Turning Twenty Again
April 13, 2007I have decided to start selling Turning Twenty patterns. This was prompted by the popularity of my quilts from these patterns at the talk I gave today. My initial stock should be with me in about a week and will be 8 pounds per pattern including postage. If you are interested in ordering either the original Turning Twenty pattern or the Turning Twenty Again that I used please contact me via the link on the right.
More from the Racing
April 10, 2007Here are a selection of my other pictures from the weekend. Some of them aren’t a clear as they could be. I guess I am out of practice. Hopefully I will get better again during the season.
Here is Fireforce. A lot of the teams are quite scathing about this big track drier, but it wouldn’t be a large event at Santa Pod without it, and whether you love it of hate it, you have to admit it is quick. It’s record is 336 mph at the end of the standing quarter mile. I have to admit I have a soft spot for this car.
Two funny cars next to each other! Well I cheated, it is the burnouts . This is Showtime and Starkotter. They were remarkably reliable this week end. The Penzoil car however behaved more true to form and threw it’s bodywork at the crowd. No one was hurt but two pieces of barrier will never be the same. These fuel funny cars are very tricky beasts.
Another picture of Showtime, still behaving itself. I am really pleased to have caught the header flames in this shot, especially as it was such a bright day.
Another picture I am really pleased to have caught. This is Urs Erbacher (runner up Top Fuel Pro Shootout) lifting up Lex Joon (winner). It was good to see the people at the top of the sport having fun together. 
This is the best picture from the weekend though. Steve Bolton on the podium. Not only there but on the top step. Who would have thought it last year. He had so much bad luck, but it paid to stick with it. This weekend wasn’t all plain sailing, Steve doesn’t know his own strength and keeps breaking his throttle peddle. Without the kind souls at the track welding it for him he wouldn’t have been collecting that trophy, so thank you all for your help. Hopefully Steve will soon be in need of a bigger house to store all his trophies.
The 4 Link Ugly Stick.
I feel I have to start by saying I didn’t name the Ugly Stick, and I don’t think she is ugly. This is what has been eating our time over the weekend, and in fact last weekend as well. This is Tet’s drive for the year. A Super Pro ET – Super Comp Dragster.
This is the latest addition to the Paul Marston Race School. Seen in front of the soon to be gone barn. She has just been brought over from America and seems to be taking to her new surroundings pretty well. Of course having behaved well in testing she then proceeded to have a strop the first real race. Friday morning she started blowing fuses. It turned out that her throttle stop had shorted out. This was bad news, not only had it missed us the first round of qualifying but it meant that Super Comp was going to become a lot harder. The class requires you to cover the standing quarter in 8.90 seconds, this car can easily do it in 8.20, so is too fast without her stop. Still in the old days it was done by lifting and this was Tet’s chance to show he could do it that way too.
After finding and elimination this fault we headed back out for the second round, and got shut down on the line. We had a water leak. Not in an easy to get to place either. one of those simply remove the engine to fix, sort of leaks. Still we managed to get it done by the end of the day and the starter kindly allowed Tet to make his last licencing pass at the end of racing. The parachute does work and he knows how to deploy it.
Above is the early morning burn out , from Saturday. As you can see the weather was perfect for racing, we didn’t get a spot of rain all weekend. I love the look of the burnout with this car. You can see the smoke slowly curling off the tyres. By the end of the weekend Tet had also found the optimum length of burnout to put the most heat in the tyres. We were thrilled when Tet made it through the first round of eliminations in Super Pro, and unsurprised that he didn’t in Super Comp. However the Super Comp race was fantastically close, not bad for doing things the hard way.
This was one of those moments when you get bored standing in the pairing lanes. The car herself is very bright and shiny but the helmet was giving a perfect reflection of the lane. Again you can see the wonderfully blue sky, so different to last year. I think there will be a quilt inspired by this picture, and a during the weekend I came up with several other ideas too. I think having multiple diverse hobbies is really useful for keeping ideas flowing for quilts.
There are more race reports here;
Drivers perspective by Tet
Crew Chiefs Perspective by Robin
EuroDragster – look for 12.00
Some pictures
I have almost recovered from the weekend, more on that in a moment, and I thought I was time I put up some pictures of my MQS entries.
First is Burning Chrome, this quilt top was made by Robin Tregaskis. Rather annoyingly the quilting is practically impossible to photograph. I’ve tried all sorts of tricks to make it show but it isn’t playing ball. Still it is a striking quilt, and in person you can see that it is covered in red flames, which do suit it very well.
I guess I should add that these are all entries in the same category, the Bread and Butter category. It has been a very valuable experience making these quilts. I would never have made this pattern without the show but it has given me a lot more insight into how fabrics work together and how balance changes the final look of the quilt. I am actually helping a friend make one as her first quilt now too.
