Quilters Guild Day

Today I went to a Quilters Guild Region Ten area day. It was nearly a two hour drive through fog and icy roads and I had a back seat full of enthusiastic young quilters. I really enjoy these days as I see friends whom I have know for ten years but only see two or three times a year. Today was no exception and plans were also made to catch up with people at the Quilters Guild Conference next month where I will be teaching. I was determine however to take some stitching with me so I started machine quilting this last night and did manage to sew in some ends today.

The speaker today was Louise Presley from Hope and Elvis. She describes herself (quite rightly) as an artist and gave a really good talk which raised some interesting questions. One side of her business is connected with vintage textiles and things she makes from them, the other is more contemporary work much of which is Louise's response to things reported in the media. Perhaps the most important thing that I took away from her talk was that when I make my quilts I need to stay true to myself and let my creativity led me forwards and not other people's expectations.

My band of Younq Quilters had a great time as well, under the careful supervision of the YQ rep they made these chickens. Sue did not know when she planned this that all these YQ's own their very own chickens! This chick and rabbit were hand sewn by my son.

Dyeing day

I had a wonderful time today teaching dyeing. I love the graduation from the yellow to blue above. Once I have some photos of the washed fabrics I will post some on my web site.

I want to say thank you to everyone who has left a comment to win my fabric basket filled with goodies (see below). I am having a fantastic time discovering new blogs and some wonderful, creative people. I have entered lots of giveaways so I have fingers and toes crossed that I will win something as well.

Website

Well its official, thanks to DH I now have a website! It is something that has always been at the back of my mind to do, he has the magic fingers and know how to make it happen.

I think I am still too young for google to pick me up so if you want to have a peek you can just click on the image above. The website is still a very new venture for me so I would love any comments from you.

I'd rather be stitching

Its been a busy 24 hours. Last night I went for a Chinese with an old friend. Fantastic company but not great food. The local Chinese we went to has changed so much, instead of table cloths, linen napkins and Chinese crockery we had blank tables, paper napkins and a buffet that only had two veggie things I could eat (except for rice and seaweed). There was not a chop stick in sight with only knives and forks in baskets. Today was very different with fantastic food and company due to the Expedition Quilt Art girls. Tonight, well I felt very old! My teaching assistant whom I worked with had a 30th birthday party. It was good to catch up with old friends but I found it hard to shout at everyone which you had to do above the noise (sorry music). I did feel old beyond my forty years as I would rather have been home doing this, and this,
and this,
I was home by 10pm which surprised DH. This mini quilt is for the Expedition Quilt Art challenge, lots of other wonderful people have completed their challenge - not me. Well it is finished and is sitting in the dye bath, just got to wash and dry before revealing photos hopefully tomorrow on their blog.

Miniature Quilt

As promised images of my miniature quilt. This week seems to have flown by, most evenings spent making a Norman castle with DS for history homework. I have been impressed though as he has done most of it. Our secret method was "No more nails", fantastic for big boys junk modelling. Any way, here is a close up of the bottom left,
And the bottom right

And the whole piece. It measures 5" x 7", made from tissue paper, lutradur, plastic, organza and a tiny amount of angelina fibre. The binding was the plastic net shower curtain stuff (I'm sure it has a technical name though)

My tutor is pleased, just hope DS history teacher likes the castle tomorrow as well!!

snow dyeing results

Here just for sweetiepie are the late photos of my snow dyeing. It seems to have taken me a week to get these on as life has a nasty habit of all too often getting in the way. I used procion cold water dyes, turquoise and magenta. The colours are not great, I had plans to photograph them outside but it has rained all day here.

I had some black and red left over and this was the result of that snow dyeing -

I have also been working on this, my miniature quilt made from tissue paper, lutradur and plastic (with a small amount of plastic)
It has a lot of hand stitching which doesn't show up on the photo. Just at the point of putting on the binding (plastic shower wash thing- do you know what I mean?) it had a major accident. I had green painted tissue paper under the white, all subtle when small child came and picked it up with wet hands. After consulting with my tutor I bravely put more water onto the tissue. This then meant the bottom plastic circle was not dominate enough, it receded too much. You can't see how much stitch went into this, the image below is slightly better. My aim for tonight is to get this plastic binding sewn on. If I manage this I will post photos tomorrow.

Snow dyeing - part 3

The title isn't very original but describes the latest snow dyeing.

I put a mesh shelf (from an old animal cage) over my sink in the utility room and put the soda soaked fabric on top (left image), I then piled fresh snow on top of that (right image) put the dye solutions over this snow and then left it to slowly melt.

After a few hours I had peeks of this -
I will have to wait overnight to see the final results.