Show's Over Folks.....

After a lot of hard work by lots of people, we finally had the Plym Piecemakers' Show this weekend. Not sure of final figures, but I know we raised more than we could have hoped for. P and D were masterful on the sales table...nothing was priced, and people were asked to "make an offer"...while being reminded of the charity we were suppoorting. Fabulous tactics ;-)

After nearly 7 hours to set up and 6 on each day the show was open, I'm exhausted, but thrilled that it all seemed to go smoothly. Hopefully, everyone enjoyed it as much as I did, and will respond to suggestions of doing another in 2 years.

So for now, I'm having a couple of days off sewing, but thinking of the new pieces I can make...lots of inspiration from the 9 magazines I bought....It's OK, I donated about 30. I also treated the kitchen to a cafetiere cosy. Slightly too big for ours, but I can make one to fit....and it'll make a great gift along with a bag of good coffee and help me along in my mission to stash bust as well!

Next on the horizon is a trip to Torquay next Monday with my sister for a girly day out. We're planning to visit Sewing the Seeds and treat ourselves to afternoon tea. Possibly not so good for either stash busting or weight busting!

Show quilting

I can't believe that the Show is now only 2 weeks away. It's being held at Yealmpton Resource Centre, Stray Park, Yealmpton PL8 2HF, and anyone who happens to be in the area on Friday 30th or Saturday 31st July is more than welcome to come along an see us. We're open 10-4 on both days, entrance is £1, and once costs have been covered, we'll be making a donation to Devon Air Ambulance.

Entry forms were duly sent to all our members, with a return by date of 20th June...by which time, I was looking at having to sew 24/7 to make sure there would be something to exhibit. Luckily, more forms arrived and we've now got more than 100 entries. I'll be showing 4 quilts, a table runner and a cushion. Most of them have been featured on here, so here's a quick re-cap:

Japanese Glass

Chocolate Box

Chocolate Limes

Autumn Table Runner

Carp Cushion

I Spy Pirates

This last one is a work on progress for friends who are expecting their first baby in the New Year. They both do triathlons for the Pirate Ship of Fools triathlon team, so I'm planning to FMQ lots of I Spy charm Tacks in the quilt, but I have to draw a skull & cross bones to include as well.

As well as working on pieces for the Show, I've been sewing like a wild thing on other pieces. I've taken the plunge and am trying to sell some of my quilts...the machine really needs to pay for itself, and making curtains and soft furnishings for people isn't as stimulating as quilting!

I've added corner squares to a pack of Japanese charms I bought from Susan Briscoe a couple of years ago, and I'm planning to trim them to make snowball blocks, then assemble them into a 9x11 grid, add a couple of borders and quilt in a sashiko style.

I made a summery tessellated top last year (could be the year before...) and this weekend I've added the final border to it:

Someone's asked me for a quilt, so I'll offer it to her first once it's finished.

My Japanese taupes quilt also has a new home lined up for it. I just need to make another set of blocks using a second jelly roll, jumble them between the two sets, border, layer and quilt it. I'm thinking squares in a stone variegated thread. Lesson leanred from working on Japanese Glass: buy two reels of thread. I ran out with about 18" square left to quilt, at 2130 last Tuesday. Luckily, I was able to order another reel from Barnyarns.com, which came on Thursday, so no real break from working on it.

Ack, can't find photos of the other 3 pieces on either computer, and camera batteries are dead, so I'll have to update that bit later.

Been busy

So it seems that since the good news about the results, my quilting mojo has returned. I've been to 3 quilt shows in the last few weeks, and been so inspired, I'm using my EQ6 more than I've done for a long time, trying to get designs out of my head and onto the design wall.

By far the biggest of the shows was Malvern. Had to be at Tavistock for 7:30 to get the coach up, and eventually arrived back home close to 10pm. I really liked this show, more than Birmingham I think. It was closer for startes, and therfore less tiring to get to. The quilts were just as good as Birmingham, but fewer (whisper it) pretentious ones. More pieces that actually looked like a wall hanging or bed quilt, rather than pure art.



This was one of my favourites. The maker has fussy cut flowers and butterflies out of the fabric then appliqued them to the central section. Many of the butterflies looked like they'd been bonded to other fabric and were 3-D. I didn't buy a catalogue, so can't credit the maker here.

I bought fabric, but the best bit was I was given some money to spend on behalf of the group. I decided that no matter what I bought, someone would complain about it, so I might as well please myself! I settled on a Jelly Roll book, a couple of stencils, a whole pile of Fabrications magazines and a Patsy Thompson DVD.

Our own quilt show is around 8 weeks away, so I visited 2 local shows as well. Picked up some good ideas for next time, but possibly not enough time to do this time. One of the shows had a section of jelly roll quilts that they'd made in a sew-in. I like this idea a lot...maybe something to consider in winter.



