Quilting the world, for customers

Sorry I've been a bit quiet. I've finally had a chance to make serious in roads in to the pile of customer quilting that has been growing since before the Festival of quilts. I had imagined I would come back from the show, take a few days off and quilt up a storm. It didn't quite work out like that. I drastically underestimated the amount of interest a show like that can generate. Thank you all so much for your support it is appreciated, although I am still fighting a loosing battle with my email backlog. I see the end in sight, take a short break and I'm losing again. Oh well. The picture is of one of these customer quilts with a border I am especially fond of.

If you haven't entered the Road 2 California quilt show there is still time as they now allow online entries. It's a pretty good system and easy to use. It even checks the resolution of your images for you. I like it a lot, as just preparing and posting the entry was time consuming and expensive. I hope that if it works well for this show others with a lot of international entries might try it too.

For those of you who quilt too much, or overuse your muscles in other ways you might like to search the internet for 'Gelli bath'. I'd love to be able to say I saw it and immediately thought of it's theraputic possiblities, but well, that would be a lie. I first saw it in Toys R Us on a quilt related mission (pool noodles). It was aimed at kids and consequently hit me. It looked fun, but when I read the package it was only designed for a very shallow bath. I sulked and bought pool noodles. I later discoved a grown up version, which has lots of very proper words about home spa treatment and all it's benificial effects. All very nice but how much water will it turn to jelly? Half a bathfull, fine, sold. I was initially disapointed the kid in me wanted a really thick bath. The quilter however is thrilled. It has delivered much happer muscles. My shoulders and legs have taken a pounding the last two days and are now happy again. They are right the gel holds heat amazingly and delivers it better too. I don't understand it, but I will be using it again. My very fussy skin even likes it.

If you are in Birmingham, 'Bad Rain' will be on display this weekend at the science museum there with BICS. BICS is a comics event and my quilt will be on the stand of Insomnia publications, who published Cancertown the graphic novel it comes from. The creators of Cancertown will also be there along with many other writers and artists. If you've never been to a comics show this is a nice one to start with. It's an interesting venue and a good size event for a first experience. Say hi if you see me.

Rush hour?

It seems that around London rush hour now runs from about 3.30pm to at least 9pm. It's not getting silly, it's got silly. I am currently sitting a a Polish war memorial with a hot car and a road masquerading as a car par between me and my house. On the bright side I have a dvd player in the car and a new quilting dvd to watch. It is (P)fun - (P)feiling - (P)feathers by Claudia Pfeil. It is designed for longarm quilting machines, but as with most longarm information it can be used on domestic machines too. So far it is all about using formal feathers (aka bump bump feathers), she is showing some great ways to fill space with them. I was initially very disapointed. I've tried this type of feather and I really don't get on with them. The more I've seen of the dvd the more certain I am that the fact they are this type of feather is what I really like about them. So I've come to the conclusion it's time to try again. These feathers do have a different look, I like the look and it has to be more than a year since I last tried. It's not that long ago that I thought I couldn't do any curved feathers so why not these? As soon as I clear some customer quilts I will give it a go.

Not too proud to beg

Please, pretty please, if you book me to come to your group can I have the address of the venue. I waste hours trying to workout addresses. It's really hard to get to the right place without an address because although I don't use satnav I do use maps. They work by giving you road names, so if I don't have the road name your venue is in, I struggle.

Won quilt

Sorry it's been a while, I wasn't expecting so much life to be waiting for me. My last post was supposed have an illustration. The house where I was staying had an amazing view over fields. For some reason blogger didn't accept it, so I've tried again here. I've also got a picture here of the quilt that I won in the raffle. I'm sorry the colour hasn't come out at all right. In reality it is much more of a soft old gold, but the design is wonderful. Of course being stupid I forgot to write down the makers name, doh!.