This quilt you’ve seen before, it is “My Fat Quarter of Paradise”. It now has wide black borders on each side. Of course that makes it too big for me to photograph. Typical. You just have to imaging the rest of it, one more row of blocks and then the borders.
As requested here is a close up of the quilting. These feathers flow all over the quilt. The thread is variegated so as the fabric colour and the thread colour change the feathers appear and disappear. I am very pleased with the effect. British customs did their best to stop me finishing this quilt but the British longarm quilters bailed me out. I posted the request and had a string of calls offering me the thread I needed to finish. I hadn’t even dared to hope someone would have it. I can’t wait for this quilt to finish it’s tour of duty and arrive on my bed. I love it.
The last of the Bread and Butter quilts is “Road to Mondrian”. This one is the same size as Burning Chrome. It is 30 Turning Twenty blocks. It has 10 fat quarters of plain black in it and is quilted with my decadent swirls. This is a fantastic background or all over fill. I really enjoy quilting it and I think is shows. Lots of movement and texture.
The thread on this one is a variegated again but much more subtle than on the previous quilt. The purples in the thread work well with the plain purple back. Yes I know I am supposed to use busy backs, but I had it and I like it so I used it. It’s come out pretty well so I don’t think I will be stressing about it.
It doesn’t really show in the pictures but all the colours are batiks. They all came from Hanna’s Room at the Chilford Show. It probably isn’t obvious but they do make a pretty good spectrum of colours when you see them together. I wanted to see how that would come across in the quilt. I think the answer is it gives a very balanced feel, so I will be repeating that in the next one I make with more black in. I think this quilt will be staying with me as well. It will make it easier for me to retire a couple of my first quilts. They weren’t the best constructed to start with and after constant use they are showing some wear. I have debated just carying on using them, but I think they have too much value to me to do that. I love being able to see how I have improved over the time I have been quilting.
No time to catch my breath
April 5, 2007You might have gathered I have been busy. I still am, right now I am waiting for a tube into London to get name stickers for The Ugly Stick. A rather unfair name for the dragster Tet will be driving this year. I do have pictures of it but I can’t upload them from here. We went to Santa Pod this weekend to give it some testing and it was amazingly well behaved given it has been shipped from America then stripped down and rebuilt. If the weather holds we should have a fun weekend with it at the Easter Thunderball. Hence the urgent need for the stickers.
Last night I picked up my nudes from DHL. They did indeed have another ribbon with them and a certificate. I was so stunned when one of the mail lists I am on had said it had come third. I don’t think I entirely believed it. Now I have the rather pretty ribbon I guess I have to 
However I have found something else to consider when planning quilts. I can’t post a roll longer than 1.5 meters. The nudes are 1.7 rather annoyingly. Also as wall quilts are art Parcel Force won’t ship them at all. You can of course lie about what is in the package but then it isn’t insured so it probably isn’t a good idea. I wonder if home contents would pay up if something had been lost in the post when mis-declared. Any ideas?
My entries to MQS found me another change in the post office service. They used to offer a swift air service that took four days to America, and for an extra charge they would reduce it by another day. It cost about ten pounds and was great for entering shows. I knew it was Easter this weekend but by sending my forms on Monday I thought there wouldn’t be a problem. The fastest service now offered is still three days but they don’t count the first day as the collection from the post office is in the afternoon. As I had missed it for Monday this meant Wednesday would be the first day of the three. As there are two bank holidays this weekend the letter would have been delivered Tuesday or Wednesday next week. The price for this high speed courier service (their words not mine) 38 pounds. Unbelieveable. So back to DHL 44 pounds and next day delivery. I am feeling very let down by our postal service at the moment.
So with those out of my hair I can concentrate on the quilt patterns I am designing, my meme quilts and my commission for a while. Then I need to think about my floral quilts and what i will be sending to Sandown. All this fitted in around the drag racing.
Well I have arrived in London so I have a signal again and can send this. Let’s hope the printer has done his work. I will try and put some photos up tonight but don’t hold your breath. Things keep cropping up. Oh and if anyone sees my quilt In Full Bloom in Chicago this weekend please send me a picture of it. Thanks. In fact if you see any of my quilts anywhere I love to know and get photos.
Saturday – New Members Coffee Morning
April 3, 2007Yes, Yes I know it is Tuesday, but bear with me and it will become clear why I have only just had a chance to update you all.
