I Found It!!!

My Perfect Purple Camera... I can't say it was lost because I knew it was here somewhere... I only look for it when I need to take a photo so all the in between times it just stayed 'misplaced'... I've actually found it now, it was in a place that I had already searched several times, duh!

So let's catch up a bit... 

After Gail admitting to finding forgotten quilts in her garage, Sporty Sue felt inspired to search to see if the quilt fairy had left her any unfinished jobs... Tadaaaa! Just like Gail, and inspired by Gail, Sue found a quilt top that she can barely remember making. It will be finished!!

Jean (not Beano) has been joining us for stitchy fun, Friday Quilt Club for a few weeks now. She'd been eyeing up the Beautiful Batik fabrics I have in my very own quilt shop... she eventually lost control of the urge to purchase and is now super excited with what she decided to make... No wonder !!

New Sue came to make a sandwich with her border free quilt top and her Border on the Back backing , I'm guessing this might be finished by now... you know how Sue works... Marathon training!!

Steph came to the Patch Pocket Apron workshop because she wanted to learn lots of things about her fabulous sewing machine, the Juki DZ 7. When we do Patchwork and quilting we tend to stick to the same few machine feet so Steph enjoyed learning just how brilliant this machine is.

Linda came to choose her backing fabric for this kennel of woofers... The pattern is an Elizabeth Hartman  design and is called 'Dogs In Sweaters' and what fabulously smart sweaters they have too. It's actually a doggy sandwich now but, I had no camera on sandwich day.

Monday Judy wanted to challenge her very own self by making a small tray quilt. She wanted to use lots of little pieces as she knows that the smaller they are, the more tricky they can be... They were tricky indeed she says! It's a fabulous Finish now, Toot toot toot

PM Pam made this sweet little quilt top. The Little pink Ballerina blocks are perfectly cute for the job. Pam is making 18 little gifting quilts in all and is well on her way to completing her goal. 24" square quilts are lovely to make....

Another of Pam's gifting quilts... She's having great fun telling people she finished another quilt and another quilt... I'm not sure she mentions that they are all small though... Is that cheating?

This is the back of that last quilt... It's lovely to flip a quilt over to find it's just as cute on the back isn't it... And it's also a fabulous finish so, Toot toot toot Pam.

Christabelle spent the whole morning doing Free Motion quilting on this gifting quilt... meandering all over the place, and she made it look easy.... That's because she practices, and what does practice make??? Perfect... achy shoulders !!! ha ha ha

Gail opted to quilt her second garage found quilt using her Walking Foot and steadily Stitching in the ditch she's getting quite a dab hand at it too, very little ditch hopping!

Rose added all the little filler bits of background fabric to her rows of swans and was able to get them all stitched together... A fabulous, finished quilt top for us to admire. See how Rose has coloured their feathers to have light to dark swans, with a little rebel, dark fellow going the wrong way in a different direction... It's not wrong to be different, we know that!

Uttoxeter Quilt Show

We always call it Uttoxeter Quilt Show... they show quilts and it's in Uttoxeter!!

They have had to extended the deadline date for entering your quilt... 

Yes!!! Just for you...

So it's your lucky day. 

If you missed the last deadline to fill in your form, go do it now.

or print your own using this link... 

Let's fill this show with our wonderful work. 

Don't worry what the judges think or write about your work... what do they know anyway??? 

If you love your quilt, others will love your quilt... I know it.

Paper entry forms will be available in my shop as soon as the postman brings them. 

We can do this!!!! 

You can bring your quilts to my shop before 

Tuesday 9th April

I can take the quilt to the show for you 

and 

I can bring your quilts back to my shop for you.

and

 If you don't want to read them, I can remover the judges comments for you too.

Just another aspect of the fabulous customer service I am proud to offer!

Stitching News

Let's start with raised fanfare trumpets for Gail's fabulous and finished, found in the garage quilt... toot toot toot! The pattern is from one of the many Jelly Roll books, one that's been around for quite a while, I think it's the sampler one. If you can zoom in a bit you will see that Gail finished off this lovely quilt with a Faux Piped Binding... it's just a perfect finish!

Oh No... here she goes again... Found in the garage quilt top number 2!! Actually, Gail moved house twice during the making of the quilt tops... that's why they were packed up and almost forgotten about... Anyway, life happens eh... at least she's finishing them now.

New Sue and my very good self spent hours mathemising two border strips for this quilt, one for the top and one for the bottom... we eventually had success and they were stitched on... When Sue got home she popped the quilt top onto the bed only to realise that it was much too long, so... she unpicked the two borders!! Blimey, that could have been a waste of time BUT...No, the back of this quilt will be fabulous!

New Sue must be enjoying the Elizabeth Hartman patterns as she is making her way through them all, I think. These Bunnies have all been made with Moda's Grunge fabrics... have you seen just how many wonderful colours are available now??? We love them.

Stitching News

Jean Bean finished her Dwight The Deer... a pattern from Elizabeth Hartman... he has a new name now though, Dennis.... It's not for us to question the artist though is it, ha ha ha. He just needs a couple of pupils and he will be extremely splendid

Judy used the design from her Gypsy Wife quilt to make this arty farty cushion.... she loves to go off on a tangent and Do the Different! The back is just as different... with a zipped flap of course.

