More stuff

Hello all.

Where has the year gone? How come it's July already? And apologies for not having posted for some time. I've been very busy so hope you'll like some of the photos I have to share.

So, I was very fortunate to attend a class with Jean Littlejohn with the Lutterworth Embroiders Guild.

Here is my work in progress:

  

  

 And here are the pieces at the end of the day

  And here is a piece I finished from my last class with Jean:

I had a fab time last weekend.  It was the village arts festival and I was asked by the Market Bosworth Quilters to demo FMQ on the Saturday. Well - sitting sewing, drinking tea (which was brought around by the lovely Andy) and talking - it was a no brainer.  I had a lovely time.

I also had a quilt on show.  A little blue Disappearing Nine Patch that I hand quilted. I do love hand quilting - but it's a little too warm at the moment to have a big quilt on your knee.

I also attended the West Midlands Embroiderers Guild Regional Day that the Leamington branch organised.  It was a great day. The location, North Leamington School was great - all one level, lots of parking and a great lecture theatre.  The talks were given by Professor Giorgio Riello of Warwick University, titled "Decorating Textiles" and Nicola Jarvis, talk titled 'all that glisters'. Please do look at their blog as it has some great photos.

I also attended a presentation by The History Wardrobe on 'Women and the Great War'. As ever they were amazing and I leant so many things about the war, womens role in the war and, of course, textiles.

So you can see - I have been rather busy.  But the days are less packed and hopefully I should get some of my own work done.

Are you all ready for the Festival of Quilts. Not long to go now!

Back to work...

Well, after a lovely week off, work was a real shock to the system.  It was lovely to see the team again, I'm so lucky to work with such lovely people.  But the getting up early was a killer.  It's also meant my run of creativity came to a bit of a halt.  But having met Bee Designs (see a photos of her work below) again today on her stall at the Market Bosworth Festival I realised if I want to do it I need to make time if I want to do it, so this coming week I'm going to see what and how I can fit creativity into the week.

So, hopefully I will be able to show you some progress next week.

Market Bosworth Festival

 The Festival was a great success this year.  It was lovely to meet some of my blog readers... you know who you are.

Above is a photo of Helen Rhodes who was demonstrating in the Bosworth gallery.  She's so nice and produces great work - do have a look at her website.

 Here's a photo of the Town Crier - not sure where he was from, but he looked very smart in his outfit.

 And here is the lovely Bee Design stand.  She also makes great paper products.

 I wanted to show you the quilt Phyllis made using Edwina's 'cut and come again' method.  It was very popular with visitors. 

 I thought you'd like to see some of the work completed by some of the ladies who were beginners and are now producing great work.  If you'd like to know more about classes drop me a line and I'll forward you details on.  Don't worry I don't teach - the lovely Linda does.

 Here is my small contribution to the show.  At long last I finished hand quilting with a seed stitch and got the binding finished and even a sleeve on.  I'm really pleased wit the results. 

And finally a lovely quilt by Angela.

So - hope you all had a good weekend.  We raised loads of money - over £1,500 which we've donated to the Samaritans, the local Guides and the local Scouts Group.

See you all soon.

Market Bosworth Festival - Reminder

Hello All.

I hope you enjoyed the sunshine whilst it was here.

Now, this is just a little reminder for you all - it's the Market Bosworth Festival this weekend - specifically our village quilting group, Market Bosworth Quilters, are exhibiting at the Parish Hall on Park Street on Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 between 11-5.  I can guarantee you'll see some great work and you'll be able to buy some lovely cake to go with a cuppa.  We're also holding a couple of raffles and we have a sales table - the proceeds of which are going to be divided between the local Girl Guide group, Scout Group and Samaritans.

There's lots to see elsewhere too.  An Art Exhibition for both days, Helen Rhodes with be demonstrating at Bosworth Gallery, Michaelmas House open their garden and Garden Studio, there's a craft market on the Saturday and farmers market and open gardens on the Sunday.  So lots and lots to see and do.  I'm sure if you come along you'll have a great time.  I'll be in the Parish Hall for most of the time - do pop along and say hi.

Regardless of what you do - have a great weekend.

Cushions galore

Hi all.

I had a lovely day yesterday with the girls from the Market Bosworth Quilters.  We were making things for the Market Bosworth Festival.  

So - as I'd seen some great Union Jack inspired cushions I thought I'd draw up a pattern myself and test it out.

Here are the results:

One cushion made up

 And one almost a cushion.

Anyway - must get back to finishing my cushions...

Cut and Come Again - sort of

Hello all.

Are you managing to avoid the downpours? Crikey when it rains - it really rains.

So here is my attempt at Edwina MacKinnon's 'Cut and Come Again' technique that she taught to our group - but I was unable to attend the class. 

I was a bit annoyed this week and this is a great technique when you're annoyed.  If you look at the link to Edwina's blog you'll see hers is much better (as you would expect).  But I think if I have another look at her blog photos perhaps I can adapt it.  I'll be putting these blocks together to make a cushion cover for the show in Market Bosworth in June.

I promise to show you the results when I have it finished.

Have a good weekend - and keep dry.

Market Bosworth Festival

Hello all. Hope you've all had a good week. I've just about recovered from the festival - it was very busy and we made lots of money for our charity this year - Breast Cancer - just over £1000.

So here's what it looked like.

And just look at those cakes....

So - this weekend I'm going to be taking it easy...

Hope you all have a good weekend too.

Busy Saturday

Saturdays are usually about either sewing all day or going into the village for a paper and having a coffee in the pub. 

So yesterday started with sewing at the Bramble Patch with Bren. Lots of Lutrador painting and FMQ. Lots more work for this one - but I'll keep you posted.

