Malta – Our first international retreat
Jennie and Valerie have just come back from our first international justhands-on.tv quilting retreat in Malta with Stitchtopia/Arena Travel After a couple of days sightseeing and chilling at the hotel, our ladies enjoyed 4 days of workshops learning how to twiddle and fiddle with Jennie and then creating a quilt with Valerie combining the Dresden Plate/Grandmothers Fan blocks on day one with Flying geese on day two to create small medallion style quilts.
Oakshott Open Days – how can you resist?
Who are Oakshott Fabrics: You may have seen some Oakshott fabrics in our Shop, but who are they? Oakshott is a family-run business which has been supplying quilters and textile artists the world over since 2003. The brand is renowned for the high quality of its fabrics and the sumptuousness of its colour ranges. The collections are designed entirely in-house and ethically sourced from respected weavers, currently in India.
Pots, Jugs and Flowers with Hilary Beattie
We've just had a fantastic weekend at our retreat at the Aztec hotel in Bristol with Hilary Beattie. As you can see from the pictures below all the students produced completely individual interpretations of Hilary's theme for this weekend, which was pots, jugs and flowers. Most were made using materials Hilary provided - they were able to select materials freely from a choice of 5 large boxes of fabric and papers and developed their own compositions - so much more versatile that individual kits - thankyou Hilary.
Under the Edge Quilters
A group of Gloucestershire quilters recently staged an exhibition of their Project Linus quilts. Under the Edge Quilters, based in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, made more than 20 quilts for the charity, which will be distributed to local hospitals to provide a sense of security and comfort to sick and traumatised babies, children and teenagers. The charity's website can be found at https://projectlinusuk.org.uk/
Festival of Quilts 2017
Valerie and our Director Steve Barton, took a working visit to this year's Festival of Quilts, and Steve couldn't help but steal some time to admire the amazing array of quilts and take some pictures to share with you. This is Steve's favourite - in beautiful colours and with some fantastic detail. It's from Linzi Upton who won the Contemporary Quilt Category with her Beelzebub quilt Steve loves the beauty of this and it's very timely, given the World Championship Athletics at the moment!
A Textile treat in Wivenhoe, Essex
We spent the day filming the textile exhibition 'Threads' which is on show at The Nottage Maritime Institute, Wivenhoe - just outside Colchester in Essex. What a delight - not just the exhibiton but the location too Here we are admiring the view during a hard day's work! A huge thankyou to all the contributors , and particularly to Janet Harker and Annie Bielecka-Jones for organising the day and looking after us so well.
Go Crazy with Val in New Malden
Valerie has been invited by a group in New Malden – New Malden Quilters Association (aka Foxy Quilters) to share this fun workshop on Thursday 6th July at 7.30pm If you aren’t familiar with this workshop , it is a great way of creating a quick and easy quilt from 6 Fat ¼’s with no waster; pretty much any combination works and you have the added bonus of not having to worry about the seam allowance.
Manchester Quilting Bee
#manchesterquiltingbee have been collecting fabric squares from generous quilters, crafters and first timers around the world in order to make up quilts for those affected by the tragic attacks in Manchester this May and they've had an amazing response so far. They are collecting five inch hexagons appliqued onto 6.5 inch cotton squares. They are being made into quilts for the families affected by the Manchester terrorist attacks.
Bath Cancer Unit’s Forever Friends Appeal
Members of staff at Knorr-Bremse Rail UK in Wiltshire are selling raffle tickets for a quilt to raise money for Bath Cancer Unit’s Forever Friends Appeal. Their colleague Tony Bliss lost his battle with cancer last year, so an appeal went out for shirts from staff at the Melksham site – an engineering and manufacturing facility in the rail industry – and the amazing response ensured there was enough fabric to make a quilt for a double bed.
Filming with Carolyn Forster
What a great day we had together with Carolyn last week and we have some really lovely workshops ready for editing; Carolyn spent the day sharing with us her 'Joy of Sewing' and we have a whole series of workshops on how to sew patchwork by hand - a great alternative to EPP and not a stitch in sight! She also showed us how to design cable quilting which you can customize for your own quilt size; there is a super quick layer-cake bag and a wonderful woven scrap quilt too (see picture below).
Twiddling, Fiddling and some Magic too -A Weekend Retreat in Henley on Thames
What a super time we all had; there was sewing for two days at the Lady Sew and Sew warehouse in Henley and then dinner at the Red Lion Hotel in Henley followed by the hilarious talk from Jennie Rayment. The sewing schedule was, for me as a tutor, a little different in that I only had to prepare to teach for a one-day workshop - teaching half the delegates on day 1 and then the other half on day 2. There was a little Magic 4 from me, and some Twiddling and Fiddling from Jennie and from the delegates point of view they got the benefit of both of us without having to move!!!
40 Minute Scrap Quilt – 1,000,000 views and counting…
We have some amazing news - Valerie's 40 minute quilt video has taken the internet by storm and has been viewed over ONE MILLION times on You Tube - making her our very own internet phenomenon. Some of you may have already watched Valerie's 40 minute scrap quilt video - it's an amazingly quick and easy quilt - that's great for anyone to make.
Filming day with Jamie Malden of Colouricious
We had a fascinating day filming some block printing workshops with Jamie Malden of Colouricious last week. As you can see from some of the pictures below (taken by our very own Matt), Jamie is a big fan of ethnic patterns and designs and hopes that she can inspire people to use modern methods with traditional techniques. The workshops will be coming to the site soon, but you could check out our Facebook page to catchup with our Facebook Live video that Dave filmed on the day as he has a chat with Jamie
Happy New Year to you all
We hope that 2017 will be an inspiring year for you; one where maybe you start a new project or indeed just allow yourself to sit back and be inspired by the varied and talented contributors we have. Do take time out to watch the interview with have with Hilary Beattie that took place on our stand at the West Country Quilt & Textile Show where she conspires to get us all 'playing without guilt.
One happy retreater
Elizabeth Betts of Popular Patchwork magazine was one of the delegates at our recent retreat weekend at the De Vere hotel in Buckinghamshire. Apparently, like many of us, it had been years since she'd found the time to have two days of consecutive sewing for herself and as one of her newly made retreat friends said to her '... it's a perfect way to spend a weekend in October' So, for a participants view of one of our retreats, click here to read Elizabeth's article that has been published in December's edition of Popular Patchwork.
West Country Quilt Show Update
An amazing time was had by all at the West Country Quilt show last weekend - 11/12 and 13th Nov Valerie's demonstrations of scrap quilts, table runners and crazy patchwork were very popular and we got to meet and interview some of our regular contributors like Kate Findlay, the Stitch Witch, Vanessa from Lady Sew and Sew, Izzy from Creative Quilting, Angela Daymond, Nancy Adamek, Chris Porter and Mary Gamester to name a few.