Monday Sheila has decided to finish off all of her unfinished projects. The Kaleidoscope blocks were stitched during one of my workshops... we think around 2014!!! So it is time to Get 'em finished!! Carol has helped speed up the process by free-motion quilting them for Sheila

The Kaleidoscope blocks were going to be made into a huge quilt but now Sheila decided to make lap size quilts and to give them to the Women's refuge that we started to support recently at our Sunday Funday Sewdays. She is such a generous lady.

A perfectly Purple lap quilt also for gifting to the refuge and made by sheila AND Quilted by our Carol... Got to love a perfectly purple quilt!!!

And... another work in progress for our Pam. She's on a mission to make 18 little quilts for a very good reason, I'll tell you about it soon. I will interview Pam and take notes so I don't have to keep remember-guessing!!

Stitching News With Tooting

Merrily finished her fabulous Band T-Shirt Quilt. All of the T-Shirts were well washed and worn and have great sentimental value to their owner. The quilt has been made as a surprise, and what a surprise it will be when it is gifted!! Merrily is working on a second, slightly smaller quilt with the rest of the T-Shirts... The quilt is hanging on my classroom wall for a week or two if you would like to pop in to see it with your very own eyes.

The guy who will own the quilt had many Motorbikes over the years so Merrily added the names of many of them to the back panels... applique writing in the colours of the bikes... such a lot of thought has gone into this project. Apartment joined panels made the quilting do-a-bubble. Toot toot rock-itty-toot Merrily... it's a fabulous and finished memory quilt.

Pam has another baby on the way... a friend is doing it... not Pam... So when baby appears, and who knows when that will happen with babies these days? Pam is good and ready for gifting this little quilt. The quilting is a random design that Pam thoroughly enjoyed stitching. Toot toot toot Pam

Actually, this might be the baby gifting quilt... Pam's made and finished so many little quilts of late that I can't keep up with each story. It's a good job they are both fabulous and finished in good time and we can remain guessing which quilt is which!! A new game?

Sandwich Saturday

All Day Di sandwiched her Soul Music T-Shirt quilt and now she has the task of quilting it. She's super excited to get it done now. Any customers popping into the shop while Di was pinning were quite amazed by this project. 

Christabelle's sandwich was next to be done. As she pinned it she was planning her quilting... there will be both Walking Foot and Free Motion stitching done. At least that was the plan I heard.

Jean (no beans) came to make her sandwich next. You have probably noticed that there is a border missing, Jean ran out of border fabric at home so, rather than miss out on her Sandwich Saturday slot, we decided to sandwich anyway... it's quite easy to add a missing border at this stage, she purchased a bit more fabric so I'm sure it will be done by now.

Not exactly a sandwich, but when the tables are all pushed together, there's a huge space that's great for deciding on block placement. Sometimes we need to see them all laid out don't we. Norma and myself placed and switched around until she was happy, then she labelled each block in hopes of keeping that very same plan... but we all know Norma loves to go off piste! You can't go wrong with Beautiful Batiks though, it will be splendid.

Our next Sunday Funday Sewday will be on 17th February. I know it's a little close to the last one but the hall was booked up for all the other weekends... so I've been canny and booked us up for January and February 2020!! ha ha ha
Anyway... check your diaries an let me know if you will be booking up. I know I said we have no limit on numbers but after we reached 27 last time I realised I should check it all out, tables etc.
So, maximum number is 32 machine sewers... hand stitchers can use round tables so we can flexicate!!! (I know, I made it up!)

Kate's Fabulous Finish

Aren't large blocks fun!!! I love them.These blocks have 4 x 10½ ˝ unit squares each... that makes the mathemisms quite easy too as you can cut 4 squares from a WOF (Width Of Fabric) Kate carefully stitched all the Melon shapes to their background with the simple and wonderful, Blanket Stitch. She elected to have this quilt professionally quilted by Amanda in Stone. Toot toot toot to both ladies, It's a truly fabulous and finished large quilt. If you saw in my last post that Kate was using up leftover fabrics to make Crazy Pieced Blocks... this is the quilt they were leftover from.

Stitching News

Oh dear... there has been serious neglect of my perfectly purple camera just lately... I plugged her in to do a little blogging and only have 3 project picture to show to you. Shockingly bad show!

So now you know how busy I've been, if there are no pictures I am usually too busy to remember PPC (Perfectly Purple Camera) What with project planning, fabric choosing, mathemising and generally offering rather excellent customer service, photos taking just doesn't spring to my mind... well, it probably does but it 'boings' right over my head! So... the 3

Last week I took this picture, Thursday actually, and I would have written that All Day Di had finished her T-shirt Quilt top... BUT, After yesterday, I have to tell you that she undid a couple of rows to relocate them... but this isn't that picture... confused? Me too! Di will be coming to make a sandwich on Saturday so It is now a Finished Top!

Rose had one Swan completed last week and this week more eggs have hatched... 6 in total and Rose says she's in the swan making groove... this quilt will be an Ombre of Swans, can you see the blues getting deeper as the Swans go up in the picture?

 We are having a lot of trouble with Christabelle's curved quilt blocks. The pattern is completely wrong, none of the templates are the right size so we're having to sort that out... not often a printed pattern is completely wrong because of original printing... but that one is. More on that later as we are giving the designer the chance to sort it out... it's not going well! except she has now put an announcement on her blog.

So, in the meantime Christabelle decided to make up a Kiddy quilt. This picture is a little out of date too as Chris will be making a sandwich on Saturday... I love off centre designs... they are so very fudge-a-bubble!!!