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.

It's a miracle!

If I hadn't seen it myself I wouldn't have believed it. Yes - Fluff and Flo - asleep - next to each other.

Not so sunny weather

Well - it's not sunny any more. To say it's raining would be a real understatement - it's thrown it down. I haven't taken a photo - it's too sad.

I've found a really good blog called Hope in every day. Krista has some great ideas about how to yourself motivated. She suggest setting your own classes - so you decide on what you're going to study, your own book list, field trips and objectives. It's such a great idea.

With the weather having taken a turn I'm now so looking forward to Sewing Camp. Not long to go now.

I went to Bramble Patch yesterday and delivered my quilt for a cause for their Strawberry's and Cream exhibition. I also did a bit of shopping - not all for me I hasten to add.

Anyway - must get on.

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.

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).

Spring has sprung...

I just had to go for a walk this morning to take a photo of these lambs - I just love to see them jumping around on their little fat legs.

As I haven't posted for a couple of weeks (sorry!) I thought I'd post lots of photos and not say too much....

Below is my piece I entered into the exhibition at Bramble Patch called Poetic Licence - it's open until Saturday 18th April. If you do have a chance to go please do as the work there is really good and there is so much variety.

Here's my entry for the Trentham, Quilts in the Garden show. I was really pleased wit the result - but as it was hung next to a really bright quilt it looked rather dull.

I've also posted photos of the quilts entered by other members of our group. Again a really varied group of quilts.

If you don't like huge quilt shows this is a really good one to go to. It's small enough to get around and there are a good number of stalls to buy material, books and art products. Also if you take your partner with you they can have a look at the retail village - or just sit and have a coffee.

And here's what I bought...... I'm sure you'll see them pop up soon.

If you want to learn how to make this scrappy Irish Chain above, Linda is running a class at the Bramble Patch on Thursday 23rd July. The class is called Double Irish Coffee.

And this one really made me smile - I love the Santa cat......
Hope you all had a good Easter.

More stuff.....

As promised here are the other book marks I made, inspired by the Jenny Rolfe class last week at Bramble Patch. I'm so pleased with them and I've shown them around at work and a number of people said they would like them.

I've also managed (just) to get my BQL challenge block completed for March. It does still need to be quilted - but at least the block is together. As you can see Kandy introduced the technique of photo y=transfer - those of you who know me know this is a technique I love. I printed my image as A4and used the remaining pieces to make more single and double blocks to use in the piece. I'm looking forward to quilting it as when it's 12 x 12 you can experiment and you aren't too disappointed if it doesn't go to plan.
The weather has at last picked up and although it's cold at least the sun is shining.
Hope you're all having a good weekend. Perhaps I'll see some of you at Trentham next Sunday.

Jenny Rolfe

I had a great day yesterday at Bramble Patch - I took a class with Jenny Rolfe called 'miniature works of art'. Below is the result of a day's work. It measures 2.5 by 8.5 inches. I'm really pleased with it as the finish is much better than I normally achieve. Needless to say I'm now making my third one.

And here is Flo with a look that says 'don't you dare move me......'. And we didn't.Still having great weather - it really seems to have given everyone a lift.

Take care and I hope you're all having a great time too.

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.

Busy busy...

Hello, yes I'm still here.

I had a lovely day out yesterday with the Lutterworth Embroiders Guild to London to see the Prism 2009 exhibition at the Pall Mall Gallery. Although not a large exhibition all the pieces were of a very high quality. Hopefully in the next blog I'll be able to provide you with some details of the artists.

Because we were there from 10 - 4 we decided to visit a shop I heard about from one of the quilters in our group - McCulloch & Wallis. What a treasure trove. I was very restrained and only bought 4 meters of ribbon.

We also had lunch at the new National Geographic store on Regent Street. It was rather nice.

Here's another of my blocks for the exhibition at the Bramble Patch. I've got to deliver them in the next few weeks and I've just got to finish off the one block and then decide how to get them hung.
And finally here's Flo - exploring. LOL She really can't wait to stick her little nose anywhere. Luckily she jumped out before we shut the boot.

Well - I'd better crack on with all the stuff that seems to have accumulated over the week.Have a lovely weekend and enjoy the sunshine.