Top done

Border detail and extras

I'm pleased to have completed my top today pushing on to meet my self imposed deadline. I'm pleased with the border, more stack and whackery based on quilts I saw in a Bethany Reynolds book which used a strip pieced block.

Top done

Sisters Quilt

Four Sisters

Today I've done quite a lot of work on the borders of this quilt, another form of stack and whack which I'm thrilled with,  and made a start on sewing the sashing strips together and attaching them to the rows of blocks. The posts I think of as "chips", just random snippets. I started this project in a workshop with Judy Johnson in the Sisters Quilt Show week. She was a very thoroughgoing teacher going into design aspects as well as technique. There are only three Sisters mountains overlooking the small Oregon town of Sisters but this quilt has four identical squares in each block hence the name. I've had the dark green Fossil Fern fabric for a long time and it's just right for this and for once I have ENOUGH!

Bonnies' afternoon

It was the usual get together today where we gathered around the table to draw round templates and cut out our Farmers Wife blocks. We showed the ones we'd completed in the meantime.

Mavis's colourful blocks

Trish's collection

My "Farmer's Puzzle"

My "Farmer's Daughter"

My "Evening Star"

Today

Tree bag for tombola



Cutting out Farmer's Wife block




Blocks arranged

 Today has been a bitty day on the quilting front. I have finally unpacked and put away all including this bag which I took to the Show & Tell at Oast. I have a lot of this fabric and made a couple of bags last year - I was pleased to see one at the foot of the lady who had won it. I wanted to advertise our show by displaying the bag.
Bonnies are meeting again this week so I have been cutting and setting out Farmer's Wife blocks. We spend our meetings drawing round templates - very peaceful. I set mine out on a padded cake board each one separated by a piece of kitchen paper. Then I sew them one by one.
Also I decided I can't spend the next two months just thinking about the show so I unearthed a UFO from a Judy Johnson workshop at Sisters last year. This very flamboyant fabric was the only one with a 24" repeat I could find in time. I think the quilt would probably be better with 20 blocks rather than 30 but I'll use them all up. I like the technique very much so will return to it, I hope.

Strings workshop with Carolyn Forster

One of Carolyn's versions of this design

Carolyn

 This was a really good day. Carolyn showed showed us several patterns which worked well with strings and several techniques for making them, not just " one true way". However what I liked best was the huge number of examples she had brought with her, complete and incomplete, vintage and her own work. This was to alert us to the design and fabric possibilities and to analyse the piece's impact. I'm not sure if I shall leave my efforts as samples or go on to make some smallish quilts. Sewing strips is very addictive!

Student squares

Student stars







Bag Lady

One aspect of my patchworking life and all the groups is I am constantly packing bags and sometimes packing the next lot before unpacking the previous one. It's been like that this weekend with Farmers's Wives, Oast and Carolyn Forsters string workshop today so tomorrow will be the great unpack.

Ready for Farmer's Wife

Back from Oast

Strings at the ready for today

Bonnies are back!

Fran with her quilt top



My Farmer's Wives



Mavis's blocks

Three of the four Bonnie quilters met today and the most recently completed Farmer's Wife blocks were set out and Fran showed us the top she has been making which will be an imminent great grandchild's floor quilt.

Usual Suspects Day

Tracy and quilt

Tracy and her Kaffe quilt

The Usual Suspects came to my house yesterday. We had fish and chips (chips courtesy of my husband) and lots of chat and impressive Show & Tell especially from Tracy who has finished several massive projects including a huge quilt started in a Kaffe Fassett diamonds workshop  and which all bear her hallmark of bright colours and joyful combining of patterns and some very clever piecing.


Another Tracy quilt!

Valerie had been to a weekend with Barbara Chainey and was pleased with her quilt top when it was held up to view and Judy has been making blocks in William Morris fabrics, very subtle and pleasing. Me I did a spot of handsewing binding down on my bags but with all the chat and hostess duties got very little done but finished in the evening. No photo yet.

Valerie's top

Judi's William Morris blocks



Royal Wedding Fever

Watching the wedding

Out for celebratory lunch

Our table

Farmers wives 24-29



Bag making

 It's been a lovely long weekend (tomorrow is still a bank holiday). On Friday we had a joyful time watching the Royal Wedding. While the palace photographs were being taken we had a tasteful lunch of smoked salmon and potato and green salads preceded by a Kir Royale and accompanied by champagne. There was enough left to toast the couple as they came out on the balcony. In the evening we watched it all again and the next day somewhat spruced up we along with other neighbours had a celebratory lunch in aid of the chirch. Our table was rather renegade being hatless; other guests wore some impressive creations and sadly there are no red white and blue decorations in this shot either. Again a toast of champagne to close.
In between I have been sewing: Farmer's Wife blocks and two bags at once as fundraisers for our show in July.

Antimacassar

Having made an antimacassar for my husband's chair I've made a companion piece for my own.