I guess I should explain the title of the last post. I was distracted by dinner hence the last post being cut short. My talk was a lot more eventful than normal. Generaly ,y talk starts, I talk, there are some questions from the audience, I stop. Sounds fair? This time otheres had plans, about a third of the way through we heard a lady call 'Hello'. Odd, it was pretty obvious that we were in the middle of a presentation, so perhaps there was a better way to approach us? No, calling loudly, 'can my scouts use the toilet' is the way to go. I refrained from the obvious answer, 'I don't know do they have their toilet use badge?' and the organiser dealt with them. A few minutes later we had another interuption. This time it was a bus company who wanted some cars moved. On the surface a fair request, however we were all in the car park and in no way responsible for cars parked down the road. They weren't interested so we had to stop the talk and read out all the number plates. Very strange. Still it makes life interesting. The banana you will just have to find out about for yourself :)

Scouts, buses and bananas

I am currently in Nottinghamshire teaching and speaking. Yesterday I was teaching 'Art quilts by numbers'for a lovely group of ladies, and today at show and tell I got to see some of the quilts almost finished. I love it when I get to see work from my classes. I will be teaching the same thing again tomorrow, to some ladies I met today. From those I talked to it should be a very lively class.

Today I was speaking at region 10's area day. It was an unusual set up. In the morning everyone sat, socialised and stitched. It seemed to be a great way to get to know people and share techniques. That was followed by an excellent faith lunch. There seemed to be almost a perfect amount and blend of food. Then I got to speak. Despite the group being very quiet they were amazingly positive after the talk. However the best bit for me was the raffle. I often buy tickets but usually I'm not really that interested in winning. Today I desperately wanted one of the prizes, but with a large group and 18 prizes to be drawn, there wasn't a great chance. Tet drew the raffle and I promise I didn't influemce it, I won the litte quilt I wanted! I will show you it tomorrow when I will be teaching the lady who made it. She has said she will sign it for me.

Partial seams

You may remember I bought a kit at the NEC that I was making up. It's frustratingly close to being completed but other things have got in the way. The pattern calls for a partial seam on every block, and being lazy I wanted to chain piece them. I had thought I couldn't, then it came to me. I got Tet to take some video so you can see how it's done. It really did make the process a lot quicker.

Now I have to get some sleep. I was teaching machine quilting again today, to a very nice group of ladies. It was an early start though and I am not a morning person. Tomorrow, two classes up at Patchwork Corner.

Planes, trains, automobiles and socks

So can you guess what I have been doing today? I will give you a clue, it isn't quilting, well not directly anyway. Quilts have come from it and I hope that I have the source material for a few more.

I guess I should also admit that the title isn't entirely accurate, I haven't seen a train today. I am hoping you will let me substitute a helicopter. It's sort of like a train, isn't it? No, oh well, how about a bike? Sorry they are my best offers.

The planes are from the Battle of Britain Memorial flight. The first two to come over were the Spitfire and the Hurricane. I didn't manage to get any really close up shots I'm afraid. When they come over low it is very obvious how fast they are and I just couldn't follow them and adjust the camera quickly enough.

They were followed by this helicopter. Sorry helicopters aren't really my thing so I will have to leave identifying it to the reader. I am pretty pleased with some of the pictures of it though and I think I might be able to get a pattern out of them.

I think any minute now you are going to work out where I am. I have spent the day watching the racing at Santa Pod. It's been a lot of fun, and I can't remember when I last watched so much racing. I know I would get bored if I did it every day of every race weekend, but just once in a while it's great. We even had good grandstand seats, which made getting the photographs a lot easier.

While this probably sounds like a holiday, and it feels like one, there is actually a serious side to this. I've taken about 700 photographs today to try and get a few more for my car series. I am also looking for a good image to include in the new art quilt book. I am hopeful that I may have got one today, but I will still try and take lots tomorrow as well. Due to a couple of quite nasty accidents (sore cars, the drivers are fine) the racing ran very late today so I missed out on getting pictures of the Street Eliminator cars. I have a real soft spot for these cars, because they are all street legal. I will be trying very hard to get some good pictures of them tomorrow.

I did also mention socks, remember? I was ordering more supplies recently and I came across a DVD on knitting two socks at the same time. It was discounted and sounded strange so I bought it. It is by NenahGalati and it's weird yet wonderful. I liked it enough that I ordered her other DVD's and some needles. I haven't knitted socks on circular needles before so I decided to try one first. Wow! I love the technique. I've managed to knit down to the heel in the gaps in racing today. Normally I wouldn't get past the ribbing in that timescale. I will be doing more socks like this, it's fun. I had planned on showing you my progress on the blog today but we happen to be staying in a hotel with free Internet. If you don't live in the UK you may not appreciate how strange that is. Trust me, it just doesn't happen. Now we know about this hotel we will be staying here again. So as I could show you some of my proper pictures, my sock will have to wait. Sorry.

