Busy Old Week

Originally this week was intended that we should go to Yarndale, a yarn festival in Skipton, North Yorkshire, but being so close to the events of earlier this month and also there was a local Quilters' Guild meet on Saturday, I decided not to go to Yarndale.  I will find out what the dates are for next year and go then hopefully.  I didn't, however, un-book the day's holiday and a swapped day off so David and I decided to go on days out on Thursday and Friday.

After this week's weigh in (I've stayed the same weight for the past 3 weeks) we went to Bath, in the rain.  Once parked, taken the bus into town and had lunch, the weather dried up and later in the afternoon the sun shone. We ventured up the main shopping streets to get to The Fashion Museum at the Assembly Rooms.  Unfortunately there was a private party in the Assembly Rooms but we were still able to go around the Fashion Museum, which chronicles the changes in fashion from the 16th Century up to modern days.

After that we wandered down to the town again and mooch around the shops towards the railway station.  Taking one or two pics

David outside Bath Abbey (we still haven't been inside the abbey all the years we've visited Bath)

That tourist has stayed by the Abbey for a long time! I'm sure he was there the last time we visited...

Went to the pub where the rooftop outdoor area adjoins Bath Spa station, a bit of trainspotting before getting the bus back to the car park.It was late evening by the time we got back home.

On Friday after a morning pottering at home we were off again, this time to Mottisfont Abbey near Romsey.  This is a favourite NT place to visit and its a fascination to watch the trout in the River Test as they compete for food coming downstream.

At Mottisfont there is an exhibition in the top floor rooms of the work of Kaffe Fassett with his needlepoint, knitting and quilt works.  The walls were coloured giving more atmosphere to the work displayed and I've taken photos which I've put in a couple of collages.

We may have seen some of the work before, but it is the use of colour that seems to be timeless.

It was a nice sunny afternoon and still lovely to walk around the walled gardens even though a lot of plants have passed over for the year and also to walk along the river.

Saturday I went to Region 4's Quilters' Guild meeting.  It didn't seem as well attended this time as the meetings normally are, which was a shame as there were 2 very good speakers, Barbara Janssen, who was one of the founding members of Exeter Quilters and her work over the 35 years she has been quilting.  She bought a lot of quilts with her large and small and from traditional to contemporary though I only took one pic, of a quilt depicting a stone in Ireland (ashamed to say I can't remember what it was!) following her delving into her family history.

The second speaker was Angela Daymond of Fenland Textile Studio whose use of natural dyeing, particularly of woad is the main feature of her work and her talk was about the history of woad called "Woad - Blue As Old As Time" a really interesting talk about an industry that was so important for such a long time but has almost withered to nothing as indigo and modern chemical dyes are more readily available.

Here are a couple of pics of her pieces

The pic above was a dyed tray cloth which she used to great effect.  There are more photos of her work on her website gallery (link above).

This lead to today and a Kantha stitch workshop. Various fabrics arranged to provide a background to stitching motifs, such as her trademark running hare, stitching in Perle thread of a fine thickness.  I really enjoyed the relaxing hand stitching, so much so that when I came home I carried on!

 This was the picture once I came home

I added a bit more stitching and around the perimeter to enable to me to remove the tacking stitches from the piece.  I may add a bit more stitching but see how it goes.

I also bought one of the Kantha inspired booklets and some woad dyed fabric with dark blue thread and my friend (because I drove out to Dorchester from Poole) treated me to a flower vase kit.  So I will be kept busy!