Quilting Retreat

Six of us went to Villavin Farm near Holsworthy, Devon to "test drive" the new workshop owned by Jo. She has been running 3 self catering cottages as well as a quilting business, Villavin Crafts and the workshop and shop have only just been constructed. Having looked at the website this evening I have noticed that there's photos of our efforts in the workshop already!

We had a lovely journey from Wimborne down to Holsworthy and the 2 cottages that we used (one of them in the first pic) had first class facilities and were really warm and comfortable in the cold February evenings.

In the second pic there is a view of the workshop with Donna setting up her machine. The view is out into the garden where a couple of days there were chickens and ducks wandering around.

The third photo shows the shop area with a lovely big Welsh Dresser decorating the end wall. The add to the fabrics being displayed there are a lot of little knick-knacks arranged here and there.

I made a quilt (which isn't yet finished) and also a quilt-as-you-go bag, which is in the fourth picture. The quilt was from a pattern called Nick of Time and I hadn't expected to make quite such a dark quilt but it all seemed to go well. Promise to finish of and blog later.


Whilst we were there Judy from British Patchwork and Quilting magazine came to interview Jo and an article will appear in the May edition of the magazine.

A wonderful time was had by all and we would have made any excuse to stay longer. With this unseasonal spring like weather there was no chance of being snowed in!! Hope I can get away to do something like this again; nice to have a large slice of time to do nothing but sewing!

Visit to Bristol

Last weekend saw my husband and I going to Bristol. Not a fast but can be a scenic journey. After going through Blandford, Dorset heading to Shaftesbury we stopped at a National Trust viewpoint which overlooked the valley towards Compton Abbas. Of course, what does one have a camera for but to forget it and leave it at home! So with my trusted phone I took a photo of the fantastic scenery. The next photo that I took as a bit of fun was of our shadows as the sun was still quite low in the sky (I'm the one on the left. This was looking towards the hill just before Melbury Abbas.

The purpose of our visit was to see our daughter, Sarah, who lives in the city. She works at Bristol Royal Infirmary and on Monday the 28th was her 27th birthday. We decided to explore the city going from Clifton down Park Row to the centre. This was the view at about 5.00 pm on the Millenium Bridge looking across the River Avon towards the Waterfront with its bars. We had a lovely weekend and of course lovely to see her too.

Bit of this, bit of that

Haven't been up to a great deal since suffering the flu, tried to go back to work, then home a few days and now feel better to go back to work yesterday. So good, so far. While I've been off sick I've been doing some hand sewing but not finished anything just yet.

I've got "petals" to sew onto a hydrangea applique from Kumiko Sudo's book of Fabled Flowers; quilted a piece of half square triangles for a cover for my embellisher (it didn't come with a cover); and have part machine sewn a handbag; so all works in progress.

However, things are beginning to flower - my orchid in the kitchen (pictured) has now got 4 blooms and despite the horrible wet weather I've looked in the garden to find that polyanthus is flowering and the crocuses are thinking about flowering soon. Nice to see some colour and promise of spring to come.

New year, new bag

Belated Happy New Year. This year has not gone off to a good start. Only one day at work then off sick with flu. Still hibernating at home today very tired and achy so a short entry on the blog today.

Yesterday was a little better and managed to (slowly) make a bag from the bag challenge with the Yahoo Group that I belong to (BQL), which is based on the supermarket carrier bag, except that the bag will fold into the little pocket at the bottom, very neat. I enjoyed doing this and may do another.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Haven't done much sewing, in fact none at all recently, so have nothing much to show at the moment. I'll be going away for the Christmas holidays and spent much of today getting ready for the off tomorrow.

On the left is a lovely photo of my grandson Leo. This was taken by my daughter-in-law, Carly. He does look cute in the little santa suit.

I wish everyone a

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Haven't blogged for a while

I haven't been blogging lately as we've had another family wedding. None in 20 years then within 2 months there are two! My youngest son Jamie was married to Carly in October and this picture on the left is of older son Alex and his wife Mary was taken at their wedding last week. They were married in the parish church in Billingshurst, West Sussex. The weather was pretty awful earlier in the day, but then the rain stopped and the sun even can out until they reached the reception. It was a lovely afternoon.

But I've also been getting Christmas presents for family as we were meeting up for this family occasion and would be the last time to see each other before Christmas, so most of the present shopping is now out of the way. I'm not normally this organised for Christmas.

Yesterday was also mine and my husband's wedding anniversary, we've been married 30 years now. Although we didn't go out to celebrate, we will be going away to Derbyshire for Christmas, so now Christmas cooking for me!!