Oh, I've just realized I haven't told you about the cars and bike. They are, Ian Turbeville on his top fuel supertwin bike, Dan Larsen and Danny Belio in their top methanol funny cars.

Teaching and writing and stuff

I always find the first week of term a bit of a shock, and this one has been no exception. New people, new classes and this year new venues.

The new people have been great. I feel it's quite tricky adding a few new students to existing classes. Will they jell with the class, will the class suit them, or will they change the dynamic of the class for the worse. So far this year is looking good. I've got very lucky and have some fun people who have joined my classes. I think Wednesday will go from strength to strength. Some old students have returned too, which is lovely. Familiar faces, and names I can almost remember are nice, as is seeing how they have progressed while they have been away.

The new classes are coming along. I've almost written the three introduction type chapters for my art quilts book. I am feeling a lot better about teaching that tonight. Of course I can't find half the tools I wanted to photograph, but I don't think that will be a significant problem. I still haven't really got things straightened out after the mad rush for the festival of quilts, and it's all the small things that are hiding. Oh well.

My first new venue I don't get to see until next week. Tuesday I will be at 'The Nimble Thimble' in Buckingham. It's a new shop just trying to find it's feet in these difficult times, so if you are in the area, you might like to give it a look. For those of you who find Patchwork Corner too far south this might be your chance to come and join me for a class. This Tuesday I will be teaching machine quilting 1. A whole day of playing with different quilting options on your machine. I believe there are still a couple of places left so if you want to join in, call the shop on, 01280 822236.

I'd better get on and take the photographs I can for the class tonight. They won't be happy if I haven't got any pictures in my hand outs. I suppose I aught to dig out some samples too, where do you suppose I packed the swan after the show...

Flying for quilters

What do flying and quilting have to do with each other? Well that depends on your outlook. Other than the fact that my pilot is a quilter, just look at all the inspiration we found.

I met Peter at Patchwork Corner, when he came in with a proto quilt. A stack of blocks made from ties. It looked like it was going to be a lot of fun to quilt and I was thrilled when he handed it over and told me to do whatever I wanted with it. I did and among other things it got a Vulcan quilted on it. I had ascertained during our conversation that he was an aircraft enthusiast so it seemed appropriate.

Well it turned out I had underestimated this interest somewhat, he has a plane, and he offered to take me out in it. Of course I said yes, but then work got in the way. It feels like it took forever to get a free day to fly, and then it looked like the weather was going to be against us. At the last minute I got lucky, very lucky. We have fantastic visibility and a cloud layer we could get above. I will admit, that doesn't have as much quilt potential as being able to see the ground, but it's a wonderful place to be. I loved it.

For quilt potential though the Norfolk coast provided in bucket loads. I couldn't believe some of the colours we were seeing, and apparently I was seeing it past it's prime. I like the way the light coming through the clouds makes patterns on the ground. It's very much like the effect of quilting on patchwork and I am sure at some point this will get incorporated into a quilt.

We stopped for lunch at a pub in Binham. Yup that sounds strange, but it's true. On the way in to land I got a great view of Binham Priory. It's a magnificent building now, but when you go inside it has an artists impression of what the building would have looked like. It was huge. It must have been somewhat intimidating to live near.

From here we hopped over to Muckleburgh to a tank museum. I'm going to have to make it back there at some point. It looks quite small from outside, but inside it is a tardis. Tanks, trucks, guns, uniforms and well stuff. Lots of inspiration there. I have many pictures of tank tracks, the patterns in them are wonderful. There was also a Ferret, so here you go, a two ferret photo.


