No Events For Ages and Everything at Once.

 This week had two events after none for ages.  The first was West Country Embroiderers Dorset Day, which involves a gathering of members from the Dorset Groups, with traders, lunch and an afternoon speaker.  I’ve been to this annual event for a few years now and is usually an enjoyable day, meeting and catching up with people, but there is a feeling there may not be much more of them as some groups are getting smaller.  The afternoon speaker was Sandra Meech, who had problems getting to the venue due to snow in Somerset (there was no snow here in Poole, but it was very wet that day).  She is an art quilter who spoke about her process of creating her textile pieces. I took a couple of photos 

A quilt with printed sections

A textured example, looks like the the surf washing up on a stony, littered beach.

Having been fed lunch and the slideshow in a darkened room it was a struggle to stay awake, my brain tends to think it’s time to go to bed!! Although presentations are often made this way, I find it difficult to concentrate on the subject.  Anyway generally I enjoyed the day and hope that this annual event will continue.

I was out and about places on Thursday and Friday, but Saturday I went to New Milton, Hampshire, to join friends for the The Quilters’ Guild Region 3 day (I live in Dorset, so in Region 4) but New Milton is closer than a lot of events in the region. It is a similar day of traders, speakers, meeting people.  

The first speaker was Brian Taphouse, the founder of Lewis and Irene fabric brand, which is run by his family.   He has worked in the fabric industry for many years before Lewis and Irene and explained about how they source the fabrics and mill they use to print fabrics, and how going into the future are bringing in another couple of designers. 

The afternoon speaker was Joy Harber (née Salvage), who is a younger quilter (she’s 32) who discovered patchwork while doing a machine knitting module as part of her textile university course. Her quilts have really small log cabins. Here is a photo of her next to a quilt composed of blocks of small log cabins, pineapples and Court House Steps.

There were quilts we could ohh and ahh over due to the smallness of the blocks but unfortunately we were not able to have a good look after as I had to leave with my friend to get back to my car as the parking was about to expire!  That was really frustrating. Her talk started late in the afternoon as she had trouble getting to the venue. Other ladies from the Isle of Wight had to also leave part way through her talk.  She was staying in the area to run a workshop for members the next day.

There was a group of ladies who made some crazy quilted elephants 

This beautiful appliqué quilt was hanging in the corner of the hall

One of the ‘show and tell’ quilts were a quilt by the maker and her swap quilt.

And believe it or not, I’ve bought fabric at the two events.  11 Fat quarters! I’ve not bought that much fabric in ages!