Talking of Christmas, I could not resist taking a photo of a giant snowman lit up at Tower Park, just north of Poole. He is situated between a fitness club and the bingo club and must be about 18 to 20 feet tall!

But I did manage a little bit of sewing, I made a couple of stars for a swap in the Yahoo embellisher group and these are on their way to Kandy and Lynne. Using sparkly red felt as a base I needlefelted some shiny nylon fibres and added some Angelina and sequins. I finished the edges with some Kreinik thread which looks a little bit like tinsel.

Glitzy Sunflower

Another item that I've done, which I started 3 weeks ago at my local quilt group, Quarterjacks in Wimborne, is a sunflower, which I've just downloaded straight from my phone (no editing done here). This was demonstrated by Hilary who's done some flower themed journal sized quilts.

It started with a layer or background fabric, I've used a green/purple batik, layer of organza. The cut pieces of petals and leaves placed on top , with some Angelina strands. Another layer of organza, after which the whole thing was placed onto wadding then stitched around the petals with multicoloured thread and other quilting done with metallic thread. Thought that I overdone the quilting as it looked wavy, but after trimming and adding organza for the binding of the quilt it looked really good. I hadn't tried free machining using zigzag stitch before I tried this in the middle of the flower and it worked well. Might have another bash at that some time.

Brooches to go

Here's a couple of brooches that I've made using my Embellisher for the UK Embellisher Swap Group. These will be going to Lorraine (on the left) and Lynne (on the right). I now found an opportunity to use some little silvery charms, which I'm quite pleased with.

Lorraine's brooch is using some slubby yellow/red yarn on a red felt base which was wound around the middle and then up and down around the circle, holding the yarn down with a hand needlefelt needle. It was then finished off with the embellisher and red fuzzy yarn was couched down behind.

Lynne's was from a pack of felt, scrim and fuzzy yarn which was needlefelted down and used more fuzzy yarn around the edge. Thought it looked like a birds nest so adding the charms it became a Magpie's nest. These are going out in the post and hopefully Lorraine, in the US should get hers before the end of this month!

Brooches received

Look at these lovely brooches I've received in a swap in the Embellisher Yahoo group that I belong to. I've almost finished them and will post later.

I received Amanda's (on the left) today, a padded felt flower with little purple beads surrounding the centre of the flower. The one on the right is from Lorraine, a gold coloured face on a poinsettia made with layers of felt, fabric and netting. The photos don't do justice to them being taken in artificial light, but such are the dark winter evenings.

Postcards received

Here's some postcards I've received from recent swaps. The first 2 being the Letters swap in the BQLPC groupThe top one from Kate with S's in different formats including braille dots, embroidered and a tag, the bottom one from Caroline with scrabble tiles printed and on the right from Sheila.

The next two are (top) from Wendy using different fonts for her S's and (bottom) from Ruth with Sue on a quilted letter fabric background.
The last two are from the confetti swap with the Arts in the Mail Yahoo Group. There are 4 cards but received two so far. The top one is from Dawn with some lovely rainbow fabric scraps and the bottom from Flicsha with little bits of fabric and sequins.

I enjoy making postcards and even more so receiving them, its great to see them on my doormat after getting home from work.

More Postcards to Go

I made another batch of postcards which are going in the post tomorrow. These are for the theme of "Confetti" for the Arts in the Mail Yahoo Group that I belong to and will be winging their way to Wiltshire, Turkey, US and Australia.

I made one large piece of calico with some Steam a Seam fusible web. I chopped up some trimmings of Kaffe Fassett fabric which I sprinkled onto the fusible. On top of that was some bits of shiny gift tissue (that's the shiny bits you see in the photo, knitting ribbon yarn, Angelina and shiny yarn. I'd covered this with black tulle and ironed the whole lot. After covering with free machining I then cut them into 4 postcard sized pieces and edged with fuzzy yarn. The second photo shows confetti tissue which wrapped a present I received a few months earlier which I glued onto craft Vilene which again was trimmed into 4 pieces and glued to the card backs.

I'm starting to like working all the cards in one whole piece - it is so much quicker than working each individual one. I worked this way for the letters postcards that I made earlier this month. So far that's it for this year for postcard swaps unless there's a swap that I really must make. With my other son's wedding near Christmas and other things going on with the run up to Christmas itself I'm now going to concentrate on the unfinished stuff that's hanging around

Felted Purse

Back at the end of June when I went to the National Patchwork Championships exhibition at Sandown I bought an Embellisher. The workshops were very popular and I didn't get time to go on one so after a dem0nstration on the Janome stand I bought one, a Janome Xpression. I've not shown anything on my earlier blogs as I've been playing about but have joined a Yahoo Group to swap embellished items. An earlier swap was an ATC and I'll show a pic of one I made during the summer on a later blog. However this latest swap was for a felted purse which I made for Lynne.