I had a lot of fun, and I really can't wait to do it again. So much so that lunchtime today I had great difficulty keeping track of conversation as light aircraft teased me at the quilt shop. In fairness the first class of term was a lot of fun, if a lot of work. The workshop is looking great, and the students were a really fun bunch. I do enjoy seeing how a class progresses with machine quilting. There are always some students who find free motion quilting stressful yet often they are the ones who the other students feel are the most proficient by the end of the day. I also get to see a lot of variations on patterns. Whenever people copy things they change them slightly, and sometimes those changes give you a whole new pattern. Today I got two more, though I have yet to see if they work for me. I think one of them might.

Tomorrow I have two classes, with several new students it should be interesting. I have no idea what skill level they are or what they might want to make. I like a challenge. I suppose I aught to try and get some sleep, I suspect I won't be very successful, it's far too hot for me again.

Happy Birthday Ford Capri

Today we had to take the family to a 40th birthday party. We missed most of them due to quilting commitments but this one was too local not to attends. It's a nice day for it, and Trogdor, the race car was even persuaded to start. I hope he will be as keen on leaving. It is so cool to see a car park full of Capris, and I've been window shopping. I know Joker would love a new shiny (and more effective) radiator. The one I really liked even had a URL on it, so later I can scare myself with the cost. To complete the day the Ace Cafe have added free wifi so I can blog while I wait for my food.

FOQ - Twisted Thread Video

I am very impressed with the camera man who managed to get this footage. Did I mention how much I dislike cameras?



There are more festival of quilts videos on their web site.

Back to work

Wow, work is sort of worky isn't it. I have a stack of customer quilts to work through, which is quite nice, but also a pile of paperwork. Unfortunately every time I try to look at it the phone rings or an urgent email comes in. I am sure I will get through it all but it's going to take longer than I thought.

As work is taking up more time than I had anticipated I haven't quite finished putting my holiday quilt together. It is very close though so when I clear the customer quilts I will pop the last borders on and get it on the frame, I am desperate to play with my new threads on it.

I also realised today that I have to get writing rather urgently. Term starts next week and it now looks like three of my students will be wanting to use my new book. That's going to be tricky if it is still in my head. The good news for all of those who have been asking for it, is that this will be an art quilt book. It will cover several of the techniques I use to produce my art quilts and at least three specific projects. It might even get published before the other book I have written and ready to go, given how many people seem to really want this book. I suppose rather than writing here I should be starting on it.

FOQ - Gallery - The Longarm

The last thing I want to show you in my gallery is my longarm quilting machine. From talking to people who were at the show a lot of quilters haven't ever seen one in action. I would think that goes double for the non-quilters amongst my readers. Fortunately Tet managed to video me demonstrating while I wasn't looking. I don't like cameras much and video cameras are even worse.



It's not a very long video, but rest assured more are planned. I am hoping we might manage to video some of the quilting of the holiday quilt, given I am having to get used to being filmed I might as well make use of it. Hopefully Twisted Thread will soon be putting up some footage of me quilting that I will be able to share. It was taken by their professional photographer who was very good at putting me at ease.

Anyway enough about video, back to the longarm. I work on an APQS Discovery, mounted on a Hinterburg quilt frame. I would love to have the correct frame for the machine but my house isn't wide enough to fit one in. I used cotton threads on it for nearly all my quilts. I do sometimes branch out into metallic threads, but not often. My quilting is done free hand, which means I don't have a pattern I am following, I just draw with the machine. On a pieced quilt I can used the patterns within the top to help guide my placement, but with the wholecloth quilts that are quilted to look pieced I do mark the piecing lines before I quilt.

I do not have a computer on my machine, I can't just program it to do something. Really all the machine does is move the needle up and down. I can control the speed the needle moves, but everything else is down to how I move the machine, including the stitch length. Yes a lot of longarm quilters do have computers and stitch regulators, I choose not to. I like being able to shift a pattern slightly to make it work to best effect. Sometimes this means blending it into the piecing, other times I may make sure the fancy part of a design is somewhere it shows more, it depends on what the quilt needs.

On the test piece I was making (which is likely to actually get used) I was trying to create a crazy patchwork look. I thought this would give me a chance to make an interesting piece of quilting but allow me to change designs regularly and even take requests from visitors. I felt it worked really well as people did pop back from time to time to see what new patterns I had added.

