Two months later …

Earlier resolutions of more frequent posting have taken a serious hit since June – who knows what happened, maybe there was just too much excitement going around.  Resolutions of more frequent posting have been reinstated and and reaffirmed so it’s onwards from this point.  Here’s a quick run-through, mostly in pictures, of what has been going on –

Late June, early July – visits to Mead Quilters and Lutterworth Quilters to talk about The Tentmakers of Cairo and teach a workshop on needleturn applique based on Tentmaker style –

A little nearer home and a day visit to Little Moreton Hall, one of the most highly-decorated black and white houses in the NorthWest of England.  Lots to enjoy – many different glazing patterns, woodcarving and so forth –

Mid July and a mini-holiday down in Exeter at a private quilting retreat.  This was a chance to meet up and catch up with my good friend Pat Cox and renew acquaintance with the group of quilters who gather around Pat in Exeter each year.  It was standard summer weather when I arrived –

but gradually improved.  But with good company, good food and quilting does the weather really matter?  Thanks to Barbara Jansen and Jeannie Stetson for all they do to make this retreat such a terrific experience.

End of July, a belated holiday in Southern Spain and a chance to forget about grey and cold and wet – blue skies, sunshine and trips to one or two of my favourite spots for tile and door-hunting (Tarifa and Tangier).

I find that quilting and blogging friends are seldom far from one’s thoughts on holiday – here are a couple of camels for Debbie Wendt, a great tiled doorstep for everyone who does English paper piecing, a perfect (but not pink) pillar for Shirley and a couple of excellent doors and doorways for Lee –

Back from Spain and almost straight into Festival of Quilts – just a couple of days to finish gathering things together for my space in the Quilting in Action section.  This is what one tiny section of Festival looked like just before opening – as you can see, its very orange!

The orange at Festival is not always easy to deal with – if it’s not carpet on the floor, then it’s sodium lighting way up high which can play havoc with cameras and colours.  I was still getting to grips with a new camera and had a few frustrations along the way – Andrea Stracke’s fabulous quilt “Peridot” was the most delicious soft lime green but came out looking like this

There’s an “effects” option on the new camera, right up close by the shutter button.  It’s really easy to switch to this without realising what’s happened – which explains why the pictures of some of the Volunteer team are a trifle blurred (and I’m sticking to that excuse) –

Sadly, the pictures I took of the Volunteer Team’s work are too blurred to post* – apologies, but what if we did it again with different designs for next year, by which time I might have mastered the camera?

* the same fate overtook most of the other pictures I took at Festival – much muttering and cursing!

So, here we are almost at the start of September.  Lots of entries in the diary, and lots to do – plus more frequent posting…  time to go and get started.

 Happy stitching!

The merry month of May

Well it may not have been merry all of the time, but May has certainly been an action-packed month – starting with the great trip to the Open European Quilt Championships as described in my last post, continuing with 4 days of quilting fun and friends at Quilts UK, Malvern, various one-day classes and Chris&Barbara work and then last, but by no means least, the safe arrival of The Grandson (weighing in at 9lbs 9oz, mother and son doing fine).  Quite a rollercoaster!

Just before Quilts UK the postman delivered a most interesting parcel full of good things from my Aussie pal Lee Cleland.  Lee and I are working on a constantly-changing number of collaborative and individual quilting and writing projects (last count was around 9) and I have fallen behind in my timetable – but things have been really moving along Down Under.  One of the projects we planned last year involved Lee interpreting some of my new designs using Oakshott fabrics from one of their Charm packs.  In the parcel were the results – here’s a quick glimpse –

Lee only had my tiny little start-up scribbles to work with and it was really interesting to see how close they all came to my final versions which are in the new pattern book “Top Twenty”.  (Shameless plug, the pattern book is now available for purchase on my website )  And, of course some of these were developed into patterns that the amazing Volunteer Team worked on at the end of last year –

It was great to have a chance to show some of both sets of samples at Quilts UK and I’m planning on doing something similar for my space at Festival of Quilts in August, so thanks again to Lee and the Volunteer Team for their excellent work.

