Sprat and Winkle

Today I can share some pictures with you from yesterdays workshop for Sprat and Winkle quilt group. You know those days when before lunch you wonder if anyone should have got up? Well it was one of those. Fortunately the group, regulars and visitors alike had a great sense of humour.

I feel that any day that starts with getting up early is already going wrong and yes for me 7am is early, too early. It wasn't good to be greeted by rain and very poor visibility for a long motorway drive, but a booking is a book so you do your best. I remembered to by fuel and headed off.

The first stage of the journey took a lot longer than I expected so I decided to skip my coffee stop and just head on. Of course from there on I made great time so I arrived at the hall about an hour early. It was lucky I had been there before as the sat nav was quite a distance out. Oh well, time to have a nap and read a bit.

The class was due to start at 10, but by 9.30 no one had arrived. I guess I am just used to groups who like to be early, there was still plenty of time to get set up. 9.40 I did start to wonder and phoned a frined. Just as well, I was at the wrong hall. While she didn't have the address of where I needed to be she did give me great directions and 10 minutes later I was at the right hall.

I like to be early I get flustered when I am tight on time, but very quickly I realised I wasn't the only one having one of those days. People kept heading back out of the hall looking for things. Legs, feet, leads, leaves and whole sewing kits had gone walk about. Very strange. On the birght side the kitchen was fully functional and tea, coffee, hot chocolate! and cake were very quickly suppled.

In the housekeeping section I thought I would mention what to do in the event of fire or sewing through your finger, and I did ask people to be extra careful as we seemed to be having one of those days. Initially the workshop went well. We manged to find enough equipment to get everyone started at the same place and the same time amd nearly everyone gave free motion quilting a go. Unfortunately I turned out to be right, it was that sort of a day and a lady did manage to sew through her finger. Of course that isn't normally a big problem, but as you might expect for this tale, the needle broke. Still not a huge problem with a calm patient and several practical and medical people aroud. Until we noticed it had managed to go right the way through. One for the professionals, but the closest A&E was closed so off she went to the next closest, thanks to her husband who came and picked her up leaving the reast of the class to carry on.

The number of strange incidents we had was just crazy, I'm used to broken needles and grubby irons but the sewing the machine foot to the work was a new on me. Machines did random things and had all manner of tantrums. Somehow everyone managed to laugh at their problems and the quilts came on well. The student who had the day trip to hospital did make it back for the rest of the class and the one who threatened to die trying something didn't.

To round off the day I managed to over charge one student twice. Once is pretty poor, but twice? Fortunately she told me and we did eventually get it all sorted out. However, my next stop after the class was to return another customers money, I overcharged her last time I was in the area. I think I will have to claim it is somthing in the land there that makes everything a little strange, but while this might sound like a bit of a disaster, it was actually quite fun and a lot of work was achieved. Next time I am there I will make sure I go well prepared for any eventuality.

Tomorrow is a private frame quitling lesson. I'm hoping it will be somewhat less eventful.