Day out in York and Bridges

Yesterday David and I had a day out in York as I was hoping to get to see the Sewing in Wartime and African Fabric exhibitions at the Quilt Museum.  A wonderful collection of quilts and some with memories of the war which were combined with artifacts and clothing from other local museums from Hull and the Yorkshire Air Museum near York, which made for a very interesting exhibition. There was one tale where a family was bombed out of their home while away on holiday with neighbours and the mother had found a house in which she moved the family, but they had nothing at all and had to start everything from scratch

One recent wartime quilt was one made to commemorate the Falklands War in 1982.  There was a block on the top left hand of the quilt that had the names of the ships Canberra and Uganda, which meant something to me as I sailed on the Uganda in 1970 on a school cruise to Madeira, Gibraltar, Tangiers and Lisbon . She was an educational ship owned by P&O and was still being used for this purpose until it was commandeered by the navy to become a hospital ship during the conflict.  After then the ship was sent to the Far East, where it was scrapped, which was a sad end to the ships life.

Anyway I digress. In the smaller room in complete contrast to the faded and worn fabrics of quilts with dramatic histories to the bright and colourful world of quilts made with African fabrics, you could just feel the sunshine from those quilts.  This was organised by Maggie Relph of the African Fabric Shop which is based in Yorkshire.  Unfortunately no photography was allowed in the exhibition rooms so I can't show anything of these but here is a link to the Quilt Museum here.

After this visit and meeting up with David for lunch, we went to the Treasurer's House, which is situated at the back of the Minster away from the crowds outside the front of the Minster.  This is owned by the National Trust and before their ownership it was once the house of Frank Green, the son of a Wakefield Industrialist Edward Green and had made several changes to the old house, part of which dated back to Medieval times.  There's more about this on the NT website here.  We had a wander in the garden afterwards.

The back of the Treasurers House

View of the back of the Minster from the garden

Garden fountain

This week I took delivery of my sewing cabinet and I am still trying to organise myself around this.  There is just enough room for my wheelie units that hold the fabric.  Not quite sure if about the cutting and ironing area as David has added extensions to the legs and cut down the top to half its size, not sure if that's quite right (or in the right place) but see how it goes.

Neat and tidy all closed up

Opened out with the wheelie units

And remember the Bridges postcards I sent out?  I'd had these below in return, aren't they great?  Two of them you will have seen in my last post so the other 3 came in this week.  I was really impressed by Anette's which was printed on both sides and had used Photoshop to manipulate the photo of the bridge.  I've had Photoshop Elements for ages, must get to grips with using that!

Here they are then...

The complete collection

And the back of Annette's card (I've blocked out the address)

Still keeping busy

A postcard post this time.  I've come up with inspiration for the Bridges swap for the BQL postcard group.  I drew a bridge shape and Bondawebbed this onto light blue sky and dark blue water fabric with the addition of characters on top of the bridge.  I started with gardening children from a novelty fabric, but then found some others that were sort of the same scale as the cards I made, so there are elephants going over a bridge, a giraffe, and a zebra.  I know that wouldn't normally happen, but I am using my imagination here. Anyway with the addition of some green grass and flowers they don't look too bad.  So here they are before winging their way to their recipients.

I thought, while on the subject of postcards, show you my complete collection of purple postcards from last month, which was completed only recently.

I also had a postcard sent to me in error, on the theme of Ice from Jacquie.  I didn't take part in this and it was meant to go to another Sue. I hope to return the favour and send her a card in the future.

I've also received a couple of cards from the Bridges swap from Janet and Pauline

As a break from postcards yesterday I had a go at a block that I hadn't tried.  This was called Pineapple Plus from a book of the same name by Karin Hellaby of Quilter's Haven.  I bought this book at the Festival of Quilts.  It took less than an hour to make one block and all went together quite well with her method of quick piecing.  As I may be making a large quilt next year to replace the one currently on the bed in the main bedroom, this might fit the bill.

Onto something completely different, I thought I would let you know that there is a giveaway on Quilt Times of a book called "Tis the Season", so go over and have a look if you want a chance of winning this.  Ghastly thought though that Christmas is just over 3 months away! Where has this year gone.

I've not been idle

After finishing my job last week I have been catching up with some sewing stuff.  I had to make a card for 10th Sept for Ruth's birthday - made in a rush last week and I have another birthday postcard for 25th September to make for Plum's birthday (that won't be in such a rush). So here's Ruth's postcard

This week my husband is at home too having had a hernia operation as a day patient on Saturday.  It will take at least 2 weeks recovery and he's resting watching dvd's and telly so I've taken to my sewing room and started on Monday with a pattern that I bought back in June from Quiltessential.  It has been difficult to get going with this and I should have known it wasn't going to go well when the first square was a 9" x 8" rectangle instead of 9" square - oops! The pattern instructions are in multiples to make different sized quilts from table runner to king size quilt. I cut out the fabric to make 2 panels to make 1 wallhanging, but found I didn't have enough of one of the fabrics and however I tried to fiddle with it.  In the end I have made 1 panel, which is quite wide.  So this will now be hung on its side as a long wall hanging instead.  In spite of whatever could go wrong did go wrong I and quite pleased with this quilt top.  Here are pics below.

1 panel just joined together above and below after adding the borders

The photo above shows how much fabric that I've got left as I intended to do 2 sections, as it turned out the one that I've made hung on its side will be enough.  Will have to get creative with what I have left.