Sometimes it feels like the only time I sit down and make time to quilt is when I’m demonstrating at shows – ok, it isn’t really the only time I quilt, but it’s certainly less often than I should.  A couple of years ago at Festival of Quilts I started on this silk piece and got a whole motif stitched while doing a lot of talking –

– this was just one motif from the Hearts & Ribbons pattern book that was new for that show.  Great plans to finish the sample off into something quite delicious – but, as is so often the case, no further action.  Rescued from the back of The Cupboard, this was a good piece to demonstrate on at the Malvern show and, who knows? – maybe it will be much further along by the time August and Festival of Quilts come around…. there is some progress

and a quick close-up

Intriguing how much difference even light marking can make to the stitching – you can see here the main lines appear darker/yellower than the second or double line around the outside.  It’s the same thread both times, but the second line is stitched “by eye” (also known as guesswork) rather than over markings.

In rummaging through The Cupboard I came across a silk sample I stitched in the early 1990s – or was it late 1980s?  anyway, it’s a long time ago.  This was a sample for one of my first set of quilting designs and you can see how much things have changed and moved on – look at the feather loops and notice how they are opposite each other and quite chunky and squat compared to the more elongated loops we like today.

As well as a lovely day at Cupcake Cottons in Burford teaching Essentials of Hand Quilting I had a very sunny day with Brockhampton Quilters, teaching them not to be Defeated by Whigs.  Foolishly last year I had shown them my sample block of Whigs Defeat – Fine, they said, come back and show us how its done!  And, as you can see, they all got a great start on those pieced arcs …

A quick reminder of what a completed Whigs Defeat block might look like –

At one point during the day I think I heard myself saying something REALLY silly like “Oh wouldn’t it be great to do a Jubilee version in red, white and blue?” – !!  Wonder if anyone heard me – or should I just mark out some pieces and get going …

Next class is at that favourite haunt of mine The Bramble Patch – and as that is scheduled for tomorrow I’d better get going on the all-important task of packing everything into the car.

Happy stitching!

One show after another

The past few weeks have been fairly hectic and I’m now home for only a few days to turn around and get ready for Quilts UK at Malvern next week.  Last week was the much-anticipated trip over land and sea to the Open European Quilt Championships at Veldhoven.   Judging, teaching and demonstrating alongside an exhibit of some of my vintage quilts and some of my Tentmaker pieces, plus LOTS of quilts and traders to enjoy, an excellent hotel (and food!) and many lovely quilters to meet – how hard can it be??  You can find videos from the show and all sorts of other goodies over on the OEQC website – do go and take a look for yourself, and perhaps make a plan to visit next year.

Here’s a detail of what, for me, was one of the outstanding quilts in the show – “Serpentin“, a wonderful wholecloth that was pretty near perfect in every way, and an equally wonderful surprise when I discovered that it was made by Andrea Stracke.   Andrea and I first corresponded with each other way back in 1993 or 1994 I think, shortly after “The Essential Quilter” was published, and it has been a great pleasure to see her work at UK shows.

The detail and workmanship on Jane Rollason’s quilt ” Elizabethan Flowers” was pretty good too –

Then there was a quilt from the inimitable Sandie Lush – ” Whig Rose”

A really quick glimpse of just a few quilts in the championships –

A charming detail from Sheena Norquay’s sampler

I did manage to acquire a few fabrics –

(- some of these are from the last visit to Cupcake Cottons in Burford just before I left for the show.  Thanks for a great day, Jackie & Steph, I’m looking forward to next year already!)

One of the features of the OEQC show is the number and diversity of guest collections.  Two that were very popular were from Reiko Kato and Joes Meester & Isabeau Reinders Folmer

My Judge’s Choice was “Hommage a Monet” by Hilde van Schaardenburg

It was fun to see the Dutch edition of Essential Quilter for the first time –

and to see some of those quilts from the cupboard on display.

The last day of the show I was teaching Tentmaker applique and was so busy I almost forgot to take pictures –

And if I don’t stop now this post will be far too long and I will be even further behind with the preparations for next week.

Happy stitching!

Away with friends

Its the much-anticipated annual retreat – the one that involves long-standing quilting pals, a four-star hotel, good food and time to catch up on news, gather thoughts, make plans and maybe even do some stitching.  We have the use of a small conference suite so we can spread out with all our fabric and gadgets – this year everyone else is busy sewing and I appear to be glued to the laptop.  Not sure how that has happened, although I have brought a couple of stitching projects along just in case!  So here’s an indication of some of the activity –

No prizes for guessing that one of our company is Katharine Guerrier – her retreat project is to use up a whole stack of “leftover” quilt blocks of various sizes to make a new quilt top

and so far it’s looking pretty good for a “rescue” project.  We’ve each had a copy of the new Rainbow Disks  title Little Welsh Quilts by Mary Jenkins, which also looks pretty good – of course we’re all far too busy to sit down and look at it right now, but it will be something to savour when we get home

– and you’ll find Mary’s blog here for lots of other lovely things.

