Stitching News

As my lovely shop has filled up with more shelving to house my beautiful fabrics, to give you a vast selection to choose from!!!, it's getting increasingly difficult to take photos of your fabulous, finished large quilts. I can't apologise for that really... I do it all for you!

Here's Shirley's lovely, large quilt, it's just about all in my photo, give or take a corner or 2! The pattern is from this book by Jo Avery, there are lots of beginner friendly projects to choose from. Shirley pieced the top at the beginning of the first lockdown so she's thrilled to have it finished. Toot toot toot Shirley, a fanfare well deserved!

Norma counted up her blocks and we think there are enough now. She'll know better once they are all sewn together. Just because we know the numbers on the tape measure doesn't mean we can see how large the quilt will be, it's a visual thing... I hope that makes sense to you, it's perfectly normal to me, he!

Suzie continued at home with her Potting project.... 

Just to zig-zag and swirl... it's all making sense now. 

She's already planning a little more wrapping and potting!

They are such fun, mindless sewing can be just the ticket.

Lady Lidl has been known to cringe and shudder at the thought of working with triangles. She must have had a nightmare project at some point. A new book was gifted to her during Sewing Prevention season and she wants to make quilts from it... but they all involve triangles!

Hour Glass Blocks, with Quarter Square Triangles and Half Square Triangle triangles!!

Top tips from an expert helped create a perfect block, perfect points and a delighted Lady Lidl. As you can see, there are already plans for more triangl-ing!

Jan brought her strips already accurately cut and labelled so she could pin and sew, pin and sew... all afternoon. Accurate cutting is the most important part of patchwork really. If you don't cut it right, no amount of fudging can help... that's not strictly true, we still have need for fudge sometimes.

Well now look-etty-look... Bev not only finished her wall hanging quilt top, she made a sandwich. Got all the quilting done... In The Ditching, and got the binding stitched on ready for homework. She's so excited about her next project, which will involve so many triangles... and a hedgehog!

Shirley started a new project.

Do you have any idea what this is?

I'll leave it out there.

Stitching News

Suzie's Ugly Bird House quilt is coming along a treat... Obviously her version is not ugly at all, I love the blue wall! so she's going to have to come up with another cool name, ha!

Bev got all of her Easter flavoured blocks finished so was able to sew them all together at home. She's got the hang of accurate triangles so they all turned out just right... smaller ones are a little more tricky.

Lady Lidl chose a great stripe fabric for her bag trimming and the handles. Pockets have been stitched on, one for her 24" x 6" ruler and one for the 12" square.

Fiona Too purchased one of my Gnome books (This one) There are some very cute applique designs in it. Fiona's plan is to have the beautiful Batik, Quilt-As-You-Go blocks alternating with the Gnome blocks, which will all be joined appartment-ly. 

Sister Suzie has spent her evenings wrapping! She had the full 30 metres of cord ready for Potting when she came to class. Getting the centre started is the trickiest bit and now that is done, she will just zig-zag and swirl.

Kim and Jacquie came to repeat the Beginner cushion workshop. Lots of people come back to make a second cushion as there's so much to learn, it's a "Top Tip" packed workshop so the second is like a refresher... 

This is Kim's project... made to match her first cushion...

And this is Jacquie's second cushion. Sunflowers are such happy-smile-y flowers aren't they? I hope you've noticed the little yellow trim on that there cushion zip flap! Both ladies went home happy and just needing to finish the cushion quilting.

If you fancy trying a "Top Tip" packed, patchwork and quilted cushion workshop to get you started, or just for the heck of it, there's a workshop on Saturday 12th March. Only two places left though.

Stitching News

Just before lockdown, 2 years ago, we were all getting geared up to finish our quilts for display at the Uttoxeter Quilt Show . Unsurprisingly, production stopped when the show was cancelled. Now, can you believe it, some quilts still are not finished and they are entered in the competition this year... Race on!!

This is Jean Bean's competition entry. She had forgotten all about it but now is in full sewing mode. She was pleasantly surprise to see how much she had actually achieved before lockdown so she will be ready on time to finish this bright and beautiful quilt for the show this year.

Christabelle made this very special cushion for her Brother In Law, a big birthday needs a memorabubble gift doesn't it! It's such a treasure!!! The cushion I mean, the Brother In Law obviously treasures the car more!!

A hidden zip!!! This is the most amazing zip flap I ever saw.

Toot toot toot Chris, absolutely fabulous and perfectly finished!

Rose is adding the stitching detail to all of her picture blocks. It's getting close to time to join the blocks together now. 

Gail found her conservatory cushions had faded (darn that beautiful sunshine) so she's decided to make new brightly coloured ones using the originals as a template.

Princess Jackie has a lot of quilting to do. 

It's a good job her Juki DX 7 has a nice big quilting hole!!

Aileen came to make her Bee-eautiful quilt sandwich. She's really enjoyed using the Elizabeth Hartman pattern and she's extremely proud of her big quilt. This one will be hand quilted with Perle cotton, lovely.

