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)