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!