Sandown and other bits

Yesterday a group of us Bourne Quilters went by minibus to the National Quilt Championship show at Sandown.  Always quite a good day with lots of chatter on the journey to and from the venue and lots of quilts to see.  Unfortunately I can't show photos of the quilts as organisers state that photos are for personal use only and can't be shown on websites.  What I can say though is the Champion Quilt this year is by Ferrett with a really large wholecloth quilt.  Some purchases were made of course but I didn't spend very much, even though I'd won £48 earlier this week on the Bonus Ball draw at work.

I was taken with the exhibition of Gail Lawther's quilt collection following her New Zealand collection of Glimpses of New Zealand, she now has a new book called Glimpses of Britain celebrating places and people of what Britain means to her (this is accompanied in the photo with a bag pattern from Monkey Buttons).

There are also fabric opportunities with bargain fat quarters and at the bottom of the photo is a hand dyed piece from Farne Designs in a colorway that I could not resist.

Another postcard swap is in the making.  This time it's fabric manipulation and I thought I would come up with inspiration for this but I have found this a bit challenging, not sure why.  Here is my progress so far, I decided to sew tucks and have them going in opposing directions.  I've used a space dyed commercial fabric which I've had for quite a while.

 I liked the look of the back too...

So far it's made two whole postcards and a couple of small pieces (because I didn't cut the piece wide enough to get another whole one out) and joined with other strips of the same fabric.  I'll progress this further this weekend and get the postcards in the post.

Meanwhile all the others in the same swap have sent theirs, so this is what I've received.

From the top - Annette, Janet, Irene, Jan and Alice.  They're all lovely cards so I'd better get sewing!