On Tuesday I'm supposed to be leading the group in scrap quilt strategies. I've asked them to bring in their favourite scrappy techniques, and I've prepared some samples, as well as found some scrap books and I'll take a couple of quilts in to illustrate what I'm talking about. The other thing I want to do is drum up volunteers for the show, stewarding and refreshments, and tie down details of insurance and finalise a trader.

More badness, but progressing

AGM's with 2 traders aren't the best places to be if you're trying to stash bust are they? I did quite well though, only coming away with 6 FQs and a piece just under half a yard.





My pictoral block of the month quilt is finally finished off properly, with all the ends darned in. Not done a label yet though.

I'm currently working on my Round Robin. I bought the thread for it at Step by Step, and had a practice with some that's identical, using a scrap sandwich. The d%^&*d sewing machine just didn't want to play, kept chewing up the thread, snapping it and skipping stitches. I was very calm (niece visiting from Manchester so no bad language) and pulled everything to pieces, brushed and re-threaded...no change. OK this time I read the manual, changed which way the thread came off the bobbin, and changed the needle. No change. Evenutally I changed the type of needle, from a quilting to a microtex. This time it seems to have solved the problem. Still getting occasional snaps, but nowhere near as bad.





The top photo here shows my first few attempts, where the snaps and snags are obvious. The second photo shows how it's going now I've swapped needles. The big skipped bit is from the "before" sample.

I started work on my real piece, reduced my tension and off I went. Very slow progress as it's a quilt pattern I've not tried before. I'm happy with how it's looking so far though and I love the way the green-brown progressions in the thread are standing out against the colours of the quilt. Think this could be a piece for the show in July.

Another quilt show

This time in England.

We got home from the US on Friday afternoon, I can't believe it took longer to drive from Heathrow than it did to fly from Boston! Nose to tail with cars all the way down from Bristol. I saw quite a few cars pulled in on the hard shoulder with bonnets flung open, so I'm guessing lots over heated in the queues. We picked up the children from Exeter on the Sunday. I was really excited to see them after our break away, but that only lasted about as long as it took to load the washing machine with the first of many laundry loads.

The following weekend, August 22nd, it was the Plym Piecemakers' trip to the Festival of Quilts at Birmingham. We had to be at the carpark for the coach leaving at 6am. EEK!! I was still jet lagged, and I never sleep well if I've got an early start...fear of over sleeping means I wake every hour. We got there on time and a quick 4 1/2 hour journey and we'd arrived.

I decided to take Mike's approach for viewing the quilts and Pat, Margaret and I all dutifully trooped up and down the first section of the exhibition. We managed to view this side in about 2 hours, and I was confident we'd seen all the work on the left hand side of the entrance hall by the time we split up and started heading fot the vendors!! I had a budget, but once again it was a very generous one. Of course, I'd not really planned anything to buy, but had a few ideas of what I fancied.



So here we have some vegetable FQs, a couple of yards of gingko fabric for the corners of the Japanese snowball quilt, a 6 yard piece of dark brown and blue for backings, a couple of half yard pieces of kimono fabric, a new rotary cutter, bobbins, a stitch in the ditch foot and fancy threads bobbin case and a double DVD from Patsy Thompson about free motion quilting.

I feel that I've been in a bit of a rut with my quilting recently but haven't known how to break out of it. I'm not finding as many challenges as I used to in my work, and so I was looking to the FoQ to inspire me anew. I let my photographs dictate what I wanted to buy for future projects...looks like it's art quilts on a smaller scale rather than bed quilts. Having decided that, I bought a couple of books as well.



I'm looking forward to trying some of the landscapes, the author has broken down the technique into manageable steps, and it seems quite do-able. As for the Art Quilts book, I've flicked through it a couple of times, but really need to spend more with some fabric and the machine and work through some of the things they suggest. I'm also thinking of reserving Quilting Arts magazine for more inspiration.

Now behind the stash pictures and the books, can you see what else I bought? It's a portable design wall! The first time I put it up, it took less than 10 minutes and there were no problems at all. It's made from a flannel fabric so my blocks just stick onto it with no pinning!! It's great!!

Only a couple more posts to go and I'll be all up to date. I've got quite a few photos of what I've been working on since returning from Birmingham...naturally lots started but nothing completed yet!

Holiday to the US

Yes here's another post within minutes of the previous one. It's going to be a mini report on our Boston holiday. We'd printed an itinerary and knew lots of things we wanted to do, and managed to fit them all in, plus a couple of other things that we'd not planned at home. We left gaps in the schedule on purpose for this, so were really happy that we were able to fill our time without feeling rushed or that we were spending too much time just shopping (Is there really such as thing as too much time shopping? Discuss!)

So we had breakfast out every day:



Went to Plymouth:



Cape Cod:



Baseball:



Dinner Cruise:



Meals out:



Oh! And a quilt show:



More on the quilt show in my next post.