Saturday was the Region 7 new members coffee morning. The idea is this is a small event where new members can get to know the committee and ask awkward questions. It doesn’t seem long since I was the new member and trying to work out what one does at a coffee morning and here I am being one of the committee which is supposed to know stuff. Still at least I knew where the hall was thanks to Bonnie so that was one less thing to worry about. I also knew it was an event not to take the Camaro to (it’s down a very narrow road). So Off I set at way too early o’clock. I arrived rather early so I had a chance to look around Wheathampsted. It is a lovely village with what looks like a great butcher. It also has the watter take off for a mill with fat moving water and little falls. I will have to go back with a camera and take some pictures, I feel a quilt coming on.
Our esteemed leader had arrived when I made it back to my car, narrowly saving me from the trashy women’s magazine I had bought to pass the time, and we set to work putting the hall in order. After first checking for undesirables, someone had left the hall open over night. All was well and quickly the quilters touch could be seen. Table clothes cakes and a kettle boiling. If you haven’t been to a quilters meeting and you like cake, do consider it. Quilters can bake, although I no longer make coffee cakes as I prefer Wendy’s. Oh well.
Time then slows down, and we wait, slowly other members of the committee (this is a yucky word to type, I think we should be renamed team or gang or something else short) arrive but only one new member. For me this is the most stressful part of the day, will anyone turn up? Will we be force fed amazing amounts of cake? Then suddenly we are buzzing, the chat is off and the new members are joining in. About now I realise why this is my favourite event. It is the most chatty and interactive as a group. Probably because it is fairly small and you can reasonably talk to everyone.
As is customary for this kind of event we had show and tell. As ever it was interesting and inspiring, the Kandinsky inspired quilt especially appealed to me. I loved the colours and I think Kandinsky was the first artist I saw in a proper gallery so I have something of soft spot for him. I was also pleased to see people who call themselves beginners than show multiple quilts. I love the idea that people are making more quilts per person. I think it give you a lot more scope to grow and play with ideas, which is even more important for those just starting to try a new craft.
At the end of the meeting a group of us headed over to Patchwork Corner. It was fun to drive in a convoy of quilters rather than racers (see yet more way quilting and drag racing are similar). It is a lovely drive too. For so close to London it is surprisingly rural, and on a warm bright spring day it was lovely. As always Patchwork Corner was friendly and welcoming to new people, and I think a fun time was had by all. I even managed to get the honour of showing off the now not so new workshop facilities. I love seeing peoples faces the first time they see the custom built teaching room.
Watch this space for more breasts, Doug has provided me some new tools for my 3 dimensional work, and I hope to find time to play sooner rather than later.
The evening was spent quilting frantically. I needed to get the wholecloth finished Saturday for it to be able to go to the MQS show. I didn’t manage it. It is very close, but rather than miss Tet’s first runs in the dragster I decided it won’t be going to the show. I have five other quilts that will so I don’t think I have done badly. This quilt will still be finished though and if nothing else be used as a longarm sample. I have a plan to remake it entirely for the NEC as I ca see many areas which I can do better now. It is funny how much I have learned from this one quilt. I do love it and I am seeing this as a great proof on concept. I will try and get some pictures up later today.
All I see are stitches.
March 29, 2007I did read somewhere that you shouldn’t quilt for 12 hours a day. I know why, you stop and you can still see stitches and a slight shake on everything. This is the second day in a row I have just quilted solidly. My desk is showing the strain, it is covered in paperwork, mail and the detritus of meals grabbed too quickly. The mugs and cans really do need removing.
The quilt on the frame is my first wholecloth. It is proving to be a bit of a stretch both for me and the machine. I have cleverly chosen a totally unforgiving combinations of fabric (black cotton sateen) threads (thin bright cottons and metallic silver) and designs. I even skipped the busy back. Now repeat after me, always use a busy back, always use a busy back…. but plain black would look so much nicer, if I could keep the tension perfect, yes it would. Bit of a tall order on a large bed quilt. Oh yes and having carefully tested the Hobbs 80/20 to be sure it wouldn’t beard on black fabric (three times in fact) it is bearding. Doh!. Yes I have finally learned my lesson, there is a bolt of black wadding on it’s way to me right now.
So I have a quilt which from maybe six feet away looks great on the front, close up it is OK, the back is just a train wreck. It was intended for the MQS show and for the Festival of Quilts. About lunchtime I was wondering if I should forget about entering it. I mean it does have more issues than Rolling Stone Magazine. Having thought about it some more I am going to send it. I think it is a good design (I would it’s all mine). I’ve put a lot of effort in and I want to show it off. It is interesting, as you might expect from me doing something traditional. I don’t really have an alternative I want to make for the FoQ. Most importantly shows are full of perfect or near perfect quilts. I know I don’t learn much from the bits that are right, I know what I am aiming for. I learn more from the errors, from things that would have worked better a different way, and from seeing where I have already mastered something that is evidently not easy. So I am putting quilt into shows for this reason. Hopefully people will learn from my mistakes and feel inspired and encouraged (believe me a lot will be able to look at this and think they can do better tension wise). I think that is worthy in it’s own right. It has also changed the quilts name, it was Guide me Home, it is now simply Guide Me. I have learned a lot from it, and it has indeed guided me.
