Festival of Quilts

On Thursday and Friday last week I went to the Festival of Quilts, the first time I've visited over 2 days as I've previously tried to get everything in a day.  It has grown so much that it is so difficult to see all I'd want to see and photograph and buy, of course (can't go to an exhibition without purchasing something.

One big thing I have bought (it has yet to be delivered) is a Horn cabinet like this one here. After having a desk made up of a worktop on some adjustable legs which in our old house was attached to the wall, but here is freestanding and does sometimes wobble if stitching quite fast, and it will be good to have a level sewing area to work on too. Other than that I bought some books and arty bits which took my fancy but not a lot of fabric.

Ok on to the pics. Here are a few favourites of mine.

Amongst the miniature quilts above in the middle of the top row is one made by my friend Janet

This one is Best in Show and Miniature Quilt winner by Kumiko Frydl.

I like the clothing section and these 2 coats I really liked - unfortunately I didn't take note who made these

Another favourite was Gillian Travis' Balkan Socks on a washing line - this is half the washing line-full

I also liked this one of the pottery kilns in Stoke - again I don't know who made this but here are 2 photos - the second with names of the towns in the Potteries area of the Midlands

I know who made this one though, it was Julie, who has a blog here

And the pansy above was absolutely gorgeous.  I am a sucker for blowsy flowers.

Just a few of the thousands of bonnets to commemorate the many women convicts who were sent from Britain to Australia.  And more were on the floor

It was just a brilliant display.


I'll continue with my catch up at the weekend.

A new blog

Just thought I'd mention that my daughter-in-law Mary has a new blog - Look What Mary Made.  She's only just recently started her blog and she likes crafty things, especially cross stitch.  What lovely talented daughters-in-law I've got!

The Wedding

Still catching up - today saw me back at work and the news that I have at least a couple of weeks work, so my employers haven't finished with me yet!  The temp job was only supposed to last 3 months, now I've been there 6 so anything is a bonus at the moment.

David has another couple of days, which have amongst other things, been catching up with shopping and ironing (he is such a hero!).

So weekend before last we have a lovely weekend enjoying Peter and Diane's wedding in Surrey (Peter is David's brother).  They've been together for quite a few years so when they said last spring last year they were getting married August 2010 seemed a long way off - how the time flew!  They were lucky enough to have the photos taken between showers as there was thunder outside during the service.

Here are a few of my pics from the day.

The happy couple

With the Best Man and Bridesmaid

With the Wild family (my son Alex took this photo)

And again

Doing the impossible before the wedding - getting the grandchildren lined up nicely on the settee at the hotel to take a photo of them in their best clothes! Freddie (3rd from left) had a cap with his outfit which Isobel (2nd from left) could not resist trying on for size.  There were some good ones taken, which my daughter in law, Carly, took.  She is a keen photographer and took loads of photos too and here she is trying to get one of the shots outside the church when I photographed her!

She did take a lovely photo of our children which I'll post sometime if she can mail me a copy.  It's very rare to get all 3 together.

Next time I will get to posting about the Festival of Quilts from last weekend. Just got to choose what photos to show.

The first leg of our holiday was to go down to Dorset for the day and stayed at my parents' overnight.  My Mum and I went to the Quarterjack Quilters exhibition at Upton House in Poole.  Took a while to catch up with people that I hadn't seen for some time, that I only had a short time to take photos.  So here are a few of what I did managed to take while I was there.

This is what I could not resist, small challenge quilts about 12" square I think, of black, white and one other colour and what a variety of quilts were produced.

There were also a lovely selection of giraffes, and I've just noticed that one has a hat on!  This was taught by Jan, who's speciality is making toys.

 This scrappy quilt contains teddy bear fabrics - didn't know there were so many! I can't say who made this as I can't remember.

And I really like the colours in this quilt.  This was displayed quite high under the picture rail in the house.

So just a taster of what we saw there.  It was a lovely sunny day too (nice to see the sun for a change) that we couldn't resist an ice cream after seeing the quilts.

An update

We've just come back from holiday, having spent 10 days away there's lots to catch up on, not least the unpacking and washing.  Thankfully, its a sunny morning so the washing machine is kept busy and no doubt there will be loads of ironing this evening.

I've been to visit the Quarterjack Quilters exhibition, then on to a wedding in Surrey, back down to Dorset to stay with my parents and catch up with friends and ex-colleagues.  I then went to the Festival of Quilts on Thursday and Friday whilst David ventured to places around Coventry and Birmingham.  On the way home we visited the Blists Hill Victorian Town near Telford.  So there will be a lot to post on the blog over the next week and hope that I can spend a bit of time each evening.

