An Exciting Day!

Today I am really excited!! So excited in fact that I hardly slept last night and have the monster of all headaches! It feels a little like Christmas morning for me as The Studio is about to arrive any minute! Heres a photo of the base ready!

We've had a very productive couple of weeks and have the block and beam floor down now - it's almost finished, just a few cut blocks to be done but Paul is away and Richard works such long hours that with the time constraints he can't do much in the way of "noisy" work but he laid the blocks and found plenty to do over the Bank Holiday weekend.

note my car parked in the garage for the first time!

We are currently having to juggle financially as the mortgage company decided to give us less money for the stage two release - this in itself is so frustrating when we've budgeted really carefully. It means we cannot order things like bricks and tiles (not exactly luxury items but really important) so this will no doubt put our schedule behind! We have to keep going back to the drawing board and decide what is a priority now - we do need to fit out the studio so that we can actually live in it whilst we build the house but unfortunately there's simply not enough money - bugger!! 
So we will be in the caravan for a tad longer; I blow hot and cold about this - its OK most of the time, I have all the cooking facilities I need and have in fact cooked some lovely meals, the bed is pretty uncomfortable and I do dream of being reunited with my own bed and then there's the shower, well, here lies the real problem, its a dribble not exactly luxurious so I would like most of all a hot, powerful shower!! We are moving the caravan next weekend to the driveway and I will lose 50% of my living space overnight! The dogs currently live and sleep in the awning and will have to come into the caravan which isn't ideal and will be very smelly!!

Preparation before it goes in the indigo vat

I'm not doing much on the textile front - I was supposed to be going to Edwina MacKinnon's house today to meet with all the ladies from my textile group, we were having an indigo day! Im sorry i'll miss this but really need to be on site! I'll have a go on my own as I bought an indigo starter kit - for those of you who don't have a clue what im talking about heres a couple of pics:

                          The result after pole wrapping

                  

And so i'll be back tomorrow with photos of my studio, well half of it as it takes 2 days! see you soon....

Wx

Latest progress & Festival of Quilts

Here we are in August and Maple Barn is growing steadily albeit below ground! Lots of trenches and pipe work, concrete and blocks - we were warned that so much money is spent where you can't actually see it and it turns out to be right! 
We have had so much soil taken away now - 61 lorries in total at 20 tonnes each time, it is certainly a lot of 'muck' but we are fairly confident that there won't be much more (?!!)

The studio is progressing well and the concrete slab is down, services are in and this coming weekend Richard will be putting gravel boards in to secure the ground around it. The studio and the house are all ordered and in manufacture as I type and we expect delivery to be at the very end of August to middle-end of September.

The footprint of the house is taking shape in the form of block work and Paul is preparing the site now for the block and beam floor which is currently in design and then stone which will surround (and cover the mud) the whole of the area outside of the house for scaffolding ready to receive the building itself.


This will make a huge difference for us living on site, trying to stay one step ahead of the weather and laying boards to walk on in order to stay as clean as possible is a nightmare; I've renamed the breed of our dogs- they were once Cocker Spaniels, now they're are affectionately known as 'mud hounds'!! I've had them clipped very short to keep them a bit cleaner but its a battle.

At some stage fairly soon we will have to move the caravan... This is attracting mixed reviews! We are situated quite high up (see previous photos) and we are going to be moving to the front of the site - Richard (who is an engineer) assures me that with simple planning and strategy it will be easy, (I'm less confident - that is by the way how we work together!!)It will be fun and I think I may start selling tickets for the event!

We had another mixed week of weather but managed a beer with Paul the builder and Tommy the bricklayer on Saturday!

And we celebrated my niece Millie's 1st birthday too, she's so adorable I can't resist posting a few photos!!

I did have a massive attack of cabin fever this week and we decided to go off for a mid week mini break and stayed at a friends house. It was so nice to have a real shower and a proper bed and a comfy sofa and big TV!! I'm now back on site and suitably refreshed to plod on with living in my trailer!!  


Textiles News:
A huge event in the Quilting and textiles calendar at the NEC this week is 'Festival Of Quilts'. It attracts a huge international following and I went along yesterday. There were some amazing textile creations and some of the art quilts were incredible.

Here are some of the photos I took yesterday: 

Edwina MacKinnon's 4Seasons

Ineke Berlyn

Linda Kemshall Close up

Linda Kemshall

My absolute favourite -close up

One of my favourite Art Quilts

Love this one!

Amazing perspective

and finally I have been building a website using TicTail an incredibly easy user friendly site where set up takes only minutes! I'm not quite ready to launch it yet, I still have more items to finish and or make but it wont be long before The Maple Barn Company is ready for business...

See you soon Wendi x