No signal!

Our telly went a bit silly last week. Here in the UK we’re in the middle of a digital switchover and all our analogue channels are being switched off. As part of this, our local news region has shifted from ‘South’ England to ‘South East’ England. I’m sure you can imagine the havoc this has wrought. No longer do we hear about the latest contraptions devised for Worthing Birdman (an annual competition in which locals build flying machines to lift them highest and furthest over the town pier). Oh no. Now all we hear about is overcrowding, overworking, overcommuting, overeating, overpaying – overeverythinging (oh yeah, and the latest poncy art gallery to pop up on our coastline (I am an art lover, I promise, but it does seem that a new ‘art space’ has become the latest fix-all solution thrown at communities in need of ‘regeneration’ in the UK)).

So, when we discovered that we had no signal coming into our telly last week, we decided to keep it just that way. And what a revelation it’s been! Our evenings and weekends are longer, we sing, we potter, and I genuinely think we are happier. With everything now available on catch-up, we can still watch what we want, but in our own time. AND, I’ve had all the time in the world to drool over and buy lots of new fabric to build up my quilting stash, and get started on some exciting new projects! Check out some of my latest...

I’m turning the scraps from our wedding bunting into lovely pin wheels. These really are scraps so they’re fiddly but really good practice on my sewing machine... Liberty fabric from Sunflower Fabrics.

Some lovely vintage strips and squares from Vintage Fabric Market and Cotton Patch. Not sure how to combine these yet but some are already being put to use in a baby quilt for some expecting friends...

And, all the way from the US, Denyse Schmidt’s Flea Market Fancy (left) and Hope Valley (far right) ranges from Hawthorne Threads, and Lotta Jansdotter’s Echo range (middle) from FabricHQ. Some of these are definitely going into a picnic quilt for us!

And here’s The Wolbag watching over them all. He shouldn’t be on the table but how could I spoil his basking?