Another New Toy

Yesterday I bought another new toy and it was all my husband's fault!  We went to Southampton and the first shop we go to is John Lewis.  He'll go to the audio department, I'll go to the Haberdashery but he was with me at the time.  I had been thinking about a sewing machine to take to classes or to do demos with, just a basic one, nothing fancy.  I saw this Janome one for just £89.00, it was basic and light and he agreed that I could do with this instead of taking my larger and a lot heavier machine out.

So here she is and I tried it out this morning and sews a little noisily but very well. If I was to get a quarter inch foot and a zipper foot it will do nicely indeed.

Meanwhile David had voucher to spend which was why we went to Southampton and he never spent it!

Today we went with Alex and his girls to Farmer Palmers a play farm just west of Poole, where they enjoyed seeing the animals and playing on the bouncy castles and the soft play centre.  For a change there was lovely summery weather to enjoy, though it did get a little too hot, we shouldn't complain.

They bought animal masks from the shop on the way out.

A lovely day was had by all!

Sandown and a New Toy

On Saturday I went on a coach trip organised by Margaret to take quilters from Wimborne, Poole and Ringwood to the National Quilt Championships at Sandown Racecourse, in Esher.  It was a very enjoyable trip and the chance to catch up with an old friend Sue, who I hadn't seen for ages.

I was disappointed that there weren't many competitive quilts, but there were really good collections of display quilts from Sandie Lush's "knitted" quilts (which you can see here on her site here from the Festival of Quilts gallery) to Rosalind Pollocks delightful collection of quilts under the title "Does it need beads"(her blog is here).  Because the photos are for personal use I am not allowed to show any here, but what I can show is one of my purchases.

I saw a lovely quilt of skirts and tops decorated with all sorts of embellishments on Antique Angels stand and asked for the kit.  They didn't have any kits left so bought the two panels to make up a quilt. I was so surprised that they were printed panels as the quilt looked so convincingly like an appliqued one, look below at the pic and you'll what I mean. They are very pretty and very girly I just could not resist.

I also did a quick workshop in the afternoon with Lynette Harris of the Stitch Witch.  She cannot be mistaken at quilt shows with her trademark witches hat and blue wig!  One of the popular items that she sells is fusible bias binding and she showed a way that one can design a simple Celtic knot and use the iron to follow the pattern made to fuse the binding to fabric.  Here's my (still unfinished!) sample here.

I was quite pleased with this and I should be even more please when I get it done! It was a relaxing break after the hard graft of looking at quilts and looking at the trade stalls!

Now for the new toy - I got a new phone, get bang up to date with one of those new fangled smartphones, replacing my dependable old Sony Ericsson on that I've had for the past 5 years and just thought it time for a change.

Hmm, doesn't look much does it.  Another photo that I had wasn't that good either.  I can get e-mails, texts and I've had my phone list transferred, but there are some bits (a lot of bits really) I've yet to discover it can do.  I've tried to sync it to my computer to download some music, but both phone and computer are trying their best to ignore each other.  Think it'll need more playing about with.

Ferreting and Embellishing

I went to Ringwood Quilters open meeting where there was a very entertaining talk by Ferret about her ventures into quiltmaking, her long arm machine, her exhibition at the NEC and the book she didn't intend to publish.  I didn't take my camera (shame) but I did buy her book, Ferreting Around, which is a sampler quilt with a difference.  It is a medallion quilt but quilt as you go,  so on the reverse side each 'round' of the quilt is quilted rather than in rows.  Quite interesting to try out one day.

Not only did I purchase some red and white fabric but I also won more fabric in the raffle.  Some animal panels with 2 matching fabrics to go with them, I think I can make use of those!

On Saturday I went with my friend Brenda to a Fay Maxwell's studio in Hampshire for a workshop using the embellisher machine.  Mine has not been in use since moving back here so time to give it an airing! Along with some unusual fabrics we made landscape backgrounds and made another similar piece on an acrylic felt background which would be melted so the fabrics on it scrunched up and the with the hear and made tree like textures to go be arranged on the backgrounds.

The piece that I made produced 3 pictures.

Here's (nearly) all our pieces - the three on the right are Brenda's.  I  was still working on one of mine! It was a busy day and great to go home with something completed. I must get that machine out and play a bit more.  Here's a pic of Brenda and I comparing our work.

Oh yes, my bag is also finished - ta da!

 

Quilters Day and Bag progress

I went to the Quilters Guild area day in Sturminster Marshall on Saturday.  Really good speakers - Pat Archibald, with whom I did a weekend workshop last November and Sarah Soward who is an accomplished quilter, teacher and the daughter of Pauline of Pauline's Patchwork in Dorchester. Their talks were very different with Pat having put together a slideshow of her travels and how they inspired her quilts.  Sarah was talking about how she was reluctantly taught how to quilt and now teaches quilting herself and bought a lot of quilts that she has designed to teach or publish.

There was also the opportunity to meet with people I hadn't seen for a long while and to see the exhibits from the Wild West wallhangings that were at Exeter in March.  The Contemporary Quilt Group were showing their collections of journal quilts. Whilst there I took a photo (the only photo of the day there) of a nine patch quilt, the only large quilt there and the quality of the sewing and the colours used were really lovely.  I had also volunteered to be treasurer for the area, which will be a challenge, but after years of enjoying membership of the Quilters Guild felt it was now time to put something back.

To complete our weekend my daughter Sarah came to visit .  She is now without a car and journeyed to us by train which isn't easy as there is no direct train route from Bristol.  Its always good to see her and yesterday we were joined by Jamie too.

I ought to show some sewing here  I have managed some.  A bit belated by I made a postcard for Irene's birthday of alternate flying geese from Karin Hellaby's Flying Geese book as I seem to have got a thing for Flying Geese lately.

On that theme here is progress on the bag that I have been making.

Bag front and back

Lining with pocket with guess what!!

Must crack on and get this finished now