A Village Quilter

I've had a lovely day today sewing with the Rocheberie Schoolhouse Quilters. It's always nice to catch up with such lovely quilters and bloggers: Sew create it The Contented Quilter Quilting in Chaos Master of Patience There was a great speaker as well - Gail Lawther . She described the influence her visits to New Zealand had had on her and also showed us the great work she'd produced. As you can see I just had to buy the book. We were also very lucky as we got a Christmas pressie too - a charm pack of lovely fabrics. I'm afraid the cake we had didn't last long enough for me to take a photo of - but I can assure you it was very very nice (and a very generous slice it was too). So all in all a great day. As you can see from the photos below there were lots of us there.

Thought I'd let you know about a great book that Radio 4 will be having as their book for Bookclub . The programme format is the audience will have the book and the author, John Irving, is there to answer them. I can't begin to tell you what a great book it is. I've always found that John Irving books always make me laugh, when I know I shouldn't and always have surprises in them. This one is so funny in places but so moving in others. If you do get time to read it - please do. I can promise it will stay with you. I have finally got round to making some things for Christmas - but I'm sure you'll appreciate that I won't be able to share these with you until Christmas. Luckily I've got a sewing day tomorrow in a neighbouring village hall - so I've got a list of things I want to crack on with. If you're in the UK take care this weekend as it sounds like we're going to have some rather bad weather. Take care.

I had a great day yesterday playing. I had a great class with Mikki - who I originally met at Bren's class at Bramble Patch. It was a really good day and I'll show you in more detail how I'm going to use the techniques I've learnt. I've certainly got a much better idea about how to use some of the stuff I've acquired over the years. Watch this space... And now to Flo - the strangest cat we've ever had in our life - and she's number 6. Well we took her to the vets to make sure there was nothing wrong - but after a very thorough examination she said she was physically fine - but it was more likely to be stress. Yes stress. So now she's a very spoilt cat who gets her own way all the time and gets to sleep on our bed every night. And she's a delight - enjoys fuss, comes when you call her and she hasn't gone for either of us once. So there you go. Here she is sitting in the bath waiting for the tap to be run. Anyway - must go now for the ceremo...

Hello. Well here's some fabric I bought this morning at Kisko (The Fabric Guild) for a project we're going to do next Saturday at a neighbouring village's hall. I shan't spoil the surprise but I'm sure we'll have a range of colours used with the same pattern. Now I'm rather proud of this - it's my very first large fruit cake I've ever made - it's for Christmas. It's actually a Fig and honey Christmas Cake from the November issue of the BBC Good Food magazine . I do love looking at cookery books and magazines - but I'm not an overly confident cooking. I think one of the issues is that when there are only 2 of you if you make a big anything - you have to eat it for ever and it kind of spoils it. But I'm really going to try to be a bit more adventurous with my cooking as I enjoy it. Lets hope it tastes as good as it looks by the time Christmas comes. I think, as it's a bit on the large size, I'll cut it at the start of Decemb...

Hello all. Yes - I'm still around - just been away for a bit and I thought you might like to see some of the photos I took. So this is a photo I took from Pontcysyllte Aqueduct across to another one. It was so high and only narrow enough to get one canal boat across - the path next to it wasn't so great either. What do you think to the artwork below? That was at the entrance. This is just a great photo DH took - a great shape. These two photos were taken at Copper Kingdom - some of you may have seen the site shown on the TV programme Coast. It was a great landscape - sort of lunar. This is Beaumaris Castle - it was a beautiful sunny day as you can see and it's a great castle to look around. And finally I took some lovely photos when we went to Penmon Priory - the water in the rock pools was so clear - and the seaweed was a great range of bronze colours. I couldn't resist taking photos of the pebbles.... So - I'm back now and have enjoyed sewing now I've g...

I thought I'd share some of the books with you that I had for my birthday. The first one is 'How to be an explorer of the world' by Keri Smith. It's a real fun book that aims to make you look more at the things around you. Here's an example of one of the 'Exploration' exercises. This one encourages you to record everything you consume or purchase in a day or week. And this one encourages you to look at colours more closely around you. By using the colour chart chips you match them to what you se around you. It really is a fun book and I'm going to take it on holiday with me. Keri also has a great blog called 'Wish Jar' . She's very generous and you get to share how she develops her ideas into the books she writes. I think it would be great book to share with children - or like me being a big kid just think its great fun. The next book is 'Secrets of Simplicity' by Mary Carlomagno. A really beautiful book to look at if you look a...

I had a trip out on Sunday afternoon. I decided to visit a friends studio that was open as part of the Northamptonshire Open Studio's event. (If you look at the PDF of their brochure this open studio is no 114) So the first picture below is inviting you in and... here you are in the studio. I now have a serious case of 'studio envy'. DH is not pleased. My idea is to get rid of the spare bed and wardrobe in the spare room and make it my studio - rather than the current situation of me working in there and having a bed and a wardrobe in there. Makes perfect sense to me LOL . As you can see the studio is bright and light and airy. The artists exhibiting and demonstrating are Mikki Stanswood , Bren Boardman and Fi Bowman . All great artists in their own right, but seeing all three at once is even better. I had a lovely afternoon browsing the book shelves and having a chat with them all. If you do live in or near Northamptonshire please do try to make some time to visit...

I hope you enjoy this selection from the FoQ - more to come. Hope you're all enjoying the August Bank Holiday. It's such a shame the weather has been rather dull - but we did manage to get a little bit of gardening done. Thank you for the kind comments about my first 'proper' walk. I'd certainly like to try some more in the future. I wanted to tell you about the the lectures I attended at the FoQ. I'd certainly recommend having a look at them next year. So my first one was Pauline Burbridge - what a great artist. She was really interesting. She explained how she planned her year and the process she used to make her pieces - she was very generous with sharing her sketchbooks. She makes 2 types of work now - large pieces and then pieces on a more domestic scale; these latter pieces allow her to develop a theme. She had a exhibition space at the festival - well worth a look. Next was Maggie Gray . She is so enthusiastic (and very funny)- even though she'd onl...

I had a few days away earlier this week. DH thought it would be nice to share with me his experience of walking the North Yorkshire Three Peaks - so we walked Ingleborough . Unlike him I managed to keep all my toes nails and could manage to walk up the stairs a few days later with ease. LOL. And yes this photo is from the top - in August - I know it should be sunny - but as you can see it was a little overcast and a little windy. And here I am at the trig point. I did have a hat on but it blew off once and I didn't have enough energy to run after it again. I'm really proud of myself for getting up there as its the first 'proper' walk I've ever done. Anyway - I'm off to FoQ again in a mo - so hopefully I'll bump into a few of you there. Have a great weekend.

I'm so glad you enjoyed looking at the quilts in the same pattern - but different colours. I hope you like the other examples here in the All Star jelly roll quilt. Anyway - next week is the Festival of Quilts at the NEC . Are any of you going? I'm there on Friday and Saturday so hope to see some of you there. Have a good weekend