Back to the frame.

I made it back from Pearoom Quilters safely yesterday. It was a lively group and I had a lot of fun there. I am looking forward to getting some pictures of the samples they made in the workshop. It always amazes me how different they all are, even with the same instructions. The 'Fur, feather, scale" class works best with a group who are happy to experiment, and this group really were. It is a class where I aim to teach three techniques. Some people will choose to finish one of more of the samples as wallhangings, others only use them as samples to jog their memory later. Whilst I am quite happy with this, a lot of groups perfer a finished project. Saturday there were 15 ladies, having fun and they produced some great pieces. I hope they will get in touch if they make a bigger project with any of them.

I should have taken the time to get some pictures around Heckington, but somehow it never quite happened. The village has a really nice windmill, and although the landscape is very flat (well what do you expect from fens?) it was rather attractive too. I am always a sucker for clumps of tree and large areas without humans. I also found out that the group too their name from their original meeting place, a pea drying hall. I hadn't thought about how you would dry peas, but I was surprised that they were just laid on the floor of a large hall. To me that seems a very poor use of space, after all peas aren't very tall are they? I would have expected lots of shelves or something. Still it seems that the method they used gave the community a useful resource, a meeting hall. I also learned that like Ireland the postmen in this area have to know which houses are were, as they have many roads called 'Fen Road'. I got very lucky as my sat nav delivered me to the correct hall on the right 'High Street', many are not so lucky in that area.

On these longer journeys I now travel with some work. Usually some sort of design project. This time I took a quilt top with me to write up it's pattern. I've found that it is the perfect break for me. I guess it gets my brain working again after just staring at morotway and I stay altert a lot longer after the break. Of course the real bonus is I get to make use of otherwise wasted time. I would have to add the measuring large quilts is a car is a challenge, especially when the car is full to the roof with quilts for my talk. It does mean I have another pattern nearly ready for typesetting and testing. I haven't been able to work much on the Phoenix and Dragon quilt patterns recently. They are taking a lot more work than the pieced quilts. I am having to consider new (to me at least) ways of presenting the pattern pieces, and how to describe what I do. It's funny vbut the more familiar I am with the technique the harder I find it to describe to other people. On the other hand. If I can get these two figured out it should give me an insight into how to produce a pattern for "Where is the north star?" an often requested pattern despite my best efforts to put people off. It really was a pain to put together. On the other hand for people used to doing hand work or any block with inset/partial seamsI guess it wouldn't seem so bad.

It's been great to have a day at home today to get some quilting done. I really do miss it when I can't do it for a few days. I've finished one customer quilt and just loaded up another. I am very fortunate at the moment. I have a large stack of quilts I am really looking forward to. It always helps things go quicker, if I am enjoying the quilt. On that note I suppose I should get back to the frame and stop messing about on the computer shouldn't I.