Been busy...

This little pile became:

Not too sure what I'll make.  I've decided to press the seams open rather than to one side to see how machine quilting in the ditch will go.

And I heard this one the radio...

Very 80s

Uttoxeter Quilt Show

Hello all.

Just wanted to show a few images from my day out at the Uttoxeter Quilt Show.  I had a really nice day with a couple of the girls from Market Bosworth Quilters.

So here are my purchases - I think I was quite restrained.

Firstly a book called 'How to be Creative in Textile Art' by Julia Triston and Rachel Lombard.  I'm very impressed with it and hope I'll work my through it.

I also bought some lovely fabrics from Images of Egypt (plain fabrics) and Batiks n Beads (batiks surprisingly).  I really like these - lets see what happens with them.

 I also wanted to share some of the quilts I saw there.  

When I was on holiday I bought some beautiful daffodils and these reminded me of them. 

 Below is an awful photo of a great quilt.  Made by one of the girls in Market Bosworth Quilters - it really isn't her usual style.  Very abstract.

 Circles - you can never go wrong.

 And here's another one by one of the girls in Market Bosworth Quilters.  I even managed to make one of these blocks with the curves.  No where near as impressive as these.

Oh and there was a lady there selling some great jewellery - Sticks and Stones.  have a look, very reasonably priced.

New York Beauty

Hi All. 

Just to prove I haven't been sitting around doing nothing - here's my New York Beauty block from a class with Linda who very kindly showed us the tricks of the trade.  I know this one is very orange - I did some more after this one and I used fabrics that you could distinguish the points.

Promise to post more soon.

Have a good Easter.

PS Thank you for the lovely welcome back comments xx

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.

Sunny weather

Yep - another sunny weekend. It's been beautiful again this weekend. The garden is really blooming now.
The poppies are enormous and always looks so dramatic.

Flo is really enjoying the warm weather - she's found a few cool spots in the garden. But she is getting hassled by a couple of new garden residents. We have 2 beautiful robins who keep sitting on the fence and sine their little hearts out. She just sits looking at them all confused.

If you look hard enough you can see the robin on the fence. I'll try to take a better photo with more robin and less garden.

And I have been sewing. We had a great day yesterday in the village hall. Barbara Chainey delivered a hand quilting class. She is a great teacher and I would recommend attending a class of hers if you get the chance. I think our festival sales stall will have a number of hand quilted cushions on it this year.

Anyway - must get back to washing the sofa covers. Boring I know but you have to take advantage of the weather when you can.

Have a great weekend.

Sewing days

Had a great day yesterday sewing in the village hall with the lovely quilting ladies of the village. Made good progress with my Scrappy Irish Chain and hope to get the top finished this week.

Anyway -not much else to say....

Hope you all have a good weekend.

Ooops!!

Hi. Yes I'm still here.

Sorry about that - I didn't realise it had been almost a month. Anyway no great excuses - so I'll just crack on.

The piece below is made up of the left over binding and pieces of fabric I had left from my Bosworth Water Tower. I thought I could use it to try out a few ideas and techniques rather than have them on lots of bits of calico sandwiches all over the place. I promise I'll post it when it's finished.

In my Bramble Patch Class, Bren set us all a 'postcard challenge'. The idea was to exchange postcards and use them as as inspiration to make a gift for the person whose postcard it was.

I forgot to take a photo of the postcard - but it was of a bicycle under a tree in a wild flower meadow with the Oscar Wilde quote of 'I can resist anything but temptation'. Well I can resist anything except tea and cake - so that was what I made.

I received a beautiful Dream Catcher with a dragon fly on it. I'll take a photo for next time.

And as it's the last class for the summer (we meet again in September) I thought I'd take in a Birthday cake - it's just under a month early. I hope you can all see the patchwork flowers on it....
And finally I did the Race for Life on Wednesday last week at Warwick Racecourse. I'm very impressed I managed it - I did jog all of the way (well except when DH was there to let me have a drink). If you'd like to sponsor me - you still can - here's a link to my sponsorship page.
http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/sarahadcock3
Many thanks to you who have already done so.
Well - that's it for now. Have a great weekend.

