Oh my
August 17, 2007So it has been a very hectic couple of days here at the NEC. Sorry I didn't get to blog yesterday but I didn't pause between getting up and going to bed.
The show is as amazing as usual although I didn't really appreciate it yesterday. I was especially pleased to see the Russian display back on investigation it was even better than I could have hoped, the main part of the show is entirely from my favourite artist from last year. Www.Nversio.Com I hope will take you to her site. I haven't found out how to spell her name yet but I will. Last year she had a theater on a quilt, this year I love her shop quilt.
The layout of the galleries is amazingly good. If you stand in the Russian gallery which is mostly cool colours you can see into the Faces of Arabia gallery which is the got colours. It is a wonderful display and really shows the diversity of the exhibits beautifully.
Oh yes I suppose I should mention. Nude with rope got a judges choice. I hope I will get to keep the little board with that on that is by it. Tomorrow I will at least try and get a picture of it.
Hmm must be the festival of quilts.
August 15, 2007I am soaked. Yes really everything i an wearing is soggy. I thought I was going over the top with my packing last night, but maybe not. I think I went for eight complete changes of clothes as this happened last year and I ran out of dry clothes. I also decided to bring four pairs of shoes for the same reason and it looks like I will need them too. So come prepared for rain.Winter Star made it on time just. I bumped into the trolly load of quilts leaving as I arrived. At least this way I can be certain it is in the right place with the right people. Now back to the serious business of checking out tonights dinner venue. I don't want to suggest somewhere that isn't good. The Little Owl was very nice last year so hopefully it will still be good.
See you at the NEC
August 14, 2007
So I should really be in bed but here I am posting the last pictures before I go. I have my longarm gallery quilt, Winter Star, packed and ready to go tomorrow morning. These are the pictures I took of it before I trimmed and bound it. The finish size was specified and I decided that I would rather have a gap to the sides of the geese than run the risk of them being clipped by the binding depending on how it shrank as I quilted. As it turned out I could have used a slightly wider binding, but I think it was the right way to go for me. I like to make my quilts oversize them trim them to where I want them. I like the quilting to appear to continue beyond the quilt and the feel of the binding when there is quilting in it. I even do this with borders, making them a couple of inches bigger than I want before quilting. There are four shades of grey thread in this quilt and a lot of black. The binding ended up with a thin piping of shaded purple as my one colour.
Pictures out and about.
I promised you pictures of Sweden, but having been rather busy I haven’t got that far yet. However, Tet who was out there with me has. Here is his page of my pictures. I think he has made a pretty good job of selecting the pictures. If you have a look you will see a picture of ‘Iron wool’ some rather unusual sheep. This was outside the company with the oldest spinning jenny in Sweden still working. They are a very friendly bunch and produce fantastic yarns, Their web site is www.ullspinneriet.com if you like knitting or other yarn crafts do give them a look. It will help if you can read Swedish, but I think you can probably get the idea even if you don’t. A lot of words are quite similar to English.
I also found a photograph of one of my commissions online today. It is quilted but not a quilt. It is Andy Carters engine cover. It is designed to keep the engine warm and clean (and in light rain dry). It was actually about the size of a kingsize quilt before it was shaped to fit the engine. Here you can see it in action as the car is being loaded into the trailer. I don’t think this is the engine I made it to fit, hence it looks a bit baggy, but it will still do the same job.
Oh yes, I will be trying to blog from the NEC again this year, but as last time the intnet access at the hotel is very expensive so I will have to use my phone again. This means I may not be able to read comments until I get home. I will see if I can work out a way around that though.
Busy Busy
August 13, 2007This time last year things were a lot calmer. I keep finding I have misplaced several days, and I haven’t blogged or read my email. This is very unlike me. I just have so much to do. The good news is I am loving it. I can work very long days and enjoy it, which is well worth the lack of time.
Today I have been finishing the quilting on the black wholecloth I mentioned in my last post. I had thought it was quite small at 70″ x 90″, but when I put it on the bed tonight it doesn’t look too bad. It is now trimmed and ready for it’s binding. Just as well as it needs to be in a quilt show Wednesday. I quite fancy doing some more quilts in this style but it will have to wait until I have ordered more thread. I seem to have got through an awful lot of black thread recently. So much so I am almost out.
