A Village Quilter

Slightly philosophical - a bit of an unusual title for me - but hopefully all will become clear (don't worry there are some photos later on LOL). We discussed at our last class how we'd like to develop things for next year. Bren says she isn't looking to run an advanced class as such and wondered what out thoughts were. I do really enjoy the classes and in particular the group we have is great - very generous with comments and ideas and great fun to spend time with. However the commitment, both cost and time, is significant and it does limit other classes I can attend. Don't think I'm having a moan about the classes - I'm not - I've learnt loads and I've really enjoyed meeting the group, I've made some great friends. One idea I had would be to run a quarterly meeting at a local village hall (near to the Bramble Patch so we can go for a bit of retail therapy) where we could meet for the day and socialise, perhaps later on have a talk by a local artist...

Well we had a great day at Bramble Patch dyeing and screen printing fabric. I've photographed the ones I did. First is one of the pieces I dyed last moth - I screen printed over it a number of times with a mix of turquoise and gold paint - using a Thermofax stock screen. This piece I screen printed with scarlet and a transparent yellow. This one was screen printed with a crackle style screen - using cobalt blue and gold. And finally used two screens on this one - and both red and yellow paints. Here are my in progress photos of the large piece of calico I prepared for tray dyeing - here it is soaking away. And here's a section of it rinsed, dried and ironed. I must say I'm rather pleased. It only sat in the tray of dye for just 4 hours. We also had a baby shower as one of our class members had a baby girl - she came along with her husband and mother. They all looked very happy - and baby was very cute and well behaved. I've actually started in my note book too. I wat...

Yep - it's Wednesday and here I am posting... As you saw on my last blog I was getting a piece of calico ready for my dyeing class - so I thought I'd show you what it looks like now I've pulled all the threads together. Here's the back: And here's the front: I'm really looking forward to seeing how it dyes. I also wanted to say what a great quilting meeting we had on Monday - it was an unplanned show and tell plus a chat about our marks at Trentham. One of our members has done a fantastic job of machine quilting our quilt to raffle at our festival . Our chosen charity this year is LOROS . It does look really great. He also had a large quilt it had taken him 7 months to hand quilt - it really looks fantastic. We had a glass of bubbly to celebrate one of our members getting second place in the bed quilt category. And our newest member had finished the small quilt she was working on. So all in all a celebratory evening. I've also taken the brave step of using ...

For a change I'm getting ready for my next class at Bramble Patch - instead of my usual rush of just stuffing things in the car in the morning. I don't think this photo is great but hopefully you can make out the circle I've drawn and then stitched on the calico. I'm then going to pull the threads to manipulate the fabric and then we'll see how it tray dyes. The aim is to use the fabric on the back of this quilt - here's a sneaky peak.... Yes it's very pink... And I just had to include this photo of Flo - who was very cute and wrapped herself up in her quilt. That's a paw poking out of the front and her bum sticking out of the back. I've also been thinking of ways to try to crack on with sketchbooks. I know it;'s not unusual to have a bit of a inferiority complex - especially when you look at some. But I'm determined to get over it. One thing I've realised is that I don't have a clue how to use a number of very basic artists material...

Well - it's meant to be Spring, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was winter again. The weather has been very strange over the last week or so. Snow, bright sunshine, hailstorms, sleet and rain - we've had it all. So our trip to Trentham for the 'Quilts in the Garden show' started off with a snow covered landscape - very pretty. With strong sun it very soon cleared to a bright cold day. By 4 in the afternoon it was snowing again. We had it all weather wise. I really enjoyed the show - and a member of our group enjoyed a little more than the rest of us as this year she was placed 2nd in the bed quilt competition. I was lucky as my quilt was shown so you see the back. Did any of you go to the show? What did you think? I do have some photos of the show and I'll sort these out for later in the week. Bobby Britnell was there - she has some great sketchbooks - I walked away with sketchbook envy. She does workshops and I'm sorely tempted to go on one. As you ...