Quilts R Us

Last Sunday David and I visited the the North Hampshire Quilters "Quilts R Us" exhibition in Basingstoke.  The group has been celebrating their 30th anniversary with a packed display of quilts of all sizes and varied techniques.  Here are a few that I took photos of

Recognise the one with the dogs above?  Someone had a different take on using the panels.  I'd used these for a quilt for Freddie when he was a baby.

To celebrate the groups 30th anniversary there were a selection of round quilts of a size to fit a hatbox.  They were placed on the front of the Year Group notices at the school where the exhibition was held, so please excuse the photos below

A lovely selection, but I rather liked the pizza one, thought that looked quite convincing!

Off tomorrow to the West Country Quilt show at Shepton Mallett.  Hope I can share some pics from that.

Don't forget there is a GIVEAWAY!  See yesterday's posting here

Happy Birthday to Me 2012 and a GIVEAWAY

Yesterday I had the good fortune of my birthday falling on my day off. I am now 57 though I don't know how I got to be that old - think I must be about 30-something - but then again I've had a bit of a scatty phase, so mentally I could be older!  Age is a funny thing.

Anyway this year I've taken part in a postcard birthday swap as you will have noticed I've made quite a few cards through the year and mine is the last but one birthday in this group, one more to be made for December, just after Christmas.  At this point the moderator of the group is wanting to pass on the baton to someone else or the group might fold, so not sure what next year will bring.

For me my choice of postcard was on the theme of "Something Purple" as it is a favourite colour and I received a lovely selection of cards.  The difficulty not to peek at any and put them facing the wall on the mantlepiece before yesterday was great, so I never saw them in detail until yesterday. I kept getting a whiff of lavender and today just realised that one of the cards, from Rosemary had a tea bag sized sachet of lavender under the lavender coloured patch.

 From the top left, clockwise - from Janet, Irene, Plum, Barbara and Rosemary 

These were from Lois, Chris Jacquie and Lesley

 And from Claire, Jan, Carole and Inge.

David and don't normally do birthday presents as our birthdays are just 2 weeks apart and our wedding anniversary in 12 days time, then of course there's Christmas.  But he could not resist getting me this

it'll match my phone cover!

We did go out to Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth for some shopping and also treated ourselves to a lovely lunch at Jamie's Italian restaurant. 

The last weekend we went to stay at my brother-in-law Peter's as him and David went to the NEC to the Warley Model Railway Show and Diane and I visited her church's Christmas Fair followed by a trip to Reading.  There I met with my sister Wen and my nephew Tyler and it was lovely to spend time with them all. Back home on Sunday David and I stopped in Basingstoke to the Quilts R Us exhibition held by the North Hampshire Quilters.  I did take a few pics and will post those tomorrow.

This weekend I'll be going with friends to the first West Country Quilt show at the Royal Bath and West Showground which started today and goes on until Saturday. See what that's like.

As it was my birthday, and I must admit I don't do this often but I have decided to

HAVE A GIVEAWAY.

 

I have a past series of the Quilt Show gift certificate to give away as I receive this as part of my subscription renewal.  Just leave me a comment, as simple as that. You don't need to be a follower, though that would be nice or do anything else.  I'll keep this going for a week and draw the winner next Thursday evening.

Postcards and a Mini Quilt

Last week I caught up with a couple of postcards for the BQLPC birthday swap.  This week there are 2 birthdays - Claire's and Avril's, so here's the story of these two cards. 

Claire asked for "Celebrations" and I had started on a card with fireworks (it being November) but with going back and forth free machining with metallic threads puckered the fabric and it didn't look very nice.  So back to the drawing board.  How would you celebrate a birthday?  A piece of cake, maybe with a cup of tea, so using the fabric which looks fairly similar to my Cath Kidston bucket mug as inspiration

I came up with this

And there had to be a tea pot on the back

I think that's a celebration, don't you.

The next birthday is Avril's and she requested "Anatomy", I tried several drawings and also hoped that skeleton figures from Halloween might get the creativity going, but then I plumped for feet, don't know why really.  From time spent in my room Sunday before last taking my socks off to draw feet.  I next tea dyed some calico (so the feet didn't look too pale) I also took another small piece of calico and applied some PVA glue.  After that dried I was able to paint it with some nail varnish (sounds batty, bear with me)  After bondawebbing the feet onto the background and free machining I then cut out the varnished calico into toenail shapes and glue them to the feet.  It worked!

I also gave this daring pair of feet a tattoo (can't stand tattoos) but I felt they needed an extra bit of decoration.  It almost seems a shame to send this one-off card, but I have kept the drawing and may have make another to keep as reference in my postcard "library".

A surprise that I received in the post last week was this lovely little quilt which was one of my choices from "Another Little Quilt Swap" (the link here is to a Flickr site showing the quilts in the swap) hosted by Kate North.  This quilt came all the way from California (which must have been a lot sunnier than the grey, grim day that we had here), made by Mary from Needled Mom. 

 The front

 The back looks really good too

And this fat quarter of Hollywood fabric came with it.

Meanwhile my quilt in this swap has started its journey to Australia.

On Saturday I went with my Mum to Doughty's roadshow sale near Ferndown.  I wasn't going to buy fabric, oh dear....

...what a mistake to make!

And on Sunday morning, while David was working I went out to enjoy the autumn sunshine and the fabulous display of the trees.  This autumn has provided a spectacular show of coloured leaves.  I went to Creekmoor and walked along part of the Roman Road up to the old railway bridge (once the Somerset and Dorset line) and then up on the bridge and along towards Upton Heath.

 At the bridge looking towards Corfe Mullen

 Looking from the top of the bridge

 Sun shining through the yellowing leaves

 The heathland in Upton Heath looking towards Beacon Hill

 Looking down Roman Road towards Upton

 The footpath going towards Upton Country Park

 Looking back at the carpet of leaves.

Catch up post

What has happened with the time.  It was October and now well into November.  I've not had much time to sew recently but I did have a good sewing weekend this last weekend when I stitched Saturday morning (no going to the supermarket, himself went instead) and most of yesterday.  I made a couple of postcards for birthdays this coming month which I will blog about once the birthdays have passed.

On the last workshop I lost my rotary cutter :o( which I (foolishly) hadn't marked and I don't know where it walked off to. So my new cutter arrived (very speedy by an Amazon trader) and so I've put a name tape on it and made a dangler from small pieces of pelmet Vilene.  So lesson learned from that is to make sure everything is marked.

I have been working on my green and grey quilt which has progressed from being quilted to having binding sewn on, trimmed and being hemmed.  My next project was finished in an afternoon making another coathanger bag for the wardrobe, this time to store my white fabric (for dyeing) which was previously stashed in a Next bag on a hanger. This was done as a sew and flip using up odd bits of the green and grey.

  I have a couple more of these bags to make - one for spare bits of calico and another for the "stabilisers" the Vilene bits and pieces - so potentially a more organised looking wardrobe and gets rid of those carrier bags.

I just now have tiny bits of the green and grey pieces left after making the quilt and the bag, think I did pretty well from the 11 fat quarters that came in the quilt kit.

 Doughty's Fabrics will be coming to West Parley Memorial Hall near Ferndown next Saturday and will be helping my Mum to choose fabrics for a quilt she is making.  I hope I won't be tempted but who knows.