2019 Wk 31 - Festival of Quilts Day 1

Woohoo - a weekend with Jackie, and with a zillion other (mostly) ladies in Birmingham.

Some stunning quilts were on show: This amazing piece was made but a lovely friend of Jackie's called Valerie

And a close up

And these next two are by the very talented Avril: a friend who also attends Richmond & Key Quilters

This circle was made from gathered fabric - gathered as if for smocking - I was desperate to touch it: a lovely piece of wall art, although the pleats must collect so much dust!!

These are dorset buttons: tiny ones about thumbnail size, mounted in plastic rings

After 14000+ steps, we went to the town to find out hotel,

and show our purchases

The Old School One

You may remember Lisa, mum and I started making a dress for Lisa a few weeks ago - well she wants to wear it to a wedding - on Tuesday! Needless to say we had done nothing further since the initial work, but this weekend it had to be finished!

My main sewing machine is still away being serviced, and the one I bought when I was teaching weekly has been playing silly games - so I dragged out an ancient Singer hand crank machine for the top stitching

 

And I hand stitched the hem and am rather chuffed that it's pretty invisible!

 

Not all old school this weekend though. The embroidery machine has been earning its keep with this pile of tshirts done

 

And a last minute present made a birthday girl very happy

 

And I've pinned a whole load more warm diamond blocks - I've even stitched a few on the Singer but my arm is starting to ache! I think I'll be back to hexies for a while until I get a machine back!

 

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School for Sewing

I *still* haven't got much sewing done recently, but we certainly managed loads at school yesterday!

I'm teaching the year 4 class how to design for the embroidery machine (and they have managed to teach me new stuff about the software I have been using for nearly 8 years!!!)

A's first design on the computer

And stitching

After school I had a few hours free, so Valerie brought in her quilt (her first quilt, that we started over the Easter hols), and we got it finished:

That happy face says it all!

And then I spent two evening hours with half a dozen mums, a grandma and an ex-pupil learning how to read paper patterns, and how to cut all sorts of corners (we are looking for quantity over quality!) to make costumes - the school production of Aladdin needs 100 pairs of trousers, and 50 each of strappy tops and waist coats!

Three more weeks, we can do this (I was pinning trouser legs together in my dreams last night!)

Embroidery Extra (1)

I've designed and trial stitched two dragonflies and a flower. I tried using a lovely gold metallic thread that I've had for years. Maybe it was its age that caused a problem, but after half a dozen thread breaks I gave up

I replaced the thread with a slightly shiny goldish colour and they all stitched perfectly!

hope these are OK Valerie x (We need to have a look at the gold in the patterned fabric against the thread colour chart as I'll need to buy thread as there isn't much left of this one)

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Happy Holiday Sewing

It's lovely to be able to spend the day with a friend who also loves sewing!   Usually I have to travel to Jackie in Ireland for this, but Valerie lives just a few miles away, and as we both work at school, we are both on holiday this week! Yippee!

You met Valerie before Christmas when she wanted to make a protective jacket for her sword fighting training, but yesterday she decided it was time to make herself a quilt.

I took her to Helen's: Helen is a lovely lady who has a patchwork shop and workroom in a logcabin in the garden at her home, and is full of ideas and suggestions. We found some lovely jewel coloured dragonflies, and paired them with some green and dark pink solid.

Although Valerie is new to patchworking she knows how to drive a sewing machine, so we moved on a bit from her initial plan of just big squares, and trialed a one patch and four patch idea

it looked good, so we arranged the blocks on the horizontal design wall (ok, my bed)

And then arranged a border of pink / green squares. We liked the arrangement, but wondered if the pink and purple squares were maybe a bit bland?

We have, of course, the technology (with the embroidery machine) to decorate the solid blocks, so Valerie picked up pen and paper and just knocked up a couple of awesome dragonflies and a flower for me to change from a sketch on paper to an embroidery on fabric.

I'm now off to play with the embroidery design software

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Thwack resistant Thursday

I told you that a colleague and I, and my mum, started to make a sword fighting jacket - at this stage we clearly had a long way to go

But less than a week later Valerie had got this far

And by this week she was trailing this at practice:

With six layers of wadding (batting) and the outer fabric - what do you reckon?  Well it's been to training and she says she can't feel the whacks!

Doesn't that grin say it all!!!