I've also made an ironing board cover for my Ikea table top ironing board.  The original cover was quite disgusting with Bondaweb marks on it (from when I forgot to cover the web with baking parchment).  I had this lovely turtle fabric and also took the wadded cover of an old ironing board cover to add to the original wadding on the board.  I made the cover an inch bigger all round than the original as I thought it was quite skimpy in the first place and no longer have to battle with a cover that keeps falling off.

 One grotty ironing board cover above and below, nice new one with turtles on.

I also found amongst my UFO's a Mariner's Compass panel which I made yonks ago which was appliqued onto a beige background and that was it.  I haven't got most of the other fabrics now but I did have a bit of the red, which was some Rose and Hubble fabric.  Gosh, must have had that for a very long time.  Another wallhanging perhaps?  Think that might go in the spare room.

I am also starting work on a set of Bridges postcards, I think when signing up for this that it came under that category "seemed like a good idea at the time" as I am having trouble with this theme. I have 6 of these to do.  I will get there - eventually.

I have decided that I will back off the postcard making for a while and get done those that I have committed to.  I have a couple more cards of this year's birthday swaps, a black and white one (I'll not have trouble with that) and a Bit of Bling which at present stands at a whopping 18 cards (I'll have to get going on those - hope I have another week next week of not working).

I also managed to fit in a few appointments that I was meaning to get sorted when I finished work so quite pleased that I've managed to fill the week.

Harrogate Quilt Show

Last Sunday whilst David was working (yes, he worked all day Sunday) I was decided that I would go to the Great Northern Needlework and Quilt Show just outside Harrogate.  It only takes three quarters of an hour to get there and with the traffic being very quiet on Sunday morning it was also a pleasant drive.

As I'd only been to the festival of quilts a few weeks before I wasn't looking to buy anything but have a relaxed wander looking at the quilts and taking photographs.  Quite a lot of large quilts on display it seems more than last year. I also took in a talk by Barbara Howell on using photographs as an influence on quilt design.

Here are some favourites from the show.

A couple of the quilts from Clare Kingslake, in a collection of her quilts called "A Quilter's Journey - The Story So Far".  

I could not resist taking a photo of this quilt - a group quilt I think - of different rolls (influenced by jelly rolls), i.e. rollover, fig rolls, toilet rolls, jewellery roll. Quite cleverly done.

I also like Joan (from Barnsley Embroiderers) fun seaside quilt.

Also a group of strip quilts from Bolton Quilters (I can't remember the group's exact name, sorry). They did a collection of red and white quilted panels.

The Womens' Institute ran a competition sponsored by Makower Fabrics with the title "All things Bright and Beautiful" using a specific Makower collection of fabrics. I found there is a slidshow of the entries here. Here's a couple of wall hangings from that challenge below.

A lovely patched butterfly

And a drapers shop scene - loved the striped fabric used for the 50's style dress.

Of course a trip to a quilt show is not complete without a visit to the traders and their selection of fabrics (oh the temptation) and here's what I bought.

A metre of striped fabrics plus some fat quarters and I liked some glittery ribbon in silver and gold, which will come in useful for a "bit of Bling" postcards towards Christmas. I hadn't washed the fabrics I bought from the Festival of Quilts so they all had a light wash together.

I've now finished my temp job where I've been for the past 6 months.  I was sad to leave to company but I guess time to move on.  I hope that I'll have some spare time to catch up with some sewing and other jobs that have needed doing this week and see how things go with trying to get another job.

Blists Hill and Clematis Postcards

Still continuing my catch up from our holiday. After the Festival of Quilts and our return to Yorkshire we visited Blists Hill Victorian Town, which is a living museum.  We went there many years ago, but after the BBC recently showed the series Victorian Pharmacy, which showed the changes in the Victorian era through the pharmacy shop, in 4 programmes, we decided we could do a detour to visit there.

A lot has changed with the orginal building still being there, but with the addition of a newer street with haberdashery, hardware and fish and chip shops, post office and photography studio.  I could not resist taking photos of the haberdashery shop.

I'm having trouble with uploading the photos so here's an explanation.  The top photo is the outside of the shop, the middle shows the sewing machine sign to the left of the shop.  Inside were a couple of displays with sewing machines and other linen displayed around them.  One of the hand machines is used by the ladies in the shop (dressed in costume).

 I managed to find some quilted items too amongst the cottages at the museum (though I can't now remember which cottages they were in!). As you can see the top photo has a bed with hexagon quilt and also a crib with a crochet blanket on it.  the middle photo shows a cot with what looks like a crazy patchwork cover.  The bottom photo shows a chair seat with Suffolk Puffs (Yoyos) on top and on the floor is a rag rug.

Whilst I was there I saw a clematis plant growing against a wall and that was just right for my postcards which had the theme of "Something Purple", so it was just the right inspiration for that theme.  Below are my postcards which have made this last weekend and posted just a couple of days ago to swappers in the BQL Postcard group. I'd used a couple of clematis flower shapes that I drew onto paper then traced to Bondaweb and also cut out leave shapes backed with Bondaweb too.  The fabrics for flowers and leaves were hand dyed some time ago, but that gives a lovely variation in shades of purple and green.

This weekend I'm hoping to go to Great Northern Needlecraft and Quilt Show at Harrogate, so more photos to be taken.  It is a lot smaller show than the Festival of Quilts a couple of weeks back, but last year was quite enjoyable to take things at a slower pace at this show.