A bit of a catch up

From the post last time when 3 quilts were in progress I now have two quilts finished.  I just kept it simple and bought some nice soft cream fleece to back the quilts with enough left over to piece for the third.

Here they are

The Boy Bunnies

The Girl Bunnies

This one is still in progress but the gingham squares looked rather plain so one evening last week I drew a butterfly shape and a balloon shape to make appliques to go on them.  Today I found a picture of a simple rabbit shape so tomorrow I'll have rabbit appliques to go on the centre blocks next to the rabbits. Then just a case of stitching around the shapes.  I found that skirt hangers make good hangers for displaying quilts and I might add something pretty them up a bit.

On Saturday I went with friends to the Quilters' Guild Region 3 Day in Brockenhurst and my friend Penny suggested taking the train from Poole.  With the train ticket Penny also gave me this train timetable and I immediately liked the picture (yes it is sideways, I forgot to rotate the photo before uploading to Dropbox).  It's reminiscent of one of those 1930's style railway posters showing the beach with the Isle of Wight in the background and sailing boats.

This gives me a bit of inspiration for a small quilt for the Region 4 challenge "Coast" and purchase of a few quarters of seaside fabrics while I was at the Region 3 day.

The speakers were Terry Donaldson and Kate Dowty from the Stitch Witches textile art group bringing along loads of quilts from their challenges, which have won prizes at quilt shows and have also held exhibitions too.  I did take some photos but there are photos and more details about the challenges on the gallery pages of the Stitch Witches site.

The afternoon speaker, Judi Mendelssohn, one of the editors of British Patchwork and Quilting magazine.  She had a difficult journey due to the snow, rain and goodness knows what weather to get to Brockenhurst and was not sure whether she would travel. (This last weekend and into this week a lot of the UK is covered in snow which is causing havoc around the country, fortunately along the south coast we are lucky not to have the white stuff, but the temperatures are bitterly cold.)  She was a very entertaining speaker again with loads of quilts to show from numerous Ikea bags. (Sorry about the heads!). Just loved this New York Beauty quilt.  This would be a technique she taught to a workshop on the Sunday).

Sunday saw David and I going to Southampton to the Mayflower Theatre to see the Hairy Bikers "Larger than Live" roadshow.  A packed theatre, though I think we were a little disappointed with the show, thinking there would be more cooking, but there was a lot of larking about and clips from the television shows.  But it got us out to the theatre (don't do enough of that).

I haven't blogged very much this month but hope I can get some stitching in over the Easter holiday. maybe I might even have the third bunny quilt done.