A Few Days in Nottingham - Part 2

We were staying a short distance from the city centre in Ruddington, which houses the Nottingham Transport Heritage Centre and the Great Central Railway Nottingham.  David had visited the Loughborough to Leicester branch of the Great Central Railway the day before when I was at the Quilters' Guild conference.   It was a lovely day so good to wander around before boarding the first train of the day.  We saw a couple of 1950's cars (Ford Popular and Hillman Minx) that had been prepared for a wedding

There were several heritage coaches too

As well as the GCRN, we also saw 3 different railways!

 The 'normal' heritage steam railway

 A garden railway with the larger 'O' gauge train layout

 A model engineers group giving people rides on their miniature railway

And a smaller 'OO' gauge railway with a reconstruction of how Ruddington station and depot looked in the 1950's.

The heritage centre is built on what was an Army Ordnance Depot during World War II and it took us a while to figure that where the journey starts is not where the station was.  The train travels about a mile around a curve to where the station once was (only the footbridge remains) and changes direction to continue its journey towards Loughborough.  There isn't a station to get off there so the return journey commences.  It is hoped that the two parts of the Great Central Railway will eventually join up.

While in Ruddington, we went into the village to the Framework Knitters Museum.  This was a trip available to those who attended the Friday day at the conference.  The museum was open on the Sunday afternoon and is manned by volunteers.  This tells the history of the local industry making stockings and other fine knitted goods which was initially a cottage industry where spinning and knitting took place of machines - families were poor having to pay rent for their meagre cottage and renting the knitting frames too for very little return on their piecework.  The small factory was then established with knitting machines crammed together in a small space and another building with circular stocking machines.  There was also a washing area at the end of one block as washing was allowed once a week and although lovely gardens at the museum, back in the day would have been taken up with grown vegetables.  The end cottage was the owner's and family members still remember how this cottage looked and were able to advise the Museum.

Looking towards the cottages, with the workshops either side.

 A yarn bombed bicycle in the wash house with the tin wash tub and mangle.

And found a knitted flower basket outside.

The next day was a return visit to Crich in Derbyshire to visit old trams,  the day was sunny and warm and being a weekday was quiet and a lovely day for tram rides and a wander in the Woodland Walk.

We've had a few visits here and its always a lovely place to go.

On Tuesday we ventured into Nottingham city centre, so swapped old trams for new

And on our trip we found a familiar name

Compton Acres! This is a visitor attraction in Poole, but never thought we would find it in Nottingham.  The stop is named after a local housing estate which has roads named after famous gardens.

On the way home we stopped near Newbury and the Sandham Memorial Chapel, with it's painting in the chapel by Sir Stanley Spencer who served in the First World War at Selonika along with Henry Sandham to whom the chapel is dedicated.  A really amazing place and so calming too.

The gardens around the back of the chapel had some artwork with these birds.

So that concludes our Nottingham trip.  There will be a post soon about my everyday stitching.

A Few Days in Nottingham - Part 1

Last weekend saw David and I spend a few days in Nottingham, where I attended the Quilters’ Guild AGM on Saturday at the University.  It also gave us the chance to visit a railway (or in David’s case, two) and a return visit to the Tramway Museum at Crich.

The AGM at University of Nottingham was a formal meeting In the morning followed by questions from members.  The afternoon was taken with lectures from speakers and I took part in the ‘carousel’ of mini workshops.

There were a selection of exhibits and challenges.  The photography was for personal use only so I can’t show any photos here.  I was able to take a photo of the hanging that was at the entrance to the registration desk, which shows features of the local region who hosted the conference, which includes Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Rutland.

I was able to take photos of the carousel classes that I took, the first being of Alison Stothard who demonstrated textures hexagons, which she uses in a lot of her designs - though it’s not a brilliant pic.