Linus squares top

At the Guild AGM there was a room given over to the Linus project and I spent Friday morning there and started on a set of squares. It gradually dawned that they were NOT all cut to the same size so this is not a masterpiece. At home I did some trimming and concentrated on getting the beginnings and endings of rows in the same place and not stressing about the other seams. I also lost the correct sequence at some point and because the pale fabric had directional trees  I felt resewing would be too much. However whilst I was counting this as a completed top I don't think 36" is wide enough so I shall add a border..

Crab & Winkle meet again

Country Roads

Contrary Wife



Marion's further sample








We met at Pam's for our Crab & Winkle get together last night and among other things Marion showed us yet another sample in very pleasing pale colours she has made for the Stack & Slash workshop which I am planning to do. I cannot resist these quick and easy (I hope) projects which I usually do as charity quilts.

Mary has made a superb quilt for the batik challenge at Sandown but I won't show this till nearer the time. Meanwhile I have still been distracted by Spring sitting outside and reading Alan Bennet's "Not like other people" for book group, much enjoyed and rereading Sara Davidson's "Loose Change" a book about herself and friends at Berkeley in the 60's and the decade that followed. I found I had less patience with the protagonists than the first time - crusty middle age.  However I completed Contrary Wife and Country Roads blocks for the Farmer's Wife project.



Marion's tessellated quilt

Distracted by Spring

Bluebells peeping forth

City Centre cherry tree

Farmers Wife 21 & 23
We are enjoying very warm days here in Kent UK at the moment and this is a very colourful time of year in the countryside and in our gardens. A sight everyone should see if only once is massed bluebells in dappled shade. We went to Rye to see friends yesterday and left early so we could go for a walk in the woods. The bluebells are only just emerging so a later trip is called for. Because of the weather I have been sitting outside and not sewing but today I did my homework: courthouse step blocks for a group quilt and these two Farmers Wife blocks. When I got back from Exeter I spent the whole week getting papers and files in order. I am an inveterate keeper of records and had allowed a backlog to build up. I can no longer keep the runs of magazines I used to so am tearing out the bits I want to keep and these are all filed under various headings. And then there the records of my own quiltmaking plus workshops, group activities, design inspirations and all the attendant photos. At some point these will all have to be thrown out willy nilly but in the meantime they are important to me.

Group days

Valerie's latest block




Marion's latest project

 

Cut and slash class sample

Before the Conference The Usual Suspects met and Valerie showed us her latest 18" sampler block made in a class with Jenny Hoyle.
Valerie has chosen to hand sew.
On Monday I drove straight from Exeter to the Crab and Winkle sewing day where we are working on a second group quilt but no photos yet as it is in a rather messy state at the moment. I chose the general layout so I'm very much hoping it will be all right on the night. It certainly threw up a lot of logistical problems.
Anyway Marion has made a playful sample for the requested stack and slash workshop which I plan to sign up to and she's made a mini version too not shown here. The other quilt was prompted by a gift of unused triangles and lots of scraps. I hope she'll lead a Crab and Winkle session as I too have lots of strips.

Guild Conference

B/W Gala Dinner

Gallery - here, Susan Denton

Redwork sample in class

Lecture - early quilts by Pauline Burbidge (L) and Michael James (R)

Campus with Cathedral in the distance

I went to the Quilters' Guild www.quiltersguild.org.uk/ Conference in Exeter this weekend and had a great time. The scenery I drove through was wonderful especially when Stonehenge loomed into view. Joen Wolfrom http://www.joenwolfrom.com/ was the guest after dinner speaker and was startled to find herself standing to speak at 10pm. I attended a wonderfully thorough class with her on Sunday and have come home enthused and eager to try out colour concepts.
I also went to a half day redwork class where Jeanne Stetson, http://www.swq.org.uk/articles/200908amyemms.php the tutor, had designed a project with a West Country theme, a famous Dartmoor landmark though I opted for apples.
One of the best things was a talk on the history of the Guild by Jenny Hutchison of Strawberry Fayre http://www.strawberryfayre.co.uk/ and founder member, not a promising subject but so many memories of past times we all remember, gentle humour and some wonderful quilts including two by early givers of classes, Michael James and Pauline Burbidge stll prominent today. Photos brought home how we pass from youth to maturity and then age.
The traders were well chosen. Cowslip Workshops fabrics were to die for and I bought two books from the Home Workshop, Two for One Jelly Roll quilts  http://www.quiltroom.co.uk/acatalog/The_Quilt_Room_Books.html
 and Bonny Hunter's Scraps and Shirttails Quilts II. http://quiltvil.startlogic.com/store/page5.html
Now I'm putting everything away but plan to finish the Linus sewing I brought home with me as soon as possible and to apply colour theory to the next bag I make for our Quay Show, starting small!

Courthouse steps

Crab & Winkle are making a lap quilt with panels and Courthouse Steps blocks. To check our measurements I made a little prison baby top 24" square. The measurements were right!