I can’t resist a book set in Ireland and written by an Irish writer. And if the author is a woman and the story takes place during the Troubles, even better.
From the prologue you can assume there won’t be a happy ending. Cushla is a teacher who occasionally works in her family’s pub. When Michael stops in at the pub one night there is an instant attraction. Although it isn’t specifically mentioned one is Protestant and one is Catholic. When Michael is murdered is Cushla’s affair with him the cause and is her favourite student the link between Michael and the murderer?
Lavinia is an indentured servant at a large tobacco plantation in Virginia. Here she becomes a helper to the slave Belle who runs the kitchen house. Lavinia soon becomes a favourite among all of Belle’s family and is instrumental in the care of the mistress of the plantation.
The story is told mainly through the voice of Lavinia but Belle’s story gives her take on the ups and downs of plantation life. What runs through the book are the differences between the life Lavinia has (even though indentured) and the life of the slaves.
This mug rug gave me the opportunity to try a technique I’ve only used a couple of times before – self binding. This was my first attempt and I’m pleased that it came out as well as it did. Hopefully by the time I’ve done it a few times I’ll improve.
I picked floral fabric for the card for two reasons. First, the flowers in Saskatchewan should soon be out. Secondly, April showers (or snow storms) bring May flowers.
From Little Handfuls of Scraps by Edyta Sitar (10.5″ x 14″)
This was supposed to be an easy project to put together on my April sewing day with Stacia and Deloise. It turned out to be a two-day project. All of the little pieces were pre-cut and all I needed to do was stitch together the background strips, place and press the pieces onto the background, and then quilt. Easy peasy.
All went well until I moved to my quilting machine. I picked a new quilting stitch that was very similar to the mattress stitch that I often use. My thread kept breaking and after quilting a couple of lines I gave up. I changed my needle and cleaned my machine but the next two lines were no better. I spent the rest of the day taking out all of those little curvy stitches.
On day two I went back to the mattress stitch and did some testing on sample pieces – all seemed to go well. But on my first quilting line on the project I noticed I had some skipped stitches. So out came that row of quilting and I moved to my regular piecing machine.
I ended up with random straight lines up and down and across the piece in order to catch all those little leaves and flowers. As I was sewing the binding on I realized I had forgotten the sleeve for hanging but I wasn’t about to start ripping out stitches again.
I like the finished project but it was definitely not easy.