The next demonstration was by Mary Jackson, who uses a lot of embellishments in her work, such as metal - using the inside of tomato or garlic purée tubes (obviously washed out first!!) - sewing through and also embossing. She also uses bits of costume jewellery, makes paper beads and uses embroidery to attached buttons for embellishing her work. Here's just a few samples in the photo below

Next was one that I wanted to take and was popular with other attendees and that was the Boro demonstration with Sarah Humphrys.  She had kits prepared with scraps of cream coloured background fabrics already bonded onto Vilene and we could choose coloured scraps and a bundle of thread to be able to try our samples of Boro.  This is a modern version of the Japanese method of attaching patches to worn areas of old garments to make them last longer. Here are Sarah's samples  below

And here's mine, which kept me busy stitching the next couple of evenings at the hotel

 Above is the front, and below the back

The last carousel demonstration was with Gilli Theokritoff who showed how to use die cut appliqué shapes to add decoration to your work.  She used a Sizzix Big Shot die cutting machine to cut out various shapes and the possibilities when using these shapes, even those that don't come out right.These are her samples

It does give plain-ish background a bit of zing with the bright coloured flowers.

After then I went around the traders and the specialist and other groups who had stands at the conference, including Fiddle Fingers Quilts, Project Linus, Region 5 Festival of Quilts tombola group.  Lots of ideas there and a really good day.   Below is a pic of the goodie bag that I had upon registration, which came in useful.

On our way to Nottingham the day before we stopped at The Bramble Patch a useful place to stop on our way northwards after the madness of the A34, M40 and A43, especially more so as it has a small coffee shop!  So below are my purchases from The Bramble Patch (has to be done) as well as at the conference.  I ran out of Christmas stocking panels so found another and found some reduced Christmas fabric to go with it.  The hat and bib set I couldn't resist getting to make for the youngest grandchildren and some other bits and bobs.

I can't finish this post without mentioning the architecture.  The conference was held at the Jubilee Campus which has a modern campus with some fascinating buildings

This one, above, was taken from the car after David collected me. We had to stop while geese were crossing the road!

Sewing Everyday in May Week 1

This month the week started with a flourish - a whole skirt.  Then with being out and about at the weekend whittled down to nothing!  However yesterday I was back with piecing and quilting once again.

First of all I made a summer skirt (then the weather turned colder!!).  I bought some lobster fabric last year which was the end of a line from the previous year, but the lobsters looked cute.

 I liked the selvedge with the colour spots like boat floats

The finished skirt

And wearing the finished article.

I've used a New Look pattern number 6053, which is described as Easy 2 hour and has a pencil skirt as well as an A line version in different lengths.  This is the third time I've used this and it works well with making the skirt one size larger than my dress size.  I've added a pocket, which I drafted out with the last skirt I made.

During the week I added the hexie units to my ongoing Kingfisher quilt and completed the bottom border of the quilt.

In he second pic I've got the hexie units laid out ready for the top border so it's getting there.  I hope this week to get that done.  I'll have to think about backing and wadding soon.

I had started to join up the excess hexagons together and thought it might make a notebook cover.  I seems you need more to make up the top and bottom to then cut off.  I got a bit disheartened with that so not sure what I'll do with them.

On Friday I made a start on a crochet Granny shawl.  I'm using a Crazy Zauerball yarn that I bought the previous weekend from The Slipped Stitch in Sherborne. I'm really liking the soft colours.

Over the weekend we had trips out to Exbury Gardens and to my daughter's at Dorchester, but more of that in another post, so as you can imagine, not a lot of sewing went on.

Yesterday I went back to my machine and bought out some orphan 16 patch blocks to make up to 12.5 inch squares and here's the result of that.

I've bordered each of the 5 blocks and I've quilted the blocks that are on the left of the picture.  Using fabric from stash I've kept the quilting simple - just straight stitch, nothing fancy.  I hope the get the other 3 quilted and sort out fabric for strips to join together.

One thing I found useful after using my friend's one is this shape cut ruler, which has slats every half inch into which to rotary cutter can go in and cut a straight line.  Why didn't I have one of these before?  I bought one last month from Amazon and have been using this ruler a lot

And I received a Wonky House postcard in the post yesterday from Rita.  My photo does not do it justice, its really lovely.  Mine was sent to Heather last week - posted one day and received by her the next!

If you want to follow my sewing I use the hashtags (can't find the symbol on my keyboard) keepingsuebusy or sewingeverydayinmay on Instagram, but will update each week here on my blog.

I'm going away this weekend to Nottingham to the Quilters' Guild conference on Saturday for the AGM and mini workshops and visiting the Great Central Railway together with a return visit to the Crich Tramway Museum.  There will be a chance of sewing at the Quilters' Guild but I wonder how much will get done the rest of the weekend?