I designed two new patterns while I was at the show. Both came about because I had people who asked me to quilt and I just didn't know what I was going to do, so I started and then had to make it work. One of them I think I will use on the holiday quilt now I've remembered it. It should work really well in the wide sashings I've added. Several viewers commented on how soothing it is to watch someone quilt. Maybe I should produce a video of just quilting happening for relaxation purposes :)

If you are interested in me quilting your quilts for you please get in touch. I will take quilts in my post and I am quite happy to discuss possible designs by email. You can also get a quote based on the size of your quilt directly from my web site, here.

Next to the longarm we had the merchandise table. I was going to say sales table but I think the free pencils and flying saucers were at least as popular as anything for sale. I'm sorry I can't supply flying saucers to you all over the Internet. I do send out pencils with any order where it doesn't add to the postage though. Apparently my pencils are very good for doing the crossword. I don't do them myself so I don't know what makes a pencil particularly good for that but I've been told it enough to believe it is true. As you can see in the photograph the book got a lot of attention, even though most of the time I was so busy with the machine I didn't notice it. I now have the postcard packs, books and patterns for sale on my site too. So you don't have to miss out on the souvenirs, they can be found here, along with the book behind the quilt 'Bad Rain'.

I hope you have enjoyed your tour. I've really appreciated hearing from so many of you. I would love to take these quilts to more shows, so if you know of one that might be interested please do get in touch. I have plans to try and get some of them into quilt competitions around the world and I am sure you will be able to follow their success or failure here.

We are still working on the rest of the videos so check back soon and hopefully I will be able to give you a more dynamic look at my quilts.

FOQ - Gallery - The best for last?

Today we should make it around the last few quilts. It's been a long tour, and I am not really surprised to have heard from several people who were there that they are getting a better look at the quilts now. Seeing them in the flesh is great, but so is having time to really absorb what you are seeing without feeling you need to move on. Standing in front of 'Dragon' we can turn around to see into the second 'hidden' area of the gallery. When I was told about the gallery it was suggested that I play with the space and provide hidden areas. I really liked that idea and really played with it a lot. On the light side of the gallery (with 'Phoenix Rising') it just gave people a gentle tour, on the dark side where we are now it had a lot more effect. Many people were startled by one quilt only to back away from it and turn to find another startling piece. It worked far better than I could have hoped, and with the multitude of routes through the gallery I couldn't predict which area people would encounter first. The downside was that a significant number of viewers didn't realise all the work was by one person (well except for two of the book quilts). Should I have made a more obvious single space....nah! I would rather have the quilts play with the viewer then have it obviously one gallery. It was fun and I think the visitors enjoyed it too.

Now back to these quilts. I think we have to start tonight with 'Bad Rain'. The making of this quilt can be found on this blog. The quilt is a double page spread from a graphic novel called Cancertown. The cover describes the story as,

Vince Morley is a man with big problems and a brain tumour like a baby's fist, living with one foot in a monstrous alternate world he calls Cancertown. When the lost and dispossessed of London start tripping over the same cracks in reality he spends his life avoiding, Morley realises he must confront the residents of Cancertown - and risk finding his place among them.

The whole quilt was assembled directly on the longarm and quilted as it was put together. Fortunately the style of the original artwork made it quite simple to work on small areas that still made sense when seen out of context. Unfortunately the colouring has an amazing luminosity which is hard to achieve in fabric. Ombre to the rescue. Without a good selection of shaded fabrics there is no way I could have achieved this effect. I was especially pleased with the largest lamppost while I was making the quilt. As it is higher up on the quilt (I work from the top down on the frame) it was the first on I had to try and may look lit. I was surprised by how well it went. When I saw the pictures after the show I realised how much the whole quilt glows and shines in different areas. When you are up close you really can't see it, but in photographs it is very clear.

If you step right back against the leather quilts you can just see the small blue quilt in the fourth entrance to the gallery. This piece 'A Brief Moment of Clarity' is the author of Cancertown, Cy Dethan. Having known him rather a long time he gets roped into all kinds of dumb plans (other than helping man a stand at the Festival of Quilts). This picture came from one of those ideas. I talked him into modeling for a quilt which meant he had to have his photo taken. He like this about as much as I do and we decided to kill two birds with one stone. After I had got the pictures I wanted we took some for him to use for publicity photos. When I had a look at the pictures I had taken this one just demanded to be made into a quilt. I'm glad he agreed to it, as I think it is a really striking portrait, and it was great to be able to hang it with 'Bad Rain'. Annoyingly I forgot to get a picture of him with the tattoo showing on the other side of 'Bad Rain' to complete the set.

