Festival of Quilts...

Well, as usual, I forgot to take lots of phots at a quilt show - I took a few, but you may know how it is - you get distracted by other things - too many people by a quilt, where the kids have got to now, going closer to get a better view, trying to work out who the quilt is by (FoQ labels them with a number and where the artist is from, you have to have the catalogue to figure out who made the quilt - I understand why they do this, so that people evaluate the quilt on its own merits rather than looking for famous names; I also know I am not alone in finding it completely ****ing annoying - when I see a quilt I like, I want to know who made it, and if I'm carrying a number of bags of shopping, and my camera, and possibly holding on to a child, the last thing I need is to have to have the show catalogue out to flip to the number to work out who made it. Grrr. But I digress. As usual.)

This photo is of a quilt that I had forgotten was going to the FoQ, and only happened across by chance - I stopped to talk to a friend who I ran into, and as I glanced up from where I was standing, there it was. This quilt was made by my friend Lana (the Longarmer - I'm sure I've mentioned her before) and I personally dyed all the fabric in it (except possibly the back - can't remember what's on the back). So that was fun and fortuitous. Otherwise, there are only a handful of photos from the show, so I'm going to skip them.

I did have lots of fun - ran into many people that I know (I do know quite a few, I admit) including my friend Cathi in Ireland, who I am off to visit later this week, who was there with Barbara and another friend (whose name I forget, sorry!) who is an American living in Ireland (as Barbara is Dutch, but lives in Sweden and Cathi another Yank in Ireland and I of course am a Yank in the UK, we made a nice little ex-pat group). Cathi took a photo of me, Barbara, what's-her-name and my kids, which I'm sure she'll blog - I'll be sure to link to it when she does (maybe she has already, I should check - ok, not yet). Also ran into some longarmer friends including Ferret, some people I know from a private internet group I belong to, and who I'll be on a retreat with in September, and Sarah and Vanessa from my little local quilt group. As well as a good handful of people I know from elsewhere.

Oh, and we spent a while talking to Jennie Lewis and looking at her quilts in her gallery - she was asked to have a gallery at FoQ this year, and not before time - Jennie's a lovely person and a fabulous quilter and I've been lucky to be in virtual quilt group with her for a number of years.

We had fun, the girls and I, browsing the quilts a bit at a time (too much at once and your brain shuts down, I find), watching some action in the virtual studio (for once, neither Sarah nor Sally was working while I was there, though I did see Sal doing some block arrangements on the design wall), including a long stretch watching Claire Benn do some screen printing - I was particularly interested in this as I finally bought a screen myself to try this process out. Someday I am going to do a course with Claire and Leslie (aka Committed to Cloth). When my kids are older and more self-sufficient... I know several people who have done them and there's nothing but good stuff to be said. We also spent a while watching Jane Callender do a little indigo dyeing on her stand and of course ended up buying some materials to try it ourselves. And of course, we shopped. The girls didn't want a lot - Sarah in particular was very restrained - but I bought quite a bit. Very little fabric, admittedly, but lots of other goodies...





Lots of threads & yarns. You may notice that most of them are pale blue - this is because I need pale blue for the sky of the fibre landscape I am making for a birthday present for my friend Sophie C - her birthday is in October, so I do need to press on with it! Anyway, I also got some yellow because Olivia loved and (and she was right, it was gorgeous), some mixed brown & gold threads, and some variegated cotton threads for genereal stitching. The variegated threads are from the Cotton Patch - looks like their own line of threads. The yarns are all from either Oliver Twists, Steff Francis or (a new one to me) 21st Century Yarns. Lovely!

One the right, some odd "fabrics" I bought - jute scrim from Oliver Twists, plus some mulberry papers and metal meshes, foil netting. Oh, and a large stack of magic paper from European Art Quilt Foundation - this is the very very thin leave-in paper I like to use for foundation piecing when I do it by hand. And you can't see this, as it's falling off the side of the photo, but there is also some water-soluable fabric, so I can play with that. Lots of fun stuff!




Left above is the indigo dye kit I mentioned before and also a template for doing stitched shibori - I have yet to try the stitched kind (lack of patience) and I may not use it much, but if I decide I don't like it, it will make an excellent gift along the line, so I don't mind buying it. I'll have fun with the indigo dye, though - I always thought this was something you had to do in big batches, but having a little kit is fabulous. That's a project for after the kids go back to school, though. Want to be able to do it without any "help"...


The right hand photo is the bits and bobs photo - all the pieces I bought which don't really group logically with anything else. Angelina (got one free, hoorah), copper scrim, transfoil, an interesting stamp pad - for stamping on dark fabric, translucent and shimmery, should be fun; some stamps, some copper wire.






Got lots of painty stuff this year - a screen for screen printing, some Stewart Gill MetalMica paints, some Dynaflows, a couple of Markal paint sticks in colours I don't have, some treasure gold (not brilliant for fabric, but Dy uses it on her polymer clay faces, which I thought was a good idea, and of course it's fine on paper, wood, etc). The art supplies all came from either Ario or ArtVanGo, two of my favourite stands - great range of supplies, and, what is really important at shows, especially to those of us who are trying lots of new things, really really helpful people on the stands.

And beads. Lots of beads. Trying to expand my colour range a bit, and also, fairly sure I found the exact colour I need to match the gap in my doll (which I took with, and which was duly admired by two ladies who were also buying beads). As I will definitely finish this doll, and plan on at least one more (and perhaps a beaded cat for my mom, someday) I feel justified in buying beads - before I just bought them because I like them :) The beads mostly came from either The London Bead Company or The Spellbound Bead Company, with a few from Steff Francis.



And finally, the only fabric I did buy - at left, some lovely hand-dyed and stamped linen from Germany, a company called Werkstatt fur Textilgestaltung - and a great picture frame mount using the linen with gold script on it, which I have since used for one of my b/w photos of Alex, and have it in my bedroom.

Underneath this linen is some cheesecloth for me to dye myself. Keep meaning to do that, and keep forgetting to buy the fabric. At right, my extravagence - a piece of hand-dyed fabric by Heidi Stoll-Weber. (Also German. Wonder what that means about me or my taste in fabric... LOL) I have an idea what I'm going to do with it, but will have to test for viability - it will have to wait until later in the autumn, though. I couldn't think of a good way to show the fabric in it's entirety (it's a metre, 60" wide) so I have just flumped it down on the dresser and photoed it - but trust me, it's gorgeous.

I did buy quite a lot. But I didn't buy an embellisher (though I was tempted) so that was pretty good of me, I thought! Sarah loved trying the embellisher, and would have happily helped me take one home, but I resisted. Maybe next year.

Thanks to those who commented while I was away - will catch up with the blogversary draw tomorrow. That's enough posting for tonight! (And anyway, I still have to update the family blog...)