Stitching News With Sandwiches

Lots of lovely projects are being made in my classroom. I feel so proud of all the progress and I absolutely love when people start to plan their next quilt before the last on is quite finished... it's all part of the fun addiction isn't it. 

Bev was so excited to get her binding sewn on ready for the evening of hand stitching at home. The very next day she sent me this photo as evidence! Toot toot toot for your fabulous and finished, FIRST BIG QUILT Bev, well done you!

Princess Jackie booked her sandwich making session, this is one huge, beautiful and bright project. It's a double sided quilt and I can't wait to show you the splendid backing she made.

Pam also came to make a safari sandwich... I absolutely love this one. Elizabeth Hartman patterns are wonderful. Pam needs to get this quilt finished ready for the fast approaching Uttoxeter Quilt Show.

Stitching News

This absolutely beautiful quilt was made by Christabelle.
It's a pattern in this Tilda Book (available in my shop of course!)
It was a tricky one for Chris to choose fabrics for as she loves big, bold and brightly coloured fabrics and the request for this quilt's colourway was pastels, blu-ish and yellow-y

Oh boy did Chris change her mind about the colours once she got to cutting up and stitching the blocks together. Each sewing session she got more enthusiastic about the pastel shades. Then Chris completely fell in love with the quilting she decided to do which was heavily influenced by the quilting on the one in the Tilda book...

This is the Quilt on Chris's bed, which was great to see but it's now going to be even more extra very tricky to gift this beautiful work as it fits the bed so perfectly...

And just look at all that spectacular quilting from the back!!!

3 whole spools of King Tut  thread were used

All done on Chris's domestic sewing machine.

A Juki no less, Juki f600 to be precise.

I'm sure you will all agree that this is a very toot toot toot-a-bubble quilt so, raise those trumpets for this fabulous finish with spectacular quilting.

Fancy Fox

As Promised, but approximately one week later than promised,
FABULOUS AND FINISHED.....

My totally toot toot toot-a-bubble Fancy Fox Quilt.

Ready for gifting, YES!!! it has a label sewn on too!!

It's been a strange kind of busy week in my world, in both my shop and personal life, but luckily it finished off with a fabulous Sunday Funday Sewday. I even remembered to take a few project pictures, which I will of course blog about very soon.

Festival Of Quilts 2022

We ARE going this year, on Sunday 21st August. !!

The coach is booked BUT I have to be more strict on numbers than in previous years.

You can purchase just the coach seat @£22.00 if you have your own ticket organised.

These prices include your entrance ticket and return journey.

If 19 -24 people go, the cost will be £35.00 per person

If 25 or more book to go the cost will be £30.00 per person.

You must pay when you book and I am very sorry but there cannot be any refund if you cancel as the Festival this year, has made all tickets non-refundable.

Please tell your chums about this.

Unfortunately, If I don't have enough folk booked, obviously, the coach will have to be cancelled.

The Fancy Fox Quilt

My Lilly and her family have some very special and very precious friends. Precious, special friends need fabulous quilts to wrap themselves in, what with these cold, winter evenings, that's a no brainer.
When your very own mum has been known to make fabulous quilts, you might be tempted to mention how you would love to gift a fabulous quilt to the special friends, should she be able to make one... possibly with a fox theme?
Oh yes!... Mum has the Fancy Fox pattern in her very own shop, so, of course she could make one.

I set about making a test Fox, that red one was the test. The background for the test fox was not meant to be the actual quilt background... I just had some pieces of it left over from another quilt which I've also just finished (I'll blog about that one later) but after making the test fox I thought, that's a wacky background idea.... I love it!! 

So I went to my very own shop and 'purchased' (shop lifted) a couple more metres. It's an Alison Glass Batik and it's just scrumptious to sew with!

The Fancy Fox pattern made 6" x 8" foxes and I had thought
 'Blimey that will take ages and about a million fox blocks, I'll math-e-mise the pattern and make bigger foxes'... so I did. Then I mathemised again to make a middle-sized Fox. I then continued making all three sizes. I kept rearranging, them spreading out the sizes, colours and fabrics.

The lovely friends wear spectacles. 'Could the foxes have spectacles please?' Of course they can! Well, I can't blooming draw for toffee, not even spectacles, so I ended up going online and purchasing another pattern... This one, Fancy Fox 2!!!  Oh For goodness sakes, I could have got that pattern in the first place and saved my brain from all those math-e-misms!!! Hein site can be very annoying!

It was quite tricky to join all the different sizes together and to keep all the fox fabrics spread out... I ended up making three rows of different widths, then I needed more foxy blocks... it's quite a large quilt at this point...

Anyway, it all worked out fine. I decided it didn't need any border treatment, it was already large enough for two people to snuggle under....

A sandwich was soon made. It's been fun to quilt. I started off shadow stitching around all the foxes... then added more, and more stitching, all easy stuff. It is actually finished as I write this but I took it to my shop to show off and forgot to take a toot toot photo. I'll grab a couple of victims today to hold it up for me then show you the finished quilt tomorrow, don't hold me to that though, ha!