Moving into the alcove there are a set of three car quilts. The top one I started a couple of years ago and has been waiting patiently to be finished. I hadn't intended to ever show this one, it was just for me. K.I.T.T was my teenage pinup, well him and the Millennium Falcon. I still have the theme tune as my ring tone, and one day I will be able to justify owning a Pontiac Transam. Still for the moment this is the closest I am going to get to having my very own K.I.T.T.

The next two quilts were inspired by too much singing. Yes that is what I said. I got hooked on playing a game called Singstar, it's karaoke essentially. On one of them it the track, Go with the flow, by Queens of the stone age. The video for that track gave me the inspiration for these (and hopefully more) drag racing quilts. I loved how little detail they used to convey the story, and I was sure I could use the same idea with race cars. My goal was to present as little information as possible but still have the cars be instantly recognisable by race fans.

The middle quilt shows Andy Robinson's Studebaker Commander. I think this car is very distinctive and there weren't too many details I had to have to be sure people would recognise it. Cutting the flames was a horrible job, one which I know will come up again as it is a very popular paint job on drag cars. I am very grateful to Richard Stirling for allowing me to use his image for this quilt.

The bottom quilt I was less convinced people would be able to identify. It's much harder to tell rails (the name given to all these long skinny cars) apart than door cars. Still I was up for giving it a go and I had a good photograph I had taken a few years ago, just waiting for me to do something with it. These quilts are not processed by computer except to enlarge the original image. I think that picking out the key details requires a human to make the selections, which means there is a lot more of me in these than most of my quilts. When Tet came home and saw the pattern for the quilt it didn't take him long to identify not only the car but roughly when the picture was taken! Good enough. This is Dave 'Grumpy' Wilson in his blown top methanol dragster. When I get a chance there will be several more cars in this series.

Next to the cars is the last quilt in the show, 'Perttu'. This is a portrait of a Finnish cello player. He used to play with the Helsinki Philharmomic orchestra but gave that up when the band he plays with now, a heavy metal cello quartet, Apocalyptica took off. I would love to get a chance to do a nude of him with his cello, he has a fantastic body and the cello would be perfect to protect his modesty. I can't see it happening, but well, a girl can dream right?

I don't know if I will get a chance to post tomorrow, but if not on Monday I will finally get to the longarm. Who knows we might have worked out video editing by then too. I would love to be able to show you the longarm in action, and I know we have some quite nice footage of the quilts as well. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

The next part of the tour is the longarm.

Holiday quilt progress

As you can see the holiday quilt is progressing. Not quite as quickly as I would have liked, but still. I have 12 more blocks to make and put on then just the outer borders. I am really hoping I can finish the top and start quilting it on Monday. I like the idea of rounding off the FOQ with a new bed quilt and the way the temperature has been dropping here we will need it soon. I am really pleased with the black in the quilt. I was concerned it would change it to much and I wouldn't like it as much as the original but I didn't need to worry. Of course I like black :) The inner borders/sashing is slightly wider than the pattern called for. I am trying to make this into a king size quilt from a large twin, so I am adding where ever I can. I also fancy having a bit more space to play with the quilting. I haven't quite decided what the outer borders will look like, but I have a couple of ideas. So long as I can get the size I don't really mind.

Calling past speed quilt students

I've now got time to go back to some of the projects I was working on before the gallery came up. One of those is Speed Quilt. I am looking to publish the patterns for all the designs and I would love to include pictures of quilts that have been made in classes. If you would like yours to be one of the featured quilt please get in touch. Also if you know someone who has taken the class pleas do pass on this plea.

