June, halfway through the year already and a month that has a quilt show at Sandown Park, Wimbledon tennis and strawberries. A strawberry is the theme of this month’s free pattern for subscribed members

https://justhands-on.tv/product-category/shop/books/
and our thanks to Lesley Brankin for sharing it; it is a delightful little scissor fob which is simple to make and you could also increase the size to make a pincushion – I seem to remember little strawberry emery fobs to sharpen needles; I wonder if anyone uses them anymore?

If you are interested in the quilt show it is the National Patchwork Championships held at Sandown Park Racecourse, Esher Surrey and will run 17-19th June – great parking and easy to get to (close to Hampton Court Palace and Creative Quilting!). I shall be there helping on the Creative Quilting stand so do stop by and say ‘hi’.

If you are in the neighbourhood you might like to know of another exhibition that will be running from 7thJune-19th June at the Sunbury Millenium Gallery (just over the river from Esher and again close to Hampton Court Palace) which is in the walled garden in Sunbury-on-Thames. As well as housing the Millenium Embroidery it has visiting exhibitions and this one is by Valentina Brunn and is entitled ‘The Stamp Collection’; Valentina has taken a variety of novelty stamps as inspiration and turned them into small works of art with the addition of stitching, fabrics and other clever mixed media techniques – more details of both events https://justhands-on.tv/events/

Talking about visiting shows we have uploaded part 2 of our visit to the Festival of Quilts 2010 where we interview Nina Davis – the graduate award winner – and see her lovely work; we see quilts by Ferret, Philippa Naylor, the Best in Show quilt which is an amazing miniature, made by Kumiko Frydl and we have a terrific interview with Pauline Ineson who made the winning quilt in the Traditional Section. She is prepared to share her secrets too as she has written a book ‘How to Create an Heirloom Quilt’ and we have chosen this as our Book of the Month

And if you really are tempted to give these techniques a go Pauline has put together a starter pack of all sorts of goodies from silk to calico, threads and lace (both products are listed on the side of the Festival video page.)

Gail Lawther wanders through her exhibition of work inspired by the Land of the Long White Cloud (otherwise known as New Zealand) and you can make your own versions as Gail has published a book containing the patterns and instructions.

Also coming up this month we have workshops with Mandy Shaw, who shows us how to make her vintage pinkeepers and a really clever idea for using up some old embroidery scraps. Mandy was kind enough to share a couple of the patterns with our subscribed members and this can be found (as before) in the Book and Pattern of the Month section of the products
https://justhands-on.tv/product-category/shop/books/

We have Jennie doing the Fancy Fandango as well as introducing us to free motion embroidery (the quilting section is coming up later in the year) and as always they are fun but full of useful information. Carolyn Forster shares with us how to create a strips and strings quilt from the scraps you might otherwise throw away

 

and I’m working on another of my favourite fast and easy quilts – Trip Around the World.

If you are in the Hampton Court Palace area next weekend 11/12th June you could pop in and see the graduate exhibition of work by the first year of the FdA programme of the Royal School of Needlework, which is being held in The Clore Learning Centre of the palace. If you aren’t able to get there we can offer you a behind the scenes look at the classroom and a brief insight into the class programme that is run by the Royal School of Needlework ; this film is from our archives and can now be found in the Shops, Shows and Museums section of the site https://justhands-on.tv/product-category/videos/out-and-about/

Workshops remain on the site for a limited period (usually 3 months) but as a subscribed member you can request that we load up anything from our archive section specially for you; while you are able to get tasters of the workshops and some tips in the basic membership, the full videos and workshops are behind our membership wall. This costs just £6/month either through the site on a pay-as-you-go basis or by cheque for a minimum of 3 months (fuller details of how to pay and the benefits are on the Membership page). As you know new videos are loaded each Friday morning early and all the thumbnails and images on the Home Page represent the videos loaded up during the previous 4 weeks – after that they move into their various sections under the video clips tab.

A huge thankyou to Oakshott Fabrics for their prize giveaway of a Colourbox which has been won by Rita Breeding , and two charm packs which have been won by The Bullen family and Sandra Paul.

It is really lovely to receive images of your work and hear the stories behind them and it is particularly rewarding to us all (and I include our contributors in that) to know that we have been instrumental in your achievements; one such story is from Lyn (full story in the Show & Tell) who was inspired by our videos and in particular by Philippa Naylor, Lesley Brankin and Lynette Harris, to make an appliqué quilt with a Disney Fairy castle theme and what a great job she made of it too.

We hope that we continue to inspire
Happy Sewing
Valerie & Jennie
www.Justhands-on.tv

P.S. if you want a little insight into just how stressful life can be on our filming days we hope you will enjoy this footage which Paul and Dave from Bizview.tv have put together under the title ‘stressbuster’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biPnf43UZ5c