Our first stop was the Fitzwilliam Quilters 25th Anniversary Exhibition just outside Peterborough, which I found out about in the Events diary of Today's Quilter magazine. I was imagining a small group show but it turned out to be a really well organised and well presented show, with loads of quilts and sales tables. We ended up spending about an hour and a half there, with DH waiting patiently while I enjoyed:
- a cushion and bag raffle, where you bought five tickets for £1 then put each ticket into the fabric envelope attached to each raffle item that you wanted to win - so you have a chance to win something you actually would like. And the items were really well made.
- a mystery parcel table where £1 bought you a wrapped handmade gift. I had two goes and received a handmade mug bag complete with mug, and a fabric basket including a 'cupcake' pincushion - both beautifully made and worth far more than £1 each!
- a fantastic secondhand book table, with fabulous expensive books all priced at .50p or £1. I spent ages on this one, handing books to DH to hold as I worked my way along. They had quilting and knitting books and some other stitching hobbies as well. Rowan magazines for £1. Australian magazines for .50p. New looking hardcover knitting books for £1. I could have taken it all home but settled for two boxes of books and magazines which I shall enjoy reading for some time to come.
- An Alzheimer's charity table full of handmade items for sale. I got a little kit to make a decorated clothes hanger with an applique cover, the sample looked really cute.
- Four rooms of quilted and embroidered display items, including an entire room of Christmas themed items. They have some really talented people in their group and there were some wonderful quilts on display.
- Fabric traders - I was strong and didn't buy any more fabric but I had a good look.
- A good sized cafe with tea and cake to finish off with.
A really great start to the day. Then we drove around Peterborough to the Plush Addict fabric shop, whom I have bought from at shows but never visited. They trade out of a large warehouse in an industrial estate, and have loads of fabric for both dressmaking and quilting, lots of interfacing, bag hardware, patterns, some yarn, and quite a lot of trims, ribbons and zips. Great resource and I'm sure I will be back in future. I purchased three widths of bias tape makers that I need for my current quilt project, a christmas decoration kit, and some gingham ribbon, and I enjoyed looking around.
After a longish drive up to Leicester, and a stop at a supermarket for a picnic lunch, we arrived at the Big Textile show at Leicester racecourse. I've never been to this show and I don't think I would go again. It wasn't very big considering it cost £10 to get in, and it was a random and muddled mix of a few traders, quite a few textile artists and displays by textile groups, a few yarn shops, a few guilds (Leicester quilt guild, Leicester machine knitters etc.), and various workshops for printing on fabric or making ripped magazine page collages or similar. I did buy a small kit to make an A4-size crazy quilt collage of ribbons and laces from one textile artist, and a half-price lavender bag from another textile artist. My main buy was a box full of 'free' magazine cross-stitch kits from a charity stall, I was looking through it and I asked what donation they wanted for a kit. It was the end of the last day of the show and they jokingly said I could have the lot if I wanted. Money changed hands and I walked the box out to the car. Now I've got it home I can go through it at leisure, keep the kits I want to make, and offer the others to friends or donate them back to local charity shops.
So between the box of books and the cross stitch kits, I've got lots to look through over the coming weeks.
Crafting this week has mainly been working on my Let's Bake applique quilt. I finally finished up all the cutting apart from the background fabrics, altogether it took about five hours of cutting I think. I now have a bunch of plastic baggies labelled for the various applique motifs. I'm going to choose background fabrics as I go along, to contrast with each applique.
Step one was to layout all the border blocks and sew them together. The original quilt has embroidered flowers in all the gingham squares. I haven't done that yet although I might do some embroidery later on so I've left the blocks loose for now and not sewn them into rows. I love having a design wall, it makes this type of quilt layout so much easier to work on.
I am following the online Let's Bake Sew-Along tutorial which starts with the pies:
Each shape is made by stitching around a traced line on interfacing then turning the fabric through. The shapes are secured to the background by a narrow zigzag stitch. Some of the shapes have additional hand embroidered details. For some reason these three pies all had their own background shape which you then stitched together, which seemed like a waste of effort so I just cut one full panel and appliqued all three pies to that.
Next I made some measuring spoons and a measuring cup.
Now that the endless cutting stage is finished, I'm enjoying the actual stitching. I'm looking forward to gradually 'baking' the various elements.
I also finished the applique and embroidery on my two purse panels this week. After the stitching was finished, I tried painting the pink marks from the heat transfer pencil with Vanish stain remover, dipping the panel into detergent water briefly, then scrubbing the pink marks with a stiff paintbrush before rinsing the whole panel. It worked quite well and the pink marks are gone, I just need to press the two panels to remove the wrinkles.
I'm pleased with how it's turned out although I found applique with this coarser woven fabric fairly challenging. The petals have to all come together in the centre which makes for quite a lot of bulk, with the small yellow circle in quilt fabric sitting over the top but having to hide the raw edges. The embroidery is with three strands of floss, I'm not very good at embroidery but this was pretty basic stuff and looks alright. The next step will be to cut out the purse panels, line them and do the hand quilting. The Japanese process is to produce completely finished components, which are then stitched together into a finished item, with an emphasis on handwork.
Yesterday I was on a one-day bobbin lace course to start a new Bucks Point lace mat. It took me about 2.5 hours in the morning to get started and get all my bobbin pairs pinned onto the pillow and in work for the pattern. I was quite pleased to get to the point where I could get on with making lace, so was a bit devastated when my teacher wandered by and critiqued the starting point dictated by the instructions, and decided it should all be undone and started again at a different point. To give her credit, having seen my crestfallen face, she volunteered to undo it all herself over lunch and re-start it. By 2:30pm she had got it back to almost the same point, so I was able to get on and work a little bit of lace before DH picked me up at the end of the day. It probably was the right decision to re-start as it will make finishing the mat much easier in the long run, but it means that I didn't really get a lot done. I haven't done very much bobbin lace lately but now that I've got this new mat started, I shall have to try to work on it more regularly. I've got a few lace days coming up this next month but I don't know if this mat would be too complicated to work on in a distracting environment.
Have you had any good road trips lately?
1 comment:
That sounds like a really fun day out!
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