Hiding in a basket of fabric that arrived at the retreat was this small piece –

– from my first range of fabrics for Rose & Hubble in the 1990s, and still one of my favourites.  I’m confiscating this  taking this home to join all the others, and I might even get around to taking a few pictures and reminding myself of what the various ranges looked like …

One of the projects on my “retreat to do” list is to sort out my website and bring it up to date – not a difficult task, it will just need a little focus and concentration – and include my new pattern book on the relevant page.  Whether I achieve this or not I did want to offer a first glimpse of  the lovely work of the Volunteer Crew who so willingly made samples of some of the patterns for the book –

Maggi got carried away (in a good way) and interpreted her given design in shadow quilting using her own hand-dyed silks and sheers –

 

With samples of this quality the book should be a best-seller – thanks ladies!  full links and credits in an upcoming post …

Before I escaped  left home for the retreat I was also sorting out quilts for my exhibit at the Open European Quilt Championships in May and laying them out on a bed well away from the attentions of three prowling cats.  On our bed there’s a well-worn white strippy-style quilt  which gets covered in muddy paw prints from time to time – it always intrigues me that even the simplest quilted texture looks incrediby rich in the right light

Happy stitching!

 

Mostly black and white

Stashed away in the quilt cupboard that has been likened to Dr Who’s Tardis is an old pillowcase.  Inside the pillowcase is a random collection of black and white pieced blocks that I have gathered over the  past 20 years mostly from visits to International Quilt Festival.    I know I have shown these blocks before so I won’t re-run them but I can report that two days ago I actually dared to put my hand into the pillowcase and pull out some orphaned quarter square triangle units.  Furthermore, I have gathered up my courage and actually sewn said units together into three blocks which now await layering up and quilting.  It was scary at first – after all I have spent a long time not doing anything with this collection because choices are difficult and there was a lot of fun to be had just riffling through the blocks from time to time – but I rather like the result.

 

 

You can see above just how interesting some of the seams needed to be to put the blocks together!  The units had all been machine stitched but with 1/8 inch seams rather than our standard 1/4 inch.  This has set off a whole line of questions in my head because other vintage tops in the cupboard have similarly slender seam allowances – was 1/8 inch the standard then?

 

There were enough units to make 3 Ohio Star blocks, but that looked rather staid so I tried to move out of the box and made one block a little different

 

 

 

 

I think the quilting will be triple diagonals spaced about 2 inches apart and then bring “back to front” to make a false binding.  Only the batting  to choose now,  I’m dithering between Legacy wool and Hobbs Polydown – of course cotton would be the purist choice, but it isn’t the easiest to needle and I’m feeling lazy!

This activity also made me realise that I have acquired a modest but adequate sub-collection of black and white repro prints which I am now re-acquainted with.  Should really be doing lots of other more important things but it was quick and it was fun, and I am putting the credit for helping stir me into action to Lori over at Humble Quilts and Kathie at Sentimental Quilter  in particular, all followers, commenters and my blog list in general.  We do get so much inspiration from others and there is so much out there that it’s easy to take it for granted.  During these last few months I’ve tried to keep up with everyone  but have found that Blogger is often being tiresome when it comes to accepting comments from WordPress, so for the moment I’m “resting” from commenting – not sure if anyone else has had the same problem?

Happy stitching!

Quilt pictures again

I will eventually get around to a proper news post rather than just decorative glimpses and random details of vintage quilts – but not this time!  Before I hit the “upload picture” button it’s maybe worth a quick recap on the what, where and why of these images.  My good friend Patricia Cox lives in Minnesota and we first met, through quilting, twenty years ago.  Over the years we’ve shared all sorts of quilting adventures mainly in the US and UK and also shared our love of vintage quilts.  Pat has collected  quilts for the longest time and her collection has been featured in various major exhibits as well as her first book  “American Classic Quits”.  In fact, the collection has grown to the point where something had to give, so we arranged that I would go and visit for a week in order to help her choose quilts to keep, quilts to sell and re-organise storage spaces.  There were too many quilts (what a problem to have!) and not enough time to pull each one out and photograph it at full spread, but I thought that peeks were better than no pictures at all.  So here’s today’s selection – hope you enjoy them!

