Yay for Piping!

It's the first day of the autumn school holidays here in south-east France; the kids have ten days off.

I find the first few days of holidays we all rebel against the normal routine before setting back into a sort of quasi-regimented timetable.  This is why I'm blogging in my pyjamas at 1130am. The kids are watching Scooby Doo (in French, it's educational!) in their pyjamas. The baby's even gone back to bed, that bum.

Later we're going to get dressed and collect pine cones for some craft activity that I've not yet thought up. Plenty of time for that.

I forgot to mention that our little petrol station received a batch of fuel that lasted about 20 hours on Thursday. The mister tipped me off after he drove past on the way to work, so we raced down and filled up the tank. The line was only three deep, which surprised me.

The next day I went into Eurodif in search of piping. Eurodif is a bit like Target, but smaller, and with a haberdashery section. A small haberdashery section. That doesn't sell white piping. But it did sell thick white bias ribbon by the metre as well as cord, so I bought some of both to make my own.

Thankfully my zipper foot was in a good mood and I whipped up some piping and finally sewed the Monaluna cushion together. I'm really glad I waited.

I loved the selvedge pictures on the Circa 50 fabric and wanted to incorporate them into the cushion. I fussy-cut the little houses and sewed them together to make a little panel, which I included on the back.

I was supposed to quilt the cushion cover but for some reason forgot to (am I the only person who does dumb things like this all the time?) - I remembered just after sewing on the piping. I wanted to quilt it to strengthen the seams, as cushions take a fair bit of wear and tear around our house.

There was no way I was taking off that piping, so instead I cut to size pieces of heavy iron-on interfacing and ironed them onto the reverse sides of the cushion's front and rear (two for the rear, above and below the zip). This will hopefully reinforce my seams and has the added bonus of stiffening the cushion so it sits very nicely (cushion posture is very important).

When I arrived at Eurodif it was still a half-hour from opening, so I had to spend that time browsing the Aix-en-Provence market. (Yes, life is hard.) There was a fabric merchant selling provençal prints, and I bought myself a metre of this.

It's a traditional pattern, but on the subdued taupe I find it looks very modern.

I was also upset to find a linen sale underway at Eurodif when I arrived. I bought some stripy and solid pillowcases purely for their material. I have been inspired, yet again, by Rita of Red Pepper Quilts and her stripy "In A Spin" quilt.

Pillowcases are a great way to amass a varied stripe collection (especially when the back side has a different stripe, like these two.) I haven't enough yet, so I guess it's more linen sales for me, darn-it.

I also picked up an assortment of stripy tea-towels.

I'm hoping to use them to dress up a sad, empty wall along our stairway.

I'll let you know if it works out!