Exciting delivery

Well it's exciting to me, and I would hope about 10 others. The QuilTarT t-shirts have arrived. My regular Thursday night students who are responsible for the quilt in my book, have offered to come and help look after my gallery at the NEC. We thought some sort of uniform might be a good idea, and well with me that means t-shirts. I asked what they wanted to be called and they came up with QuiltTarT. I am thrilled with the shirts, and I hope my helpers will be too.

I guess this would be a good time to tell you what the design specification for the book quilt was. I had only been teaching the class for a term and I wanted to see how they thought it was going. At the Christmas party I was dumb enough to ask. I think everyone came up with a suggestion, or two,

• we should all work on the same quilt
• but we have to all be able to take it home
• we have to be able to use our own fabric
• we will be broke after Christmas so we can't buy any fabric for a
• while
• it's got to be a lap quilt
• it's got to be a single bed quilt
• it's got to be a king size quilt
• it has to be quilt as you go

OK that's an interesting list to start with then they went on to techniques they wanted

• Celtic knots
• half square triangles
• flying geese
• foundation piecing.

Just to round that off, it had to work for a lady who was going to join us the next term to start learning quilting and teach something to those who have been quilting longer than me.

I came up with a round robin style sampler quilt. It works well with three fabrics or a whole scrap bag full. It has places where beginners can fudge things to get back on track (actually the experienced ones used
this more I think). I like the fact that the center panel can be pretty much completed in 3 hours which is
the standard class length (for the weekly classes) where I teach. It means they leave their first class with something they can show off.

So if you see anyone wearing a black t-shirt that says QuilTarT you will know who they are.