Last Saturday found us in Harrow-on-the-Hill (so we could attend the very lovely wedding of Dan and Charlotte) and we began the morning watching the boys of Harrow school scurry to classes, laden with folders and with their distinctive boaters on their heads.
Since we were many miles from our home in the North-East of England, we were in need of a lunch. This we combined with a meeting with the ‘High Six Media’ duo, one of whom suggested ‘Blues’ Tapas Bar. A vegetarian tapas set of dishes for two and a meat-eater’s set for two pleased everybody and the food was both delicious and as authentically Spanish as any I have tasted on the Iberian peninsula – wonderful.
I also spotted this tiled doorway, nearby, which could come in useful in due course for a spot of patchwork.
There was a bit of time to spare on Sunday before launching into the long journey home, so we made a visit to ‘Kenwood House’, managed by English Heritage, but free to visit, which allowed us to see for the first time the famous self-portrait by Rembrandt (which was marvellous) and the Vermeer painting ‘The Guitar Player’ which I found in the flesh (as it were) to be rather wooden and disappointing.
The house, which has recently been renovated, includes a beautiful library designed by Robert Adam and the combination of colours I saw there will go straight into a quilt design: soft blue, sugar pink, pale turquoise blue and lots of white. I think it will be a small double bed-quilt and I can hardly wait to start. There were deep cyclamen pink sofas in the room, too, so maybe a touch of that colour would work in the quilt.
The current week’s designing has stayed with stripes, but unlike last week’s bag, the stripes are on the inside – not the outside – of the bag. I’m keen to keep going with the re-cycling; that was always the tradition in the North-East where every scrap of material was used, if not for quilts, then for ‘proggy mats’ (rag rugs). So I created two pretty zipped pouches made entirely from recycled fabrics. The cloth came from charity shops in Harrogate, one of which was having a clear-out before re-decorating and where shoppers were invited to fill a bag for a pound! Buttons were cut off worn-out shirts and zips were all from re-cycled garments.
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