For this quilt I used masterpiece in the bobbin and signature on top. I thought the slightly heavier thread would help as I wanted the shades of grey to show up. I am fairly pleased with the result, but boy did it make a lot of lint. I had to thoroughly clean and oil my machine twice during this quilt. Normally I only need to do it once a quilt. It is surprising how different similar looking threads can be. I was also surprised to find I had to adjust the top tension for each different colour. I suppose the different amounts of dye is enough to change the diameter of the thread when it is a thicker one to start with. Certainly I haven’t noticed the same effect with finer threads.
I have taken some pictures of the (nearly) finished quilt but my computer isn’t playing ball. For some reason it seems to be having trouble seeing the card from the camera. I have asked someone else to upload it for me and hopefully I will be able to put the pictures up before I go.
This evening it has just started to sink in that the Festival Of Quilts is this week and I need to think about packing for it. Somehow it hasn’t seemed urgent until now. I haven’t even had time to think about an outfit for the gala dinner. I am sure something will work out. I am also trying to decide if I should take some quilting with me. Last year I did have time in the evenings when I was just sitting in my room, but I think I am less likely to do that this year. Maybe the time off would be good.
Please do stop me and say hello if you see me at the show, I do love meeting people, even though I am very bad at remembering names later. I do remember the people and what they make honest.
Where to begin?
August 10, 2007I’ve just spent an amazing day out in London. Out of the blue a week or so back Esterita Austin (yes the Misty Fuse and Stone Portals Esterita) got in touch with me. We talked last year but not much since so it was a bit of a surprise. She was going to be in London so we planned a day out. Her only requirement was afternoon tea, and as one of the first places I found with an opening at short notice was opposite Buckingham Palace it made sense to go there too. As you may be aware the state rooms are open for a short time each year, which just so happens to b now. How lucky were we? If you get the chance I strongly recommend taking a look around them. Architecturally they are stunning, I have coma away with so much inspiration for quilts it is just silly. It is also wonderful to hear the tales of what has happened where and to see the rooms that appear so often on television. It was fun to watch old news real later in the day and be able to say we stood there.
One of the interesting facts I didn’t know was about the roads around the palace. I had noticed they are red but I never really thought about it. Well apparently all royal roads are red and are and extension of the red carpet. Cool, I’ve driven on red carpet then.
It was a lot of fun spending the day with another quilter. It is always interesting to meet new people with the same interests, and I love how often quilters do just get along. I got to learn some more about art, which was wonderful and I got to share things about our country. What more could you ask for. Well maybe the chance to meet up again? Sorted, next week at the NEC. It doesn’t get better than that.
Anyway back to what I have been working on recently.
I’ve been promising a picture of the completed chair, and here it is. Sorry about the cluttered background I only remembered to take the picture just as I was about to walk out the door to deliver it to the collection center. I am thrilled with how solid it has ended up. It gives me a lot of hope for making a larger version. This one is about child sized, and would probably support a cat or a small child. Not bad given it is all textiles and held together entirely with stitches. One of the things I saw in the palace today was a chair which was supported by sphinxes. The way it was built would have worked very well in fabric and as it was very chunky in the structural areas it gives me a lot of scope to add strength. It is something I may have pt have a play with. 
On the longarm I have another wholecloth. This is my entry for the Longarm Gallery at the Festival of Quilts. The theme is black white and a colour, shades of grey are also allowed. It is hard to see but there are several shades of grey thread being used here. I am quite happy with how it is coming along and I am really enjoying doing it. This photo was taken yesterday morning so I could see how the shading was coming. I still can’t see things when I look at them directly. I need a photograph to reduce them and let me see them from a distance.
Exciting Post
August 9, 2007It’s been a good post day today. Firstly I have my instructions for the Fractured Quilt Challenge. This is where a several quilters around the world are given a copy of the same image to make a quilt of. The image is cut into four parts before making the quilt so the top is in four parts. These parts are sent back tot he organizer who shuffles them and send each person four parts to be finished as they like. It makes for some very interesting quilts. I did try to join the last one but I was too slow, so I am extra excited about making it this time.
