Quilt show in progress

Last night when we went to the winners circle we took a look at how the stands are coming along for the show. Some of these have stayed put from the market but a lot have been taken down and new ones have gone up. It’s a lot of work to do in two days.

I kinda like the chaos before the show, but by the time we got a picture it looks pretty much normal as you can see. I wonder if they have little tractors here like the do in Birmingham to clean up the mess from unpacking.

Am I back?

Well long time no see. Between blogger being new and improved (also known as unusable) my phone having a hard time and now very poor net access in Houston, blogging has not been easy. This will have to be a short post as the only way to get net access involves holding a heavy laptop in a very painful position.

Still I am in Houston and I have to share a couple of photos from last night. This is Brigit collecting her prize at the awards show. How cool is this? She came to my class in Sitges as well as wining loads of prizes there. It was amazing to not only see her again but to see her in this position. Her quilt is really amazing and does entirely deserve the awards. I was really pleased with this class actually as several of the quilts I thought were amazing collected awards.

Anyway I wasn’t kidding, this is really uncomfortable so I will leave this here.

where is the North Star? – Farncombe

This weekend I was the tutor for a residential (well mostly) course at the Farncombe Conference center (Cotswold Conference center now I think). The students were making their versions for my North Star quilt. The quilt is all foundation pieced and then joined using partial seams giving it a very random/organic look which is supposed to make you think night sky.

Having a mixture of abilities different parts of the class started in different ways. The experienced table went straight in with the borders. As these need the biggest pieces of fabric it makes sense to do them first. This way you know you will have the large pieces to do them and the off cuts can be used for the smaller blocks. However they are large so for the beginners I decided we should start with the simplest block the sky blocks.

The students did very well with the sky, most of them completing 2 sky blocks in the first session after dinner on the Friday. From there the beginners went on to the star blocks so I could teach them the partial seam technique. Again, as you can see, they did really well. Some of the 'beginners' went home with sky, star, and a decent chunk of border. The quilt at the bginning of the post is a combination of work from all the students. The four most experienced got their borders done and those are the ones in the mock up and the partial stars are mostly theirs as well.

I was surprised at how well all the pieces work together. The colour schemes are so different yet the play well together. I am very taken with the monochromatic red version of the quilt, which I wasn't convinced by when I first saw the fabrics. Now the border is together you can see it will be ver striking and effective when it's finished. My concern, other than my p**k issues, was that there just wasn't enough contrast to make the stars pop. I was wrong, there is and I can't wait to see the finished quilt.

Sorry this post (and others) are late. Life has been getting in the way. The posts will arive though, in their own time. I still need to get some images off cameras so I can share with you the highlights of this years FoQ, the gallery of Brigitte Morgenroth, her work was just stunning and I do have the photo's to prove it, if I can just get them onto the computer.

The last couple for this class

I can't wait to see these finished.

Another center

Center 2

Yay, we have another center done and we still have 2 hours to go today.

First center of summer school 2

We are half way through the second summer school and lots of the students are now close to finishing their first pieces. I've finally done my second piece too

Post FOQ recovery

I will post a bit about the show and my quilts tomorrow. but tonight I am glad to be home. Oddly I am now sad to have left my new friends and indeed some old ones. No you can’t please me. I’m also missing the air con, the house it 31C. Too hot, far too hot.

Thank you so much to all the great people who helped me during the show. Especially to the lady who not only bought me an ice cream when I really needed one, but also carried my sewing machine and Greek Fossils to my car for me. You have no idea how much that meant to me. Really!

It was amazing to catch up with people I hadn’t seen for a year or two. My little chicken stacker is going to Uni, how amazing is that? Will that mean she will lose her chicken stacking skills? There were lots of people there I had taught on courses and I lost track of how many had entered their quilts in various shows. I am so proud of you all, and I hope I will see more of your work out and about. After all without the quilters entering quilts the shows aren’t much good are they

It’s now way too hot for you to expect me to think, so I’m going to leave it here for tonight, except to say when I got home I had an email from the show giving me all the details of the awards ceremony. Doh! They tried, it’s just a shame I wasn’t home. They had reserved tables for us and everything, but I didn’t get the message. Oddly it seems I hadn’t put my mobile number on either. I must have been brain dead when I did that form, so apologies for saying they didn’t contact me, they did.

Where am I?

I've been meaning to post this for years. I love this sculpture but everytime I forget. I hope you are impressed This is the hotel I stay in ar the NEC, also known as I didn't have time to take any other pictures today. Ah dinner palls have arrived better go.

Dyeing.

This Monday was another private class. This time one of my students suggested a cfabric dyeing session in her home. That's brave but she isn't daft. Her house is having major building work done and she reasoned we couldn't trash it any more than thew builders what a great attitude, and probably right. Of course when you demonstrate dyeing you end up with new fabric to play with, well after several hours of rinsing you do.

I was thrilled to find I had a shade of purple I've not had before. I am fairly sure now it is a water problem so we had used rainwater this time for all the dye. This should be softer than the local tap water. In fact quite a few of the coulours have come out different shades to normal, which I think is rather fun. It'sa left me wanting to travel around the country teaching dyeing. It would be an amazing way to collect different colours of fabric.

Most of my blacks this time are rather swampy, but I did get one run of 4 shades that look really promising. I also think I have a plan for the rainbow. They may be finding themselves in a quilt very very soon.