My Happy Place!

I've definitely visited my Happy Place today... The technician called me on Wednesday and gave me a very thorough description of what had been wrong with my machine. It appears that (at least some) Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.0 machines have come with a fault to do with the tension, and he said in my case 'bits' (my term, can't remember the term he used) had actually fallen apart and were sitting inside the machine. He replaced those under warranty and gave the machine a thorough service, and I picked up my repaired machine on Thursday; now it's almost working perfectly! I tightened the bobbin tension a bit more,  it was a bit too loose for my liking, and unfortunately the knee lift does not engage. This has never happened to me before, does anyone have any suggestions, please? I will call them and ask to have it fixed, but  if there is anything I can do, I would love to have it working over the long weekend! (It's funny how used I am to it lol).

On Wednesday we also came across a nice second hand Ikea TV unit on Gumtree and so our lounge had a little reshuffle:

Very European looking lol, but we love it:)

DH put the grey cushion on the top for the cats who even have their own 'stairs' up via the scratching post to the right lol. Of course I could not resist the chance to bring my fabrics up into the house:

Needs some sorting out, especially after I squeezed a bit more in...

The drawers are just perfect for threads etc...

but I didn't want to be greedy and take over all of it (apart from that I would have needed to refold too much fabric to fit it into the drawers on the left of the unit; I would never keep my fabrics tidy enough to have them in the open shelves!) so I had to find another space:

With my large rulers on the top shelf and my cutting board underneath:)

The batting went back into the basement (there is only so far that I can push it lol) where it will remain with my other craft things until we get to move into a bigger place (probably September).

So for the rest of the day I just tutued. The quilting is all completed on the Subway Map quilt. I have cut a very skinny binding at only 2'' because I was short on the black and I hope this will suit the design. I still didn't quite have enough so I pieced some of the left-over coloured squares and added these pieces into the binding. Tomorrow I will try to get some Elmer's School Glue so I can glue baste and stitch it on. I have also done a bit of {cough} mending - some things just have to be done.

My furry supervisor;
it's not ideal to have the sewing area in the lounge, but maybe it gets my to tidy up better?

The weather has been grey and rainy over the last 2-3 days, for all I care it can stay like this for most of this weekend - gives me more time to play:) My boys are quite happy to just blob out, term 1 finished yesterday and they will have two weeks of holidays now. Tomorrow we are expecting our first proper visitors, friends from New Zealand, so really looking forward to this!

Suzanne and I have been talking for some time about our Vintage Quilt Revival Samplers, and this is a feature fabric we are considering:

Daydream Arcadia Scarlet by Kate Spain for Moda Fabrics - Image Source

I'm very keen to get back into some regular sewing - watch this space! In the meantime I will try to find / piece a suitable backing for the Giant Chevron and start marking out what will happen to the quilting on it - really excited about that!

I hope you visit your Happy Place this Easter, too - Happy Sewing!