I also got the September issue of Quilters Newsletter Magazine this morning. This is always a good thing but I was especially pleased with the “bits and pieces” column. It has a short piece about the the Quilters Guild of the British Isles. It talks about our new home where the collection will actually be on display in a purpose built museum. It should be a very interesting project once it is up and running. Hopefully it will lead to some of the UK holiday companies putting it on the agenda for trips to York.
Now back to my latest wholecloth, which is for the Longarm Gallery at the NEC. At least I can deliver it by hand so I don’t have to worry about posting it. I am really looking forward to seeing what the other longarm quilters in the UK can come up with. The theme this year is black and white with one colour. Shades of grey are also allowed. It sounds like I might get to see a whole room full of quilts in a colour scheme I love.
Whups where did the week go?
August 6, 2007Wow it’s been a whole week. I can’t quite believe it. I got back from Sweden safely then got straight down to work. I didn’t really surface again until Friday evening when the NEC quilts were safely sitting at the collection depot. I still haven’t uploaded my photos, so I haven’t got the finished chair picture yet, but believe me as soon as I have it it will be on here. Now I must get back to the very boring, but urgent paperwork mountain.
Sweden – Day 5
July 30, 2007Well I have had a fun day. I’ve taken so many inspiring photographs, I can’t wait to get home and get started on some of these designs. I had been looking at the wings of the plane bringing us over and I thought the plates and rivets had potential in a quilt, well it is a very patchwork effect. Today we went to the aircraft museum. Lots of rivets and other bits of metal to inspire me. I don’t know if anyone would recognise the various planes, but I think they will make fun designs.
The museum also turned out to be the location of choice for the various race related folk. We bumped into so many people we knew it was just silly. You really don’t expect that many Brits in a not very big museum. It was nice to get to chat to some of them.
From there we went on to Gamla Linkoping. This is a 1900 town that was moved from the center of the town to the outskirts where it could be preserved and maintained. I now understand what people mean by wide floor boards. The ones in some houses were huge. The paint effects in the Baron’s house would have made great quilting designs, but I didn’t like to take photographs and I hadn’t taken a paper and pencil so I guess it won’t be this year I use them I think I can remember one of them at least. I also talked to a lady who spins and knits, who has directed us to a factory/museum with a very old spinning jenny. I don’t know if we will make it there this trip, but we may on a future one.
We also went exploring. We do this, and hunt for ancient monuments, forts, and rune stones. Today we found a source of iron ore. It is very pretty with a little waterfall in a forest. We also had a chance to walk through the forest following animal trails. It is so different to London. It is nearly silent. Where we were there weren’t even insects making noises. I took pictures of trees, insects, flowers and moss (you had to be there) so I should have improved my source library a lot.
I doubt I will be able to blog tomorrow. Our flight leaves here after 9pm, so won’t get to England until gone midnight. Hopefully I will have time to upload pictures Wednesday.
Sweden Day 4
July 29, 2007So somewhat sunburned after two days racing (full report at Eurodragster) I have completed the hand sewing on two quilts, just leaving one to finish over the next two days. I have also been catching up on my quilting magazines. I found a new (to me at least) one in my local newsagents just before we left. It is called Quilter’s Home, and I quite like it. It is a long way from your traditional magazine. It is almost a cross with a womans magazine, but has avoided the beauty tips and celebrity gossip. I don’t like womens magazines but this was fun. I think I will look into getting a short subscription to see if it can keep it up.
I’ve also had time to think about my new fabrics. From Tyger and Ting I got a fabric that wants to be a quilt pattern, and I realized I have most of the fabrics for that quilt right here. I am honestly trying not to work, but I love what I do so it just sort of happens. It will be very tricky to piece and as I fancy making it bed size I think it is going to take a while. I also figured out why I prefer bed quilts, other than the fact I like art with a purpose. It is because I don’t have anywhere to display wall quilts. Making one pretty much is a statement that I won’t keep it. So if I want it to be my quilt, it needs to be bed sized. Besides in this case I think it will make it a little easier.