A Village Quilter

Hi,  Apologies for the lack of recent posts.  I can assure you I have been busy. I've been practising my free machine quilting - using different tensions.   And I made a pressie for a friends birthday pressie. And, I've been to a class with the Embroiderers Guild at the  Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland .  We were given a very interesting talk and tour by one of the archivists. And then we went across the road to have our class with Alison Samain .  When I saw her work I was sure I wouldn't be able to produce anything like it.  But with some very good tuition, I did produce something that resembles her work. I've also bought a few bits too. Great buttons from Hobbycraft And some ribbon from Wilkinsons - yes Wilkinsons. So - I'm off to start pondering my piece for the Kickstart exhibition.

I thought I'd share a photo of some purchases I made at Dunelm the other week. Some lovely voile. I also bought zips by the metre - and thanks to Liz I can now fit the zippers. I also wanted to share the web site of a crafts person I met at the festival. She make the most beautiful paper items - hand bound note books and stationery. Please do look at the Bee Design site. I think I've just about recovered from the festival last weekend and another busy week at work.

I just had to go for a walk this morning to take a photo of these lambs - I just love to see them jumping around on their little fat legs. As I haven't posted for a couple of weeks (sorry!) I thought I'd post lots of photos and not say too much.... Below is my piece I entered into the exhibition at Bramble Patch called Poetic Licence - it's open until Saturday 18 th April. If you do have a chance to go please do as the work there is really good and there is so much variety. Here's my entry for the Trentham , Quilts in the Garden show. I was really pleased wit the result - but as it was hung next to a really bright quilt it looked rather dull. I've also posted photos of the quilts entered by other members of our group. Again a really varied group of quilts. If you don't like huge quilt shows this is a really good one to go to. It's small enough to get around and there are a good number of stalls to buy material, books and art products. Also if you take...

Well - I did a few things last week that I forgot to share with you all. And even after this posting there are a few more to come. The photo above are of some oat and raisin cookies I baked - they managed to last for both a visit from the in-laws, a night with the quilting group at my house quilting and a husband with a hearty appetite. Here are some of the purchases I made at Malvern. These packs were just £5, 8 pieces about 24cm square. I bought these for one of my fellow quilters who's after a variety of black and white fabrics. And here are my fabrics I bought - the ones above are for my stash. The bottom ones are for my pink quilt - circles and squares again. And finally here's my experiment that didn't work. Can you even see the organza next to the printed A4 sheet? The idea was to see if photo transfer would work on organza and would show up - but as you can see it doesn't work. I'm back to screen printing in gold - which I know will work. Finally - 'hi...

I treated myself to some new threads from Jennifer Gail Threads . They're really nice and i think a great price. Do have a look at her site - she has the colour variations in different thread types and fabrics too. Here's my sketchbook plan of how I'm going to quilt the Market Bosworth Water Tower piece I'm making. And below is the sample in my sketchbook. It's gping to have both hand and machine quilting. I even did a little thread card - an idea I saw in one of the girl's City & Guild books she made. I'm rather pleased wit the sample. I need to make sure I take my time. I've a fair way to go still and still to be done are the screen printing, dyeing the backing fabric and screen printing that, plus all the quilting and then binding and the sleeve. And the little jobs you have to do on every project (like the binding) always seem to take much longer than you expect.

Well here are a few photos of the Quilters Guild day at Kenilworth. The first photo shows the hall where the neo-natal quilts were displayed and where the traders had their stalls. Really for the size of the event there were a really good number of traders - such as Monkey Buttons, The Quilters Den , White Cottage, Corner House Crafts, African Textiles, Asding - a quite a few more - sorry I can't remember them all. Here we are outside of the traders hall having a bit of time sewing. And here is everyone gathered around the front of the area where the talks were given by Rosalind Johansson and Barbara Weeks . Rosalind spoke about her time in East Africa and had a number of examples of traditional textiles and dress - some members even got into dressing up mode... sorry no photos of that. Barbara described the techniques she used for dying and had a good range of examples of her work. Many of you may have seen at the FoQ her piece based on the Gherkin. She bought his along and as...

Well - I did buy quite a bit. My excuse (DH if you're reading this) is that it was my birthday the day before and it's when I make most of my purchases. So first off - 'The painted quilt' by Laura and Linda Kemshall is a great book - well worth the money. And Linda and Laura were there demonstrating most of the time. As usual they were very generous with sharing their techniques. Next are a couple of books I've been after for a while. 'The beginners guide to machine embroidery' by Pam Watts is only a slim publication - but is really great. The 'Art quilt workbook' will be very useful - the idea is that you work through the exercises and produce work as you go along. I'm sure this will help in conjunction with my class at The Bramble Patch . I then got rather carried away at the Art Van Go stand. So we've got another lot of Koh I Noor watercolour paints, foils that can be added to fabric with PVA, Markel sticks and finally some metallic ru...

At long last it's finished. My first large (96 x 78 inches) quilt. I'm really pleased with the pieced binding. It took a while to finish off - but I really like it. I've still got a bit of tidying up and I need to add a label - but the hard slog is finished. So I feel a bit lost now without a huge quilt to sit and stitch when I fancy. You can see from below I've already got the fabric for my next project from Strawberry Fayre. And yet again it was great service - really fast. I've washed the fabric and now it needs a good press. I also need to make sure I think about how the cut the fabric so I don't end up with lots of bits. The larger pieces I'll piece to make the back.

Well - we're on about our third unbearable humid day. It's really hot, close and cloudy. However the plants don't seem to mind; although I think they could use some rain. Above are the geraniums in our front garden and below are my fantastic poppies - the are big and blousey. And this lunch time in the village the garden of Michaelmas House was open - it's beautiful; very cottage garden. They also have a studio at the bottom of the garden where they display sculpture and paintings during the summer. The shop is great - a really good range of items and something to suit everones pocket. Thanks again to those of you who are sending comments - it's so nice to hear from you all out there.