A Bit Of House Keeping

There are quite a few disrupted days coming up for customer and my shop.

DATES TO NOTE: -

In April
Good Friday 7^th Closed. Bank Holiday
Saturday 8^th Closed. Bridge Day
Sunday 9^th Closed
Monday 10^th Closed. Bank Holiday

From Tuesday 11^th April, open as normal.

Friday 21^st April – Closed for Uttoxeter Quilt Show
Saturday 22^nd April Appointments Only.

In May, lots of dates to note.
Monday 1^st Closed. Bank Holiday

Saturday 6^th Closed. Charlie’s Coronation
Sunday Closed
Monday 8^th Closed. Bank Holiday

Fridy 12^th Closed. Angie’s Day Trip

Monday 29^th Closed Bank Holiday

In June
Shop Closed from Monday 5^th until Monday 12^th

Festival Of Quilts 2023

Festival Of Quilts Pilgrimage on Sunday August 6th

Coach, return journey, with show entrance ticket £35.00 per person when paid in advance.

Pick up starts in Leek at Robin Hood Coach park 8.15am.

Collecting from Cheadle, Main car park 8.50am.

Uttoxeter bus station 9.10am plus the usual stops along the way, Checkley, Tean.

We will be leaving NEC at approximately 4.30pm, as usual.

Coach will Not pick up in Meir this year because it's a different coach company.

Please tell anyone you know, or complete strangers, we are not fussy!

Lets fill the coach again.

Thank you for reading.

Stitching News

Officially spring? Mother nature seems to have forgotten, ha!
At least the days are a good length now though eh.

Sister Susie sent these pictures of her finished Reading Pillow. How cute it that? Very! This side has the pocket for a book, it's where the middle strip is, just in case you hadn't guessed, look at that lovely rooooshed up stem!

This is the other side of Susie's reading pillow with our famous (??) hidden zip flap. What a lovely gift it is too. Fabulous and finished and ready for a toot toot toot Fanfare.

Farmer Lynda has been drawing and cutting and gluing all the bits for her latest project, A Pirate Quilt. She's been playing with her Juki stitches for the applique bits and found a perfect one for the rustic repairs on the sails. A random purchase of a Pirate panel happened too, just to get that perfect little flag bit!!

Jean Bean's gifting quilt is coming along nicely, now that is! As we are used to her randomly doing, Beano accidentally changed the size of the central star blocks, they are a bit bigger and a bit more splendid, than our original plan and so the sashing strips need to be longer, lots more mathemisms were needed. but we did it!

Are you thinking,

"Blimey Jackie, What a blooming mess?"

She always does this. 

Anyone else enjoy saving all the ends last?

Princess Jackie knows what she's doing and saves her favourite job until last, Nowt so funny as folk? Look at all those beautiful flowers! These are the original sized appliques. The bottom left block is finished, with the hand stitched detail, lovely.

Gail is on the home straight to finishing this. There's plenty of quilting done really and Gail will add more! If only to avoid getting back to working on her Shakespeare In The Park project. 

I haven't forgotten Gail!

Tina had never done 'sticky stuff' applique before. 

She's done a brilliant job with her blanket stitching.

This lovely, bright butterfly will be the focus on a new cushion.

Rose sent this picture from her holiday in Spain. 

She was sitting on the beach hand stitching her quilt binding.

What a life!!

Next Sunday, 26th March, is a Funday Sewday at Checkley Village Hall.
There's a bit of space left if you're interested. 07807530441, for more information.

Stitching News

Happy New week! We had a little snow disruption in the classroom last week which meant some folk couldn't get to class. The few that did make it had extra room and extra help so projects moved on at a pace.

Bev was able to lay out her penguin blocks with all the sashing and get the whole top stitched together. She returned the next morning to make a penguin sandwich!

Di is so pleased to have her Juki DX 7 with it's excellent hover foot feature. Tiny little pieces for applique need a change of direction on almost every stitch. One block finished, looking fabulous, and the rest of the book to go. Di is enlarging the original patterns 140% and still the pieces are tiny!

Cheryl Cheryl started this project last Saturday. She had purchased the pattern online but soon found the instructions were very vague. In class we did a bit of jiggery-pokery and made it work. Adding a beautiful batik border makes this a great sofa throw size. There was just time to make a sandwich.

We should have been away on a retreat this week but, annoyingly, it got cancelled. We were all going to work with the same pattern while we were there. Now obviously, we are not. Pam has continued with her quilt project and is almost done. She's retreating at home!

Louise Merlot stitched all the google-y eyes and other embellishment to her animals then added her borders. I had a perfect fabric for the back so Merlot made an animal sandwich followed by

A stained glass sandwich. How fabulous is that!! 

Merlot has a lot of quilting to be getting on with at home. 

I believe there's another top ready too.

I did say I expected a few sandwich making sessions soon didn't I.

I will be pushing the tables together again on Friday and Saturday this week so if you have a top ready to be sandwiched (Gail, Jackie, Sue?) just make a booking and we can get it done, ha!

Stitching News

It's been another one of 'those' weeks, do you think we can actually meet our very own selves coming/going backwards? One of these days I'm sure it will happen. In my very own shop, I seem to be selling rather a lot of wadding of late, so there will be sandwiches everywhere soon, ha! Always followed by new project plans, of course.

Bev has all of her 20 penguins ready for play, a huge relief. They are so cute but Bev hasn't truly enjoyed all the little bitty piecing, especially to make the eyes and beaks, she will change her mind once the project is finished I'm sure.

Wowsers, this is a whopper! Christabelle came to make her Log Cabin sandwich. It's 2.40m x 2.40m so I had to push even more tables together. There was barely room to get around it for the pinning. A quilting plan was made and muscles were flexed in readiness for the quilting.

Christabelle made this quilt especially to cover her sofa.

It's a perfect size and she's very happy with it. 

Chris says everyone strokes it as they admire it.

Norma had lot's of tables to herself in class so she made good use of them. Lot's of one and a half inch strips laid out ready to choose for...

Making the centres of these fabulous blocks.

Each one is 18 inches finished so Norma only needs 16 of them. I see I already told you about that last time.

My Churndash quilt is on the home straight too.

 I'm binding it!! whoop whoop

I hope you all have enough fabric, ready for when the snow arrives!!

Fabulous And Finished

 It's very tricky to take a good photo of a large quilt in my little, but very well stocked, quilt shop. Even on the 'photo step', but I'm sure you will still see an eyeful of inspiring work, beautiful colour and patchwork design

This blast of colour belongs to Princess Jackie. She's done a free-motion style quilting design on the Log Cabin beauty but she does it all using her walking foot, no free motion at all! So it is possible folk, the evidence is here, in technicolour, boom!

This, you won't believe, is the back of Jackie's quilt and, even though I took a rubbish, blurred picture you can clearly see the quilting. An absolutely wonderful, double sided quilt ready for a toot-toot-toot-itty-toot fabulous and finished fanfare.

Christabelle declared her love of Faux Piped Binding after finishing this splendid quilt. It is a brilliant method, possibly takes a little more effort to prepare all the strips but my goodness doesn't it look great. Obviously the whole quilt is beautiful too! Chris chose to 'Stitch In The Ditch' to enhance the curved design, which it does, but she doesn't like doing it, ha! How we suffer for our art! Toot toot toot Chris, another fabulous finish. Sorry there's no picture of the back, I forgot.