but over the years life has gotten in the way.  Now it seems I am back to the beginning again, and as fascinated as ever by how women expressed their creativity in the past, and made practical bedcoverings.  They were always frugal, and the earlier quilts especially had a lambswool centre (where we would use a batting today), whilst others "recycled" a worn blanket (though this impacted on the quality of the quilting stitches afterwards because you just cannot manage small neat stitches through blanket!  I can remember one old quilt being held up at auction once, with a rather grim patchwork front made from old jackets by the look of things, and as it was held up, several old woollen socks fell out through a rip on a seam . . .  Waste not, want not as the saying goes!

 Photos will follow, I promise.  My son has been absent this last week, house-sitting for a friend, but he is now back and we should be able to do the final checks and moving across to the new computer stack today.

Getting rid of plastics in the kitchen

I read an article recently, which spelt out how bad plastics are for your health, and that elements of them appear in the most unlikely places.   HERE is a link which explains the downsides of using plastic.  I thought about it, and came to the conclusion that whilst I'm not panicking about it, it does make sense to try and get rid of plastic storage containers and also any plastic gizmo's in the kitchen.  First to be replaced, was my plastic colander and matching bowl, which had been useful over the years for washing fruit or veg in and leaving to drain.  I had only replaced my previous metal colander because it was useless at draining, but now I have a deep metal one with lots of holes in all the right places! (£1 from the car boot sale this morning!)

Being frugal, I had been in the habit of washing and re-using plastic bags (freezer bags spring to mind).  Perhaps that hasn't been quite such a good idea.  However, storing things in the freezer (especially left-over portions of curry and such) will be slightly more problematic now, so I shall have to put my thinking cap on and ditch the ice cream containers and the like I had been using.  I used to have foil containers which I bought from Iceland, many, many moons ago when freezers suddenly became THE thing to have way back in the 70s (though I dare say many folk had them before that).  I will have to see if they have them in Wilko's. 

The plastic linings on cans are also suspect . . . and of course bottled squashes, mineral water, anything like that.  It will take some checking of supermarkets and trying to find things in bottles and plastic-free packs, and some stuff just won't be without a plastic cover I dare say, but when I do my next grocery shop I shall try and find alternatives.  Baked beans only come in cans or those plastic fridge containers - but we only eat a can or so a week. I shall replace tinned chopped tomatoes with passata. Then start thinking about anything else I use regularly which is tinned. I will make sure I take my own home-made bags for the fruit we get at Abergwili which is normally put into their thin blue plastic bags.  My husband's home-mixed muesli will now be stored in one of my spare big earthenware jars and that will free up the big plastic storage container for holding nuts and bolts or something in his workshop.  At least our spring water comes from the tap and without a plastic wrapping, so I shall be drinking much more of that!