Slightly philosophical

Slightly philosophical - a bit of an unusual title for me - but hopefully all will become clear (don't worry there are some photos later on LOL).
We discussed at our last class how we'd like to develop things for next year. Bren says she isn't looking to run an advanced class as such and wondered what out thoughts were. I do really enjoy the classes and in particular the group we have is great - very generous with comments and ideas and great fun to spend time with. However the commitment, both cost and time, is significant and it does limit other classes I can attend. Don't think I'm having a moan about the classes - I'm not - I've learnt loads and I've really enjoyed meeting the group, I've made some great friends.
One idea I had would be to run a quarterly meeting at a local village hall (near to the Bramble Patch so we can go for a bit of retail therapy) where we could meet for the day and socialise, perhaps later on have a talk by a local artist, set group challenges, put work together as a group to show at exhibitions, discuss new techniques and critique each others work. I spoke with a member of our village quilting group (who attends Linda's class at Bramble Patch) and she was very interested.
What do you think?
How do you interact with others to get support and ideas?

This leads me onto the slightly philosophical bit now... One of the blogs I look at regularly is Lisa Call's. She produces some great work - but also makes me think about where I'm going and why I'm doing it. One of her posts really made me stop and think about working towards goals - not just textile ones - but in general. It's to the point - ...'if I sit around it's unlikely my goals will be met'. Yes - it's stating the obvious - but just thing about what you do in a day, over a week - how is that getting you towards your goals? Please do have a look and let me know what you think. Oh philosophy over now.

Well yesterday we had yet another day of sewing in the village hall - I think we're averaging one a month - it's great. Unfortunately a couple of our members couldn't attend - one was rescuing her kitchen after having a new one fitted and the other was either just back, or on her way back from New York (tough I know). We had a great day - and below are photos of what I got up to.

A foundation pieced star - from Quilter Corner Club.

I added the brighter bits to this top and used a decorative stitch to make sure they stayed there - I think my Bondaweb was a little tired.

And I put my very pink quilt back together.

So today I've got all of those boring household jobs to do - you know ironing, washing, tidying up and cleaning. But I'm hoping to crack on with them so I can sit and sew and watch a film this afternoon.
Hope you all had a good weekend too.

It's February already

I can't believe it's February already - it only seems that it was Christmas and the New Year last week. Must be a sign of old age.

I had a lovely day yesterday - another day quilting in the village hall with other members of the Market Bosworth Quilters. Not many of us - more qulaity than quantity LOL.

I think I've just about finished my piece for Brenda's class - all the quilting is done - just the binding now and perhaps a bit or surface embellishement. Oh and I mustn't forget the hanging sleeve.

As you can see from the photo above I'll be starting another quilt soon - rather pink I think you'll notice. I promise to keep you posted on the progress of this one.

And just a few photos of Flo looking cute and sleepy. I get on with her fine but her and DH do seem to have a few issues - she bites him...

Hope you've all had a good weekend.

I'm off to have my dinner and then spend a lazy night quilting.

More haste, less speed

When will I ever learn. I was so excited that I'd got the top and the back finished from Brenda's class that I completely forgot some very basic quilting rules. Like the one that suggests you should start in the middle and work out - I just started in a random fashion as I needed to ensure the thread was used in a random way across the piece. This meant I ended up with puckered bits. I also think I could have made the sandwich a bit better - a bit tighter. So now I'm unpicking all of the bits I've machined. Bit of a pain but when you know it's not working at the start there's no way it'll look right later on. I did take it to work today and they said 'no-one will notice' - but I'd like to have quite close quilting so the puckered bits would just get worse and worse.
So it's back to the unpicking...
I've also got the job of tidying up my sewing room so my friend can get in the spare bed when she comes to stay on Friday.