I was lucky to catch up with friends at the Festival of Quilts and Lis has a photo of us over on her blog here. I'd also met up with Janet from Barnsley and Chris, Lesley and Marion from Durham, and more. More from me soon.

Pennants and Bags

I've been busy sewing last weekend and also earthing out my embellishing machine to make a bag.  The pennants have been towards to "Pennants for Patchworkers" organised by the Miniature Group of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles and will be sold in a tombola at the Festival of Quilts later this month.  Here my little effort - 3 little quilted pennants.

The first is just wavy quilting with variegated thread on hand dyed blue fabric, which was quite quick and easy to do as I've done this on postcards before. (Please excuse grotty ironing board cover)

The next one I made was inspired by a magazine article in Popular Patchwork by Sheena Norquay who made some seasonal tablemats and I've pictured that next to the magazine.

Then on Sunday I made one with sort of Clematis flowers - raw edged applique flowers (the flower fabrics used are hand dyed pinks and mauves) and beads sewn in the middle of the flowers.

I took part in the Embellisher Yahoo Group swap with a small bag - 6" square - rather fancied doing that and sent this swap to Jenny in Wales and received a bag today from Anne in Hertfordshire. Hence the dusting off of the Embellisher machine. I should have taken photos in progress when making my bag, but didn't so may have another go as I quite like this technique.

I layered a felt base with wool roving, topped that with painted Bondwebbed and after applying that I chopped some bits of gold foil to iron on top of that.  On top of this I layered some fine chiffon.  I did some hand embroidery when I finished with the needlefelting.  Having made a cord strap and joined the lining to the bag I added a daisy button.

From Anne I received a lovely red leather backed bag, with some roving and yarn with sequins and beads on the front.  Inside were some findings which will come in useful for further bag making, no doubt.

This week we're on holiday for a couple of weeks first of all going to a family wedding in Surrey and hope for a nice weekend. After visiting Dorset and catching up with people we'll be heading up for Birmingham and the Festival of Quilts at the NEC.  I'll be visiting on Thursday and Friday this year - the first time I've visited over 2 days as last year it was difficult to fit everything that I wanted to there.

Naval Warfare

Last Saturday David and I went to Scarborough.  I've visited once and posted that here but it was David's first visit there.  After seeing the town and had lunch, we then went to North Bay, Scarborough to Peasholm Park where we saw the naval battle, which has been a regular summer feature for many years there.  There are men inside the larger ships, also some smaller boats powered with electricity. There are  lots of explosions and a lot of fun while British ships outdo the enemy craft.  Here are some of the photos from the battle.

We then walked along North Bay until we reached the Sea Life Centre.  This was also the terminus for the miniature railway that goes back to opposite the park, passing the newly refurbished Open Air Theatre where there were 80's groups practising for that evening's performance. As with most days recently, it was a cloudy day with the weather not making it's mind up what it wanted to do, but at least it was dry, so a lovely day out.

The colourful beach huts along the promenade.

 

The miniature train.

More postcardy stuff...

For my 200th post (took a while to get there) I'm showing more postcards that I've made and received in the past week.

This week I've completed the set of postcards for the general BQL list challenge and they were sent out on Wednesday.  After having abandoned my crazy quilt cards after completing 2 I then opted to make 4 flip and sew cards and add some embellishments like using fancy machine stitches, ribbon and sequins and here's a pic below.

And here was the state of my room after finishing - what a mess.  I have tidied up (a bit) since then.

I'd also received more from this swap and also the BQL Postcard Group "Something Green" swap and below are the complete sets (some you will have seen from my previous post.

 
The other weekend I went to Doncaster Racecourse for the Summer Crafting exhibition.  What was meant by crafting was of the scrapbooking, card making variety, but thought it may give me some ideas.  I did buy some Micron pigma pens a set of 8 in a variety of colours for just £5.00 - seeing as they usually sell in quilt shops for around £2.50 it was a bargain.  But I had to try them out first - this was on a spare piece of pelmet vilene...

Just a quickie

Do you like the look of my new template?  I found that the background I had used wasn't available so was left with a plain background.  So I've had a play with Blogger's templates and came up with this sort of butterflies one in purple.  Was also able to juggle around with the fonts as well - quite liked that.

I'm hoping this weekend is a quiet one and can get on with some sewing.  I've got 6 postcards to get out and I also signed up for an embellisher (needlefelting) swap to make a small bag so will dust that machine off and get going on that too.