Looks big, doesn't it, because I cropped the picture but it's about 4 inches x 3 inches approx. I took several photos and they came out a bit fuzzy, so these are the best of what I took. I had some green wool roving given to me by a friend plus some hand dyed roving from 21st Century Yarns which give the colours a lovely muted look.

Postcards

I've completed 6 postcards on the theme of Letters for the British Quilt List Postcard Group. I decided to take the letters that are found on the selvedges of fabric. Digging out as many fabrics as I could that had names on the selvedge I gradually built up on a 13 inch piece of Vilene. After ironing onto the Vilene I then used varied sizes of zig zag with orangey variegated thread. Then ironed onto Bondawebbed craft Vilene and backing before cutting up into 6 postcard sized pieces.

Using some rub on letters, which I first tried out on a piece of fabric and thought it would work, I used these to highlight the names of the recipients and also the first letter of Postcard. Took a bit more work but the effect was worthwhile. I also used the colour samples on the selvedges by Bondawebbing these between the message and the address portions of the cards. These will be posted tomorrow as they are due before the end of October.

Christmas is coming!

Been shopping in Poole today and found this just as I walked into BHS. A toy dog about 5 feet (just over 1.5 metres) tall! You can see in the background more plush bears and other animals and right behind it are boxes of Christmas cards.

Sorry its nothing to do with sewing but had to upload this photo. I couldn't resist taking a photo of him with my phone. I did turn the photo so he was upright and saved it too, but Blogger didn't want to know - oh well publish and see what happens.

A Wedding in the Family

On Saturday my youngest son, Jamie was married to Carly in Bournemouth at the Wessex Hotel. The above photo shows them at the reception just before they cut the wedding cake. Today they went off on their honeymoon together with baby son Leo. This was a lovely picture just had to share.

Neat Feet!

On 1 Sept I posted the postcards that I made for the Footwear swap for the BQLPC group. In the first photo are from top left, clockwise, flip flops from Kandy, fluffy pink shoe from Dawn, Victorian boot from Ruth and sneaker from Wendy. The second photo shows a horseshoe from Janet, more flip flops from Michelle (they're decorated with beads, flower and brad) and trainer detail from Caroline.

All lovely shoes which graced a shelf in my living room through September.

I also took part in a challenge for Arts in the Mail called "Slash and Burn" which I posted a little while back and are linked here and here

The card on the left is from Kate with lovely pastelly colours and on the right from Priscilla and the photo manages to pick out the texture in hers.

Another Bowl

Not being able to resist doing another bowl as the first one was easy, this was even easier. I made a square drafted from a square ruler onto freezer paper marking out the position for the middle square and making darts from the points where the square's corners are. Making the bowl itself from bonding the fabric onto bondawebbed craft Vilene to finish took an hour and a half. Quite please with the result though uploading the photos taken with my phone I think the light was too bright coming from the patio window so it looks a little pale.

Fabric Bowls

Here's 2 pics of a fabric bowl that I've made. It was demonstrated by Jenny at Quarterjack Quilters last night. And yes, it is Christmas Fabric. I thought that I would use this filled with baubles and pine cones as a table centre during the Christmas holidays. One the fabrics were "sandwiched" together with fusible stabiliser in the middle and the template drawn it was quite easy to sew together which I did this afternoon. Nice to see something started and finished in such a short time! The first pic is looking into the bowl, the second is the outside.

Little needlecase

Playing on the embellisher last week, I needlefelted some slightly sparkly rainbow yarn onto black felt and added some black tulle netting over it. After sewing some felt "pages", I added some flower sequins and button with loop fastening. I presented this to my friend Penny who gave this yarn to me, which came from her friend's collection of yarns.

Fancy Footwear

I've been a member of Yahoo Groups BQL for some time and signed up to a Postcard group nearly 3 years ago and have been making postcards since then. Of course I joined another group earlier in the year and find that postcards are a lovely size to work with, not having the opportunity, or time even to make many larger quilts.

The latest swap that I signed up for was the theme "Footwear". Inspired by my own shoes, that I have rarely worn but they do look lovely I made my party shoes cards. Using metallic thread on black felt I used the fancy stitches on my machine and cut out shoes shapes to go on the shoe fabric that I already had in my stash.


I enjoyed making these postcards although I thought I only had 6 to make. Having checked the list again it was a good job that I did - there were 8 on the list so a 7th postcard had to be made!