Saturday in the village hall

Just to prove I did make something on Saturday in the Village Hall (with its great new windows) and even finished it off on Sunday - my advent calendar. The pre-printed panel has sat in a box for a couple of years and I'm really pleased with it finished. Now I've just got to sort something out for the pockets. I was trying to think of some non-chocolate things - perhaps treats like treat yourself to a soak in the bath. Do you any ideas?

And here is Flo on her 1st birthday. Ahhh... She decided she liked sitting under our umbrella that was drying out after a soggy walk. She can still be a bit of a bugger - but when she's cute - she's really cut.

Art class tomorrow night and I've managed to do nothing. But I know I'll have a great time. I've also got Bramble Patch on Saturday and I'll be screen printing - I can't wait.

Sewing day

Here we are in the village hall having a great day - sewing. We just take along what we fancy and have a great time. It's a real luxury to be able to spend the whole day sewing and chatting. A great way to catch up on what we've all been up to and to see what we're all making.

Now I know I had a moan about all the Christmas stuff in the shops but if you're making things for Christmas you really need to crack on with it early - so there was a Christmas theme to some of our sewing. Two of our members were making items for the Christmas Bazaar and I spent some of the day putting a few things together for pressies - obviously I can't show these otherwise some of you will get a preview.

So here are a couple of shots of us hard at work. We're very lucky that one of our members always makes a fantastic cake for us on our Saturdays - and the Apple Cake was fantastic.

Here's the quilt top I started at our sewing retreat. Although it's all together there's something else to be added to give it a lift - I promise I'll show you more when it's done.
I also did some work on my piece for my Bramble Patch class. I'm being a bit cautious about showing it as it's very different to the other stuff I make. When it gets somewhere near to being completed I promise to take a photo.

Hope you're all having a great weekend and getting in some sewing.

You are a winner!

No this isn't a scam. I entered a competition in Patchwork and Quilting magazine and I've won a pair of tickets for the Autumn Quilt Festival at Malvern. It's a new show - so I've no idea what it'll be like. Are any of you thinking of going? I'd love to know. I haven't decided which day I'm going yet - so you could influence my decision - or perhaps the weather will.
Drawing class tomorrow - lets see what occurs on the paper this week.
I've also started to hand quilt my Buzz saw quilt. As I'm using a pale thread on pale fabrics I can only really quilt in very good light as otherwise I can't see where I've got to.
Saturday is a days quilting in the village hall - not too sure how many of us will go, but it's bound to be a good day.

Drawing class

I'm really enjoying the drawing classes. I know I'm not the best but it's very satisfying to see that what you've drawn does resemble the items in front of you.

The first drawing above was one of the 5 minute sketches we had to do. The idea is that you're less frightened of the white paper. We did about 3 of these using different media and the idea with the one above was that you didn't draw a line.
This one is what the majority of the lesson was spent on. Again no lines, concentrating on light and shade and using charcoal. I was really pleased with it.

And here's some quilting (at last).
It's the Buzz Saw I started at our sewing camp (retreat). I'm so pleased with it. DH very kindly helped me put the sandwich together. I've not decided exactly how I'm going to hand quilt it - but I've got a few ideas.

The weather here has been great over the last few days - so sunny.

Hope you all OK and have a great weekend.

Quilting Open Day

We had a great day yesterday at our Open Quilting Day and hopefully we've got a few new members - we'll have to wait and see.
I'm sorry to say I forgot to take any pictures - although I did have my camera in my bag. The day was very relaxed and we just sat and chatted to all the visitors about what we did and about the samples we'd taken and what we were working on. I'd taken my free machine embroidery samples, the new Sunburst quilt and my raggy cushion. Barry was working on his applique and the rest were at various stages of cutting, binding and making up blocks and adding them to their sticky sheet. I think between us we had all stages of quilting covered.
Everyone was asked to bring along cake - and it was all very, very nice. Unfortunately it didn't all go so DH had to have some when he got home - he thought it was all very good too.
A great day - but boy was I shattered when I got home.

September already

Well it's September already and tonight is our first meeting of the Market Bosworth Quilters. We've got to discuss the open day on Saturday and sort out what we'll be doing.

