Last weekend

Last Friday was spent at a workshop tutored by Susan Denton who was also the speaker at Saturday's Quilters' Guild day.  She is a well known quilt artist and it was a privilege to be in her class about colour theory.  It is really difficult to pick out colour values so this was a worthwhile exercise, starting with taking dark, medium and light colours and seeing how different the medium appears on dark and light backgrounds, then taking 2 similar medium colours and how they react with dark and light squares.  After going from a light colour and going through to another dark colour in nine changes (easier said than done) after lunch we were working on nine patch blocks sticking triangles and squares, grading shades of colour from one corner to another but mixing things a little so there are no harsh lines of colour.  Just a pic of what I mean, below

I worked on this yesterday with buttery to mustardy shades of yellow

Almost good enough to make a quilt out of.

Being Regional Treasurer meant that I had a busyish day on Saturday, though nowhere near as busy as Chantal and Jenny, the Area Reps who arranged the day and made sure that everyone had a good time.  I didn't take many photos but here's one of Susan's quilts (it was the only one I took) of the rocks around Cornwall, where she lives.

In the afternoon Sara Price, also from Cornwall, gave a very different talk on antique quilts, a collection of which she started building up when living in the US.  Her site is here.  My friend Penny and myself where quilt holder-uppers so had a close up of some lovely old quilts and some that were, well, the worse for wear, which must add to their history.  People were gathering around the old quilts after the talk, so please excuse my photos.

I had seen a signature block quilt, which was very similar to the Granny Square blocks which seem to be popular on some blogs, but could not get near that one.

And of course a purchase of fabric was inevitable.  From Mandy at Cherry Tree fabrics

As you can see from the fabric on the right I am working on my colour shades.

As autumn progresses I am surprised how good some of the plants look.  The fuschia at the end of the garden, a happy accident from last year, is doing really well.  A gorgeous splash of colour against the bricks and stonework.