How exciting

Hello all.

I had a very nice e-mail yesterday telling me I was in October's British Patchwork & Quilting magazine as their featured blog of the month. And yes I'm there on page 68. A very nice surprise as I had no idea my little old blog would make a national publication.

So if any of you are looking at my blog for the first time please do leave a comment - I'd love to hear from you.

Baking

Hello all.

Hope you're well.

Aplologies for taking so long to blog. Thought I'd show you what I've been up to. Well one thing is baking. I treated myself to the new Nigella book, 'Kitchen' and I tried a new recipe - a Banana and Cherry cake. Hmmm nice. What do you think?

Have you cooked anything new recently?

FoQ

Thought I'd show you a piece made by Alicia Merrett who I took the class with at FoQ. I really love this one- it's so detailed.

I also fell in love with one of the student's work - Sheena Hughes. Here are some photos of her work

I loved looking at the mini studios. I just love looking at a sketchbook.

For those of you who were lucky enough to go - what did you like best?

See you soon.

Yes - I'm still here...

Apologies for having neglected my blog - I've been really busy - but I'm sure you have been too.

So - I'll start with the Festival of Quilts. I hope lots of you managed to get there - I had a great time and the photo above is from my short class with Alicia Merrett. It was really fun. I'd recommend going to one of these short classes if you go to the Festival for a few days. I also noticed they've started putting on twilight classes - from 5 - 8, I might give that a go next time.

I also went to the Contemporary Quilters Coffee Morning. It was great and a big Thank You to those involved in organising it. The idea was you moved around the room looking at 15 minute demonstrations - what a great morning.

Now - after the Festival I was very fortunate to attend a two day class at The Bramble Patch with Catherine Nicholls, It was great. Below are some photos of my sketchbook pages from the 2 days. 

So we started with a photo. Mine was of a hedgerow with lots of flowers on the verge in front of it. We were to focus on the lines and shapes.

I then condensed these lines and shapes into 6 inch boxes.

I then isolated and highlighted different elements of the same drawing and produced printing blocks.

 then sampled the block into two samples - one with Bond a Web and the second was machine pieced.

I've now made a full size sample and will see after quilting what the final size will be and see if I need to adjust the original size. 

So by the end of the 2 days I was shattered. I've now got lots of ideas to make a number of small hangings so - watch this space and I'll show you how I get on.

Catherine was a great tutor and with a class of 9 we really benefited on an individual basis from her experience and comments. If you get the opportunity to have a class with her I'd highly recommend it.

I hope you;re all well and enjoying this Bank Holiday weekend. 

More Exhibitions

I dragged DH out for the day yesterday and we went to see a few things.

First stop was The Bramble Patch - we went to see Gail Lawther and Pat Archibald's work - it was really well exhibited - lots of space and light. I had seen Gail's work before when she gave a talk at Rocheberie Quilters and we'd been very fortunate that we'd been able to handle them and hear from Gail about each of the quilts. It's well worth a trip.

After that we went to a lovely tea shop in a barn at Upper Stowe- very nice indeed. There was a good collection of shops (and lots of cats) but what really caught our eye was the Hayrack Gallery. There was a great range of items for sale and a wide price range. If you're in the area well worth a visit.

We then made our way across to Compton Verney. I hadn't been before but as 'Id got a ticket using my Tesco Clubcard points. I hadn't been before and I wasn't too sure what to expect - but I really liked it. It's got a very modern interior - but the exterior is traditional.  The current exhibition is about volcanoes. The exhibition was well curated and included a wide variety of media from a large Andy Warhol canvas and also a film which was a real work of art - I could have sat and watched and listened to it all day. We would have liked to have a walk around the gardens but the weather was rather strange - very warm and sunny one moment to heavy showers the next.

So - now I'm shattered - having nice day's out is hard work.

Exhibition

Hello all,

Just wanted to let you know about a great exhibition I went to see earlier this week. I saw some work by Stephanie Redfern on the Bramble Patch website as she's taking a class there. So I saw she was exhibiting in Birmingham at RBSA - so I popped along. It's really a lovely place to see work - very light and airey. It was great to be able to get so close and see the work in detail.

There was also an exhibition on the top floor of some great printed work - a really high standard and affordable too.

If you get the chance please do go along to visit.

Selling work

Hello all. Hope you're well.

Well if you want to look at the other page on my blog you'll see I've started to sell quilts via Etsy. I'f love to know what you think of the site and my quilt for sale.

Hello all,

Apologies for not posting last week - I was really busy and I just don't know where the time went. I'll explain about the photos of rusty things later...

I've had a bit of a eureka moment too. I'm sure the rest of world has had it quite some time ago. I wonder if some of you have had this moment too.

Do you seem to spend all your time doing things but don't seem top get the things you want done (did that even make sense!). I spend lots of time ticking things of my 'to do list' but I still seem to have loads of UFOs, lots of sketchbooks with half developed ideas and still have a pile of ironing left to do. I think I might know where I've been going wrong (my eureka moment). And it's all to do with goals - I know allot of you hate the idea of setting goals - but I think this may be the key to where I'm going wrong. I think if I set some big goals like - set up a virtual shop to sell your work, develop your ideas around colour or set out a structured study plan I can then draw down a list of 'to do lists' I'll actually do things off the list and I'll be working towards these bigger goals. I know - you're probably all there... but at least I'm there now. So how do you work towards those 'big' things? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Now the rusty things. In the last class with Bren I should have rusted some fabric - but I just couldn't find anything rusty. I know that's hard to believe but DH does keep a tidy garage. So when I was out with my mum yesterday we found a little place that had lots of lovely rusty things - so I'm off to rust. I promise to show you the results next time.

Take care of yourselves and I hope to hear from you all soon. It's been lovely to hear from you all with comments about my site and how it looks - please keep those comments coming.

So

thank you for all your comments. It's lovely to hear from you all.

Your comments have been very helpful and the general feeling I got was that the background was distracting - so I've changed it. I think it's rather nice and bright. What do you think?

So

what do you think to the new look?

I'd appreciate any feedback you have...

Open University Digital Photography course

Hello - I thought you might like to see the results of my OU Digital Photography course. There are a selection I'm submitting for my final assessment. SO let me know what you think.

Rusty beach view

Rock pool reflections

Moody canal view

Woodland walk

Light shining through leaves

Cones

Poppy

Scrap Metal

Market Bosworth Water Tower doorway

Ghostly ducks

Oh - and people keep telling me I remind them of Miranda... I'm never sure how to take that!