I've now got one week left in this job - it didn't work out permanently but 5 months out of it.  The company now has someone who can do the systems work that I haven't got experience in so hope it all works out for them.  But the upside is I get a long holiday for August as I'll have a couple of weeks to myself before David and I have our holiday - to a family wedding and then Festival of Quilts.

Any pics? Well here's a couple that David took last week while away in Cornwall at St Just.  He couldn't describe them - they weren't quilts, weren't bunting.  I'd say they were banners - colourful applique ones. They were hanging on the buildings during St Just's festival last weekend.

Have a good weekend.

Plethora of Postcards!

I've had quite a bit of postcardy post in the past week.  As well as the Something Green cards (mentioned in my last post) in the BQL Postcard group, the general BQL group also has a postcard challenge this month. Min are still in the making, but I've got 4 this week.  In the photo below (from left to right, top to bottom) are from: Inge, Irene, Miriam and Carol.  All so varied and all lovely cards that we've been pleased to receive.

I've had the first of the Something Green cards today, a beautiful green alligator, really brilliantly done.

I really must get on with the rest of my postcards for this month.  I'll get there in the end.

Playtime!

I haven't posted for a while so have a bit to catch up on.  Visiting our sons last weekend down south, then yesterday went on a rail excursion to Carlisle so our weekends have been busy.  I will catch up with those on another post (or two, maybe), but meanwhile here is some sewing that I've been doing lately.

Going into the post shortly for some of the members of the BQL postcard group are some "Something Green" themed postcards.  Like last month and the Something Yellow ones I stuck to a single item for the green theme and chose pears.  I drew a pear and sectioned it so it had some shadow a bit like a still life.  The main piece being greeny-brown like the russet colour of the pear. In stark contrast to the pear I placed it on a black/white and white/black background. If you look at the photo you'll see what I mean.  Quite pleased how they went and might have another go at shading using fabric.

Yesterday's trip to Carlisle was rainy so not much to do after lunch than to dive into shops and one of those was Waterstone's where I purchased a book called Fabulous Bags to Stitch and Make by Jenny Rolfe. After looking through the book for ages I decided to buy and today had a go at one of the articles in her book of creating your own fabric. So here's my attempt below first of all layering sheer fabrics onto wadding and bonding them.

Then came the stitching - looking good so far.

Then here's the back - quite like that too.

And finally another lot of postcards in the making.  I'm doing a scrap set of postcards and have put my scraps onto wadding with Bondaweb, just like I'd done earlier. It hardly made a dent in my big scrap bag.  I'll decorate that with fancy stitches and variegated thread and may add some other decoration but see how that progresses.


I enjoyed my bit of playtime this afternoon, pity it had to stop to prepare for the week ahead.  Hey ho.

Visit to York

On Saturday David and I went to York, first of all visiting the small village of Elvington, not far from the Yorkshire Air Museum to Priory Patchworkers exhibition in the church.  Unfortunately we couldn't take photos, but I did take part in a tombola and won this lovely stained glass style wallhanging.  The funds from the tombola were going to a cancer charity supported by the lady who made this and several other wallhangings. I'd also bought some fat quarters but haven't taken piccies, very remiss of me.

After this we then went onto York itself, where we had lunch and then I went off to the Quilt Museum.  I've been there before on a few occasions and now that I've bought an annual pass I'll be able to go several more times.  Again I couldn't take photos inside the museum, but the gardens outside have now been finished and its a very pleasant area to be in.  There's been a deli/coffee shop opposite St Anthony's Hall for some time, but now there is an art gallery called The New School House Gallery, so somewhere else to visit when in the area.

The Museum itself held 2 exhibitions - Inspired by the Past and Breakthrough by the Contemporary Quilt Group.

Here are the gardens looking towards the Quilt Museum.

This is the outside of the School House, just right of the Quilt Museum.

This is looking to the end of the gardens with seats to enjoy the lovely weather.  See the arches at the end? That's part of the city walls and people do walk along the top of the wall - you can just spot someone between the trees.

After leaving the museum I went into the city to meet David, who visited the National Railway Museum and we met up opposite the Minster.  On the way I went into a home and garden shop and spotted these lovely meerkats...

One lounging in the deckchair and the little one making a sandcastle, how could I resist - they had to be bought!

Finally, today my set of yellow cards was completed to go with the other four I received (see my last post).  A lovely lemony postcard from Michelle.