The other concern I have heard a lot is about letting out a substandard piece of work. Will people still want me to quilt their quilts or will they think my tension is always this bad. My first though when I considered this was thank goodness this wasn’t a customer quilt. I can choose to accept this mess on mine but I would never leave it on a customers. I would have had to take out all the problem quilting and keep trying until I got it perfect. It is a relief that it is only a show quilt. Daft maybe but that’s how I see it. However prospective customers won’t know that will they. They will just see the quilt on it’s own. I can write this sort of information in my statement, but will they read it? I do see this is a concern, but I don’t think it is a huge risk. If they are a customer I was really likely to get they will have seen my other work, and know that this is not normal. If they are a customer I enjoy working for they will have already know that this quilt breaks a lot of my guidelines and has done everything I warn them about, so in fact it proves I am telling the truth. The few who do look at it and think me a terrible quilter, would probably never have been my customers anyway, and I suspect I would not be the right quilter for them. I discovers a long time ago that my name is great for preselecting jobs. Those companies that don’t like it and don’t want to see me are the same companies I don’t want to work for , we just don’t gel. The customers who judge that quickly are not the customers I am going to gel with either, we would both be happier with someone else. As such i am going to take my chances. It could be that it is striking enough from the front to get picked up by magazines, and in a photo it will look just fine.
Quilters – What a bunch!
March 28, 2007How many businesses could turn to their competitors in times of crisis? Not many in my experience, but when I asked for help from the other UK longarmers I was inundated with offers of help. I have reached the point where I couldn’t afford to wait any longer for my thread for “My Fat Quarter Of Paradise”. I had to try and get the thread another way, so I asked if anyone else had any. Wow it is a lot more popular than I had ever hoped. I love the fact that people were keen to help, no one seemed pleased that I was struggling. It’s almost like being part of one big company. We are all pulling the same way.
I also noticed that a lot of quilters read their email at the same time. Well judging from the string of phone calls So next time you are feeling lonely (and it is quite a lonely profession) rest assured there is someone else doing the same thing far closer than you would imagine.
I have also been making progress on the current project, though not as much as I would have liked. I have just started putting colour on it. I decided it was time to stop when I noticed the time and then broke my bobbin thread twice by bad cornering. I think I need to get to bed. I feel so supported and taken care of, thank you all so much.
Practice makes…
March 26, 2007…if not perfect certainly a lot better. I have spent most of this evening doing ruler work on a mariners compass. You might remember the last ruler work I did was for Wait some months ago. It drove me nuts and I hated it. Tonight it is just working. I guess the 12+ hours a day I have been using the machine are now paying off, even though this is a very different technique. I suppose being more comfortable with your machine just improves everything you do with it. It seems odd that a year ago I didn’t even have the machine working. It’s amazing how far I have come since Myrna Ficken fixed my machine. It actually seems quite unreal.
Now I am really looking forward to a nice long hot bath. I ache in all sorts of odd places from tracing designs and using the ruler so much. I feel like I have earned it.
Just Sometime You Get Lucky
March 25, 2007
I am working very hard trying to get my entries for MQS ready, and it hasn’t all gone according to plan so far. You may remember that I am waiting for more thread to let me finish My Fat Quarter Of Paradise. Well last night I though I was going to have two unfinished quilts. The almost full cone of thread I had started with was looking pretty skinny and I was only half way through the quilting. There is no way I could have got another spool of this in time. It had to work, and just last. As you can see from the picture, it did, just. How close was that? The picture shows what is left of a 3000m cone of thread. There isn’t even any left on the machine to putt through a new thread, that’s the lot. I am feeling very lucky. More amusing was the thread on the bobbin was the same length, that I could have rewound, but it is nice to have an empty bobbin instead of an annoy little bit left.
As you can see I decided to quilt this Turning Twenty Again with my Decadence Scrolls. It is a lovely fill to work and is very quick for the density of quilting. I see me using this quite a lot. It is very similar to the quilting I did on Miss Baltimore who won me an award for the quilting, so hopefully I am not the only one who thinks it looks good.
Is this picture good enough as a close up of quilting? It is hard for me to tell as I know what it looks like. Also I think it is effected by the type and resolution of monitor. So let me know if I have cracked it or if I need to put up larger images.