But it finished with me, DH and some friends sitting in a field watching Alvin Stardust and then Dr and the Medics. It's true - honest.

It was a fun eveing and they both did rally good sets. Lots of dancing an d a little drinking.

What have you all been up to?

Lots of sewing...

I've been a busy girl - honest.
So here is a cushion I've made for the Market Bosworth festival where we have the quilt exhibition. This cushion for the cushion raffle.

I've also made a present for someone special - but I can't show you it all until I've handed it over...

And I've got something else on the go too....

So....

There you go - I've been busy honest.

Tomorrow I'm off to run the Race for Life - there's a link to my sponsorship page on the top right-hand side of my blog page if you'd like to make a contribution.

And I'm on holiday this week and I've got a class at Bramble Patch with Sheena Norquay.

And I was really pleased to see my quilt for the Margaret Every challenge on the Bramble Patch site. When I collect it later in the week I'll post a photo so you can see which on it is.

I hope you're all enjoying this lovely weather we having - after all the rain.

Have a good weekend and I'll post lots of photos of my class very soon.

Another sunny day

I thought I'd share a photo of some purchases I made at Dunelm the other week. Some lovely voile. I also bought zips by the metre - and thanks to Liz I can now fit the zippers.
I also wanted to share the web site of a crafts person I met at the festival. She make the most beautiful paper items - hand bound note books and stationery.
Please do look at the Bee Design site.
I think I've just about recovered from the festival last weekend and another busy week at work.

Festival 2009

Well here we are again with another Festival over and done with. Boy was it warm and boy was it busy.

I thought I'd share a few photos of our exhibition to give you a flavour of what we did. I did forget to take a photo of the cakes before we sold most of them - so sorry about that (I can promise they tasted great).

The photo above shows 2 quilts made from Jelly Rolls and the other is one made from batiks (a favourite of one of our members).

The brown one is one of mine and the one to the right is made by one of our members for her nephew.
Here are our entries for the Margaret Every Challenge at the Bramble Patch. All contain the fabric provided by the Bramble Patch - none of them look anything like the others.

A slightly brighter one by me (purple and yellow) it's quilt as you go.To the left here are our scrappy Irish Chain samples. You can see how different the colours we chose look.

And yet more by our members.

And more - plus one (in the centre) made by children at a local school.

And a few more...

Phew....

See you all soon.

Ooopsss!!!

Where has the time gone? I can't believe my last post was on 13th April! Anyway - no excuses.

Here's a nice photo from a couple of weeks ago when the Farmers Market was on in the village. As you can see it was a lovely sunny day. This was the view we had whilst we sat having a cuppa.

Here's the quilt as you go blocks our group made. I've now joined them up and Angela is putting on the binding. This will be our raffle quilt for the Market Bosworth Festival. We'll be in the Village Hall again this year and will be serving drinks and cakes on the 27th and 28th June.

It would be great if you could come along.

Finally - I'm on the mailing list for Cynthia Morris's site, this week she sent an e-mail with ideas about how to boost you're creativity this summer. Certainly something I'll be taking a look at.

I'm off now - but I hope all of you in the UK have had a good Bank Holiday - the weather has been fantastic (yes I got burnt again).

February already

Thank you all for the lovely comments you left on my last posting. It's great to hear from you all.

I had a lovely day yesterday with the girls in the village hall. The aim was to test one of the members instructions for a scrappy Double Irish Chain. The idea is that you do all the hard work putting the scarves together and don't have to spend time moving the blocks around to get a good scrappy finish. It was very good - but my head did hurt by the end of the day LOL. As you can see I did make good progress but there's still some left to so. Unfortunately won't have time this week and we've been told -;) we have to have them ready for our festival in June. So as usual no pressure..... It was really interesting to see how we all had the same instructions and how the different colour choices looked so very different.

I've also been a very good girl and got my entry off for Trentham (3 - 5 April 2009). I'm very annoying as I've got the quilt ready now.

February is already with us and as I type this it's snowing. Flo has found the weather very confusing - she's chased the snow and run a round after it but in the end it landed on her she ran around in circles and wanted to come in. I should think by now she's assumed her standard position of sleeping.

I wanted to let you know about a video podcast I watch that I think is great; it's Bonnie McCaffrey. She does great interviews with artists and they often share their ideas and techniques - please do try to find time to have a look and listen.

I'll leave it there for now - hope you all have a good week.

Market Bosworth Festival 2008

Thought you might like to see a few photos of the festival this last weekend. So a few cute animals to start with - llamas and the shire horses plus cart - they did slow the traffic up alot but they looked great.
More quilts...

And below is our sales table - bursting with cushions...

our cushion raffle...

and more quilts...

And us saying goodbye to one of our members - in fact he was our token male quilter LOL and we're really going to miss him.

We had a lot of interest in our sewing Saturdays we've got booked for September and October - neither of which I can make as I'm at the Bramble Patch. And another thing that was mentioned was a website for our group. Have any of you got any ideas about this? Any comments about what you think works or doesn't work would be very helpful.

Off to Bramble Patch again this weekend and hopefully an exhibition - I'll tell you all about if next weekend.

Market Bosworth Festival 2008

Well - it's almost here and here we are making things to sell at the festival.

The 2 chaps in the corner made a real racket all day - with maintenance jobs - they even ate our cake....
Here are the 2 cushions I made in our group.

And below are two UFOs I've finished and made into cushions for the sale table - or the raffle.

I've had a great weekend - lots of sewing...

And I'm so pleased that I've got the two magazines below to relax with over the next week.

And here is Flo - asleep on our bed yet again.