Hamburg trip

I'm just back from a houseswapping trip to Hamburg where I visited the Art Gallery and the Museum of applied art (can't conjure up the German, Kunst und ???) where I came upon these beautiful tapestries from around 1900, the blue ones by Frida Hansen and the Breton women applepicking by Emile Bernard. Some colour inspiration, I felt.

Twisted Sisters

I have bought a set of Twisted Sisters patterns and templates really for a class in the autumn which will have a charity element to it. I have already made two tops from indigo Three Cats fabrics made in South Africa and the Crab and Winkles said they would like to have a go. So here are my indigo pieces, Marion's from pastel plains and checks probably for a baby in the family and Melanie's turquoise one. Pam and I combined to use 30's plains and patterns to make a quilt for Project Linus. This seemed lacklustre till the striped sashing and border was added but it's now quite jazzy. I seem to be driven by all sorts of duties and deadlines at the moment, some foolishly entered into and the tops are multiplying but the quilts are going nowhere. I sew sew sew but nothing gets finished.

Make a better fabric Workshop

The other workshop I did at Paducah was a 5-8pm one following on from Bethany and a suitably jolly end of the day class with Sylvia Woods where she showed us her way of using up all those odds and ends to make large piece, cut out a square and then use the leftovers. I had previously done similar things myself but her strategy was different. I think this is like doodling; everyone has their own intuitive method. This will remain as a sample till I get back to it.

Workshop with Bethany Reynolds

On the Friday of the Paducah Show I did an all day workshop with Bethany Reynolds of Stack'n'Whack fame, a welcome change of place. The subject was Checkerboard Tiles, an octagonal design with triangles at each corner to form a square. It was very interesting to see how diverse the different fabrics looked. I had shopped at Hancocks on the Tuesday and spent ages choosing only to discover the Kaffe Fassett paisley 24" repeat design I originally chose was half a metre short so I then hurriedly selected another print with large shapes and bought masses only to discover the repeat is only 6" so I have to fiddle to achieve sufficient variation. The good news however was that Bethany chose mine to use as a demonstration for cutting purposes - she joined the layers together with a microtack gun. Very clever. She was very calm and there was a good atmosphere and pace in the class.

Great to be in Paducah

Paducah is very different from other shows I've been to as it's a whole town exercise and I love to pace the streets and jump on buses to get to to see antique quilts at the Rotary, Eleanor Burns in her tent and traders in the Mall. I love the museum, the book sale and the shops that have sprung up around town oh and Caryl Bryer Fallert's incredible house and showroom too. I was lucky to meet up with Rosemary from the UK and four very kind and lovely American ladies, Paducah old hands, who invited me to join them for meals, took me on the round of open homes and gave me a lift to the airport which meant I caught an earlier plane. I thought Paducah had been much spruced up since my last visit in 2005 and I hope this improvement survives the present economic downtown. I hope to go back one year and while this year I felt I had to stay in the main hotel now I'm confident enough to stay elsewhere and still find my way round.

PADUCAH!

I have been very preoccupied with non-quilty things of late hence no blogging. However, I did after many concerns along the way manage to make it to the Executive Inn, Paducah, Kentucky, for a week. I was very pleased with my room which was very spacious with a king-size bed and a view over the river. The photo shows the sunrise which I saw every morning as I woke up at 10 to 5 because of the time difference. I also had a couple of chairs on my balcony from which to survey the scene. It was only when I took the photo from down below that I realised I was very lucky. More pics and workshop photos to come.

My turn to post

Today I packed up a quilt ready to be sent off to the other side of the world as a gift for a dear relative of my husband. When I was in NZ she was tickled by the local designs of fabric I bought and I have used some of them to make this quilt and hopefully raise a smile. I call it my Kiwi Quilt and it is my version of the Maple Island Hot shots quilt pattern, a simple but effective one for using large or novelty prints. The original pattern has 12" blocks. Mine were 10.5" based on 1.75 finished squares.

Look what the postman brought!

Last autumn I handed over a very simply pieced quilt over to be custom quilted by Mandy Parks of The Quilt's Whiskers. I know the wide open spaces presented her with something of a conumdrum and I'm very grateful to her for thinking long and hard about what she wanted to do. I wasn't much help! Anyway I heard from her last week and today as promised the quilt arrived and it is marvellous. I love it and am now wondering whether to bind it in navy or red. My husband suggests dark red.
My photos don't do it justice but I am going to enter it for Sandown and perhaps for FOQ. I'm off to Paducah shortly and will check out Festival of Quilts when I get back. The Sandown form has gone. Unfortunately I won't be at Sandown but I have long been planning to enter a quilt into this show which is very popular with us folk in the south east and I would like to thank Mandy by showing off her lovely work to lots of show visitors.

Changing the bed

At present I've got the Quay Quilt on my bed made using Mary's Triangles in shades of green, blues and purples mainly. It probably looks best hung on a large wall but it's also pleasant to sit in bed and look at the pattern, like being at sea, foamy and green. It's called the Quay Quilt because it's a resized verion of the Quay Quilters' raffle quilt some years ago.

Zig Zag

I completed my Zig Zag 16" blocks the week after the retreat and laid out the twelve I need for my modest size quilt only to find I had made 13 so I bordered the extra one to finish at 24" square, just the right size for a prison baby quilt and I can try out a quilted swirl on it too. Meanwhile Judi has made her own very organised version at a workshop with her other group and brought it to Quay to show us. A beautiful Bali Pop!

Quay Quilters 02: miniature theme

The meeting was on a theme of miniatures: Annie had made a small landscape in Patricia Archbold's workshop for Oast Quilters and Valerie a small piece for the March BQL challenge while Karen was the evening's presenter and showed us miniature quilts done by herself and friend Jill, She cleverly used powerpoint so we could all see the small quilts enlarged and the quilts themselves were laid out to display. The sashiko piece was phenomenal looking as good on the back as on the front.

Quay Quilters' Show & Tell

Here is Jean's subtle ninepatch. Valerie had finished her quilt top from the workshop the weekend before while Mags showed the sampler quilt still in the making from our beginner classes. I hope all these will be in our July quilt show.