I didn't mean to leave so long until I posted - but as you can see from the photos I have been busy practising free machine embroidery. Really I wanted to be able to wake up one morning and just be really, really good at it. As that hasn't happened I thought I should get on with some practise. I've been using my Ineke Berlyn little book that I bought at the FoQ. I've also found that if I doodle on a piece of paper I can then replicate this with the machine - by doodling I get to see where the pattern is going and how I fill the space I need to. And by practising this on paper I don't up wasting material.

Thank you all so much for the lovely comments about my quilt I finished. I went to Kisko on Sunday with Angela and I bought some material so I can finish off another top I started at Quorn.

After buying material we went to the Picasso exhibition. Now I know many of you may have seem great collections of his work across the world and may be a little surprised that Leicester has a collection on a par with new York - but it's true. It's been donated by Sir Richard Attenborough in memory of his daughter and grand daughter who died in the Boxing Day tsunami 2004.

Finished!!!

As you can see I did have some 'help' with my 'Sunburst' quilt. Fluff decided one evening that it was hers and no-one else was going to get near it.

As you can see it's done - and I feel a bit sad because I thought it would take longer and I've got nothing to hand quilt. But unlike the last HUGE one this one measure approximately 61 x 50 inches. It was machine pieced and hand quilted in the ditch with YLI variegated thread - called Sunset...

I'm really pleased with how it's turned out.

Thanks to all of you for the good wishes you sent for both my birthday and anniversary. DH is now very keen to read any comments on the blog as he seems to think they're all going to be about him. LOL.

Thanks

Sunburst and arty farty....

I hope you like the photos I've included today.
The first two are of my Sunburst quilt. At sewing camp I did add the borders and make the back - both of which I'm really pleased with. Unfortunately my machine quilting skills weren't up to the mark so I decided to hand quilt it. Luckily it's no where near as big as the last one I hand quilted and the quilting isn't as dense so it shouldn't take as long. However before I started I was warned about a potential 'challenge'. As I'm quilting in the ditch you do occasionally get a bit where lots of seams have met and it's a bit difficult to get the needle through - in addition the backing is pieced - so this adds another potential seam. Guess what? - they were right. It has been a bit awkward at times but I'm pleased with the result both front and back. As the quilt is very vibrant (otherwise known as you need your sunglasses to look at it) I didn't really want the quilting to be anymore than functional - and I think it works. What do you think? I know the stitching isn't that obvious but if you click on the photos I'm sure the larger version will show the stitching better.

The next photos are for my 'arty farty' architectural quilt for the Malvern Show next year and the exhibition our group is putting on at the Bramble Patch next year.

The first photo shows a photo transfer that I printed and then fussy cut and tacked onto a more textured fabric. It looked a bit harsh so I tea dyed it and it's much more toned now.

This block started out as the rust dyed fabric, then Pitt Artist pens were used with freezer paper to produce brick shapes. I then cut out brick shapes in various fabrics. Again it looked a bit harsh - so tea dyed it again. As it had already been rust dyed the calico took on a very different colour than expected and is more marbled. Again I'm pleased with both blocks.

The blocks will be machine embroidered so the edges again won't look too harsh I'm a bit nervous about putting all the blocks together and then working on the whole piece (18 x 52 inches). It's just got to work. If any of you have any other ideas - do let me know.

Getting on...

It's surprising what you can get done when you ignore all the other stuff that perhaps you should be doing. But I've managed to get the main part of my quilt pieced now. I don't think the photo really shows the true colours - the band across the middle should be red and it looks a bit pink to me. I think it still conveys the idea of the colours moving across the quilt.

Planning the border may take a few days as I like to work out what I need to cut - and then walk away and then double check if my calculations are correct and also check if I have enough material. I also need to have a think about whether to hand or machine quilt. At the moment it measures 39 by 51 inches - so even with a border it's not too large - well not compared to the last one.

A huge thank you to all of you who posted such nice comments about my last completed quilt. It's so nice to know you're all out there. I do reply to comments posted but I know some have the settings so this isn't an option.

Thanks again and I'll keep you posted.