You’ve probably guessed by now that there was a very healthy number of red & white and red, green & white quilts …

If you happen to get quilt overload, then you can always check out the wallpaper for a little light inspiration –

– you can almost feel a quilt coming on!

And then there was a super album quilt – here are a few of the blocks I particularly liked

Many of the blocks were signed or stamped with the maker’s name or initials and I really liked the small stars in the sashing.

Happy quilting!

More pictures

Still catching up, but I’m determined to load up some more pictures from my quilt-hauling last week.  There really wasn’t time to look at each quilt carefully, take good pictures and write out the basic details of size, age, provenance etc – Pat already had all of that information in several hefty files.  We were more concerned with selecting quilts she wanted to keep, then sorting through quilts to pass on to family and friends and making neat(ish) stacks of quilts that will ultimately be sold on.  So, my pictures are really about eye candy rather than serious documentation and detail, but I think you may find something to enjoy nonetheless … and you should know that there are still plenty more to come!  Before we get started on today’s batch, I just wanted to welcome all new friends and followers – I really appreciate your company.

and, for everyone who enjoys “small” …  (Lori, I think this may include you!)

Domestic chores await, more pictures soon – happy quilting!

Untitled …

Zero stitching for the past few weeks, lots of life’s ups and downs instead.   My view of the great outdoors no longer looks like this –

-and there’s not much to say except that she’s gone after 14 good years, there’s a huge gap in our lives and the house feels very empty.  We may explore the possibilities of taking on an old-timer who needs a home, but its early days yet.

In search of consolation we spent a day in our favourite city – Liverpool – and visited the excellent Maritime Museum down at the Albert Dock.  Warm sunny weather (what a treat for November in England!) helped too.

Lots of interesting shapes and textiles in the Museum – here’s a sampling

A reminder of how we got the nickname “Limeys” ………

and a reminder of other costs –

No new stitching of my own to show (but thanks again to the volunteer crew who, I know, are beavering away behind the scenes on samples for next year) but a quick look at some old stuff.  I needed to supply images to accompany teaching contracts as well as purple prose to describe some classes – Cording & Quilting, Tentmaker Applique for the Open European Quilt Championships next May, and Essentials of Hand Quilting in various UK locations.

So, it’s rather light on text this time around but lots of positive plans taking shape – watch this space!  Happy stitching …

inspirational day out

I was overwhelmed by the generous responses to the request for volunteers in my last post. Thanks to everyone who offered to help – the instructions will be mailed this week.

Sunday was a day off – lunch with very dear friends and then a visit to one of the many historic houses we have here in middle England – Packwood House this time. Armed only with the trusty Gadget rather than the camera I couldn’t resist taking quick shots of some of the wonderful wood carving and textiles – fabulous bargello and crewel work in abundance.

Lots of elegant woodwork too –

Here’s my idea of a really lovely room to write and sew in

– ornament on the outside too

So, after good weather and good company its back to work, but I wanted to finish this post with a couple of pictures of a piece of Portuguese applique that can be seen at Packwood House. Date unknown, my guess is middle 1700s. Fabrics handwoven and hand dyed, mostly wool. Raw unturned edges with couching still visible on some of the edges. One of the many unsung and unremarked textile treasures …

happy stitching
posted from The Gadget

Welsh quilt again

A lovely sunny day with Market Bosworth Quilters – they’d requested a specific class which involves LOTS of cutting and similar amounts of piecing. Everyone got all the cutting done – 24 blocks worth – and got well under way with the piecing. The cutting is very straightforward, as is the piecing, but its a bit unnerving to come up against “cut 48….”, “cut 24…” if you’ve not cut multiple layers before. So, a big Well Done to everyone – and the cake was truly excellent!

Car unpacked, most things put away – there was enough space on the floor to take a second quick look at the Welsh quilt I unexpectedly acquired the other day. Here are a few more pics, really just to show the early stages of approximate measurements and scribbled impressions of the design. As the layout is reasonably symmetrical I think its easier to fold the quilt into quarters to do the measuring and scribbling.
On second inspection, its still not a stunning quilt but its going to be fun to produce the design and I can certainly see lots of possibilities – maybe a scaled-down full pattern, maybe elements re-arranged, and all sorts of  good stuff ….

So, I’m off to pack boxes for various classes this week – happy stitching!

posted from The Gadget