Not enough time at home?

First I have to apologise again for my lack of posts just recently. As you can guess from my heading...not enough time at home! Too many trips, not that I mean to complain, I realise I am very lucky to be able to go away so much, BUT! This is the thing, I go away to a quilt show to attend some classes with wonderful teachers, to learn how to do some wonderful techniques and then I am never at home to actually try out all these wonderful techniques. My resolution for next year is to make more time for trying out all the newly learned skills.
So where have I been and what have I been up to?

Since Malvern show in May, I have been working on my quilt "The awakening", which I have entered into The Festival of Quilts. I have actually made "The trouble with magenta, hot or not" for Festival of Quilts, but as that one is now on tour at World of Quilts shows in the USA, I have had to decide whether I would enter "Whistler" or "When rainbows dance" or enter one that has not been in a show before.

The Awakening

I added some colour on the back with Tsukineko ink pens

Radiance Challenge

My Radiance Challenge piece is now finished and a few of the other ladies in the group have also finished their challenges. I am posting their quilts here, so you can all see the quality of the work and start looking forward to these quilts going on display at the autumn shows next year

Damask dual - in progress

by Brenda Wroe 

by Nel Eyre

by Vee Jenkins

28 Petals by Adrienne Quinlan

Another quilt for Una

"Gabi was here"
The theme for Sandown National Championships this year was "Learn, Create, Inspire" and I have entered "Gabi was here" as I had no other quilt ready that fitted the description so well and I ended up winning the theme category! The prize was a voucher for books from Kaleidoscope and I spent quite a long time deciding which books to get. The theme running through all the books chosen is foundation piecing, maybe this is a clue to what is coming next? A wonderful prize and I will spend many hours looking through these books.

Karlee J Porter visit UK

Karlee is the author of the book "Graffiti quilting" and is also a designer of quilting designs and a phenomenal young woman who I am sure will change the way we see quilting. We were very lucky that Karlee agreed to visit The Cotton Patch in June, where she did several workshops where we had so much fun. Most of us felt very intimidated at the start but some wonderful pieces were produced. There is not a lot of opportunities to learn better skills for longarm quilters in the UK, so when we do have someone with such amazing talent come visit, we all grab the opportunity. Thank you so much Karlee, we loved you!

My piece done in Karlee's class:

Subsequent piece done couching with metallic yarn

Talks

I have done two further talks and now have another four booked. I am still surprised that people actually want to hear me talk and that I enjoy meeting new quilters so much. I have learnt to put my phone on silent with the alarm set to go off at 5 minutes before I need to stop talk, as it is so easy to talk for too long and leave no time for show and tell and questions afterwards.

Sisters Quilt Show

At the beginning of July, I flew to Seattle, where I accidentally stumbled upon Undercover Quilts      while exploring Pike Place Market, off course I had to support them and bought some lovely patterns and fabrics, but the biggest and best surprise was my visit to the Chihully museum and gardens right next to the Space Needle. I cannot imagine going to Seattle ever again and not go to the museum. Apart from the wonderful glass displays, it is by far one of the best gift shops I have seen at a museum. I will let the photos speak for themselves.

Looking up at the ceiling in The Persian room

The indoor garden

One of many glass chandeliers

Glass added in the gardens to complement the flowers

From Seattle I flew to Bend/Redmond to Sisters for the 40th Annual Sisters Quilt show. I was lucky to have accommodation at The Ponderosa Lodge, which is within walking distance of the town. I arrived on the weekend before the show started and could see day by day how more and more quilt related items found their way into all the shops. I had signed up for classes with June Jaeger for the entire week, and did 2 workshops with her.  I will be back next year, in fact, I have already booked my accommodation.

Original photo I worked from

My artwork on fabric using Tsukineko inks in June's class

Original photo I worked from

My collage on fabric using June's 'paint by number' technique

Firemen putting up quilts in Sisters, outside The Quilting Post

Wonderful lunch in the park for the 40th anniversary celebrations of Sisters Quilt Show

School holidays

I came back from Sisters just in time for the start of the school holidays and had a few days entertaining my daughter and a friend with trips to Thorpe Park and shopping before going to Venice with her. In temperatures of 34 to 36 degrees while in the UK there were torrential rain and cold weather, it was a surprise that we manage to get as much sightseeing done as we did. I had the chance to talk to a museum curator and collector of lace and bought some very small pieces of the exquisite lace and the obligatory pieces of Murano glass, in millefiori style (as I am working on The millefiori quilt at the moment, this trip came at just the right time!)

Making of Burano lace

Burano lace 

Bobbin lace

Bobbin lace

Waste bucket at Glass blowing factory

My millefiori glass collection

My Millefiori quilt - Rosette 1 I have managed to also get going and make progress on my 1/2" hexagon quilt:

Hexie quilt

So far managed to sew together 726. This is what it looks like so far.

Tomorrow I will be going to Festival of Quilts until Sunday evening and then I will be back in Birmingham again a week later when Angela Walters (woohoo!!!) is here to do some more skill building exercises. Hopefully I will have a couple of weeks where I can do some quilting before I next go travelling.