FOQ - Gallery - Of Jokers and Dragons

I had thought today would be the last instalment in the tour, then I counted the number of quilts and images I have left, so we will take it in two trips. Yesterday we left by what I called the fifth entrance, between Eileen's book quilt and 'Where is the North Star?', we need to turn right to continue on around the gallery. The outer wall on this side has a quilt I posted about in the making (see May and June archives), 'Joker'. It was supposed to have one of several far more clever titles, but it's working name stuck, and I suspect will do forever now. I thought of it as almost a wholecloth as the quilting was always going to be a very large part of the design. Looking at it finished this seems an odd way of seeing it but I never said I made sense. I wanted a quilt that would make a good present for two friends without asking them any of the important questions like, what size bed do you have or what colours do you like in the bedroom? Well they aren't terribly subtle if you want to surprise someone. So we got thinking about how we saw them and what things they like. Stage magic and cards had to feature, we decided that very quickly, but white? No I couldn't make a mostly white quilt, I don't enjoy it and well they aren't white people. How do you get around it, you invert the colours. The ace of spades (the most decorative card in most decks) would work really well like that. I also wanted to incorporate a harlequin. It didn't really fit, but a joker did and seemed close enough. Asking for a scan of a nice joker seemed a much more subtle question and indeed I think I got away with it. They certainly seemed pretty pleased with the quilt and will soon have a new bedroom for it to live in. This is the only show this quilt will ever be seen in, it's job is to go and keep a bed warm.

As we come around the corner of the gallery we come to three quilts in a row I managed to keep very quiet before the show. I wanted to have some surprises, but this one really pained me. I was so excited when I first did them. You will see them in revers order but I don' t think that's a problem. I've done quite a lot of work with leather in the past, but I've never got around to quilting any. I think that is because I am very aware that you only get to stitch leather once. The holes don't heal. However, things change earlier in the year I went round a lot of London fabric shops with a couple of friends and I fell in love with a couple of small leather skins. One thing lead to another and they followed me home. my friends being quilter not only helped plan the idea but they nurtured it too. and before I knew it one of the skins was on my frame. Scary? Oh yes. Very.

The first quilt we are looking at is actually from an offcut I had. I made a few of these 'normal' shaped leather pieces, but to be honest they don't really talk to me. I love how the colour works on leather, and I really wasn't sure it would. The trickiest part was binding it. I knew it needed a binding, but I didn't want to use cloth, and a double fold of leather wasn't going to happen. I then realised there were corners (yes I know sometimes I am not so bright). If I over lapped the ends of the binding like you would on a traditional straight corner binding the corners would be huge. As leather doesn't fray I decided to just trim the ends flush. It's clean and tidy without getting bulky. Simple.

The next quilt 'Leather Star' was the second leather quilt I made. I was getting braver and felt I could chance marking some designs. I quickly discovered that if the marking shows on the leather and will come off, it comes off too soon but with some care I managed to get in the lines I needed. This is also the quilt were I tested colour. It worked, but was more subtle than I expected. By choosing to leave the edge of the skin un-trimmed I gave myself a lot of hand sewing to do finishing the backing, and the shape proved to be quite a challenge, but I think it was well worth it. I love the very natural look. It took a lot of trial and error to get the design to fit the irregular skin and I was concerned they may fight, they don't and I love this quilt. I am so fond of it that when we were looking for some quilting for the background of my book cover this is the quilt I chose. Yes I did find it amusing sending a picture of the secret quilt to over 100 people before the show, and being pretty confident they wouldn't guess what it was. Certainly no one commented on recognising it at the show.

The last of the leather quilts is 'Leather Feathers' (I know, you try naming quilts at 5am after a month of sleep deprivation). This was the first of the leather quilts I made. I find it quite strange that after years of struggling with this style of feather I chose it as my safe pattern for working on leather. It was partly because I didn't think spiky patterns really fitted the very soft leather. I wanted a soft design. The first stitch was very stressful but once I was underway all I wanted to do was work on leather. I do have a lot more plans in this direction, so watch this space. Ah one last thing, that a lot of people asked, yes these are real quilts, with 80/20 wadding in them. 'Leather Feathers' has two layers in it to fatten the feathers and because I was worried the thickness of leather would hide the puff of the wadding.

The last quilt in tonight's installment is 'Dragon'. There is more going on with this one than I think most people knew. The idea probably started with needing something to balance the 'Phoenix', something with a lot of presence that wanted and needed to be big. I also had a plan for something along the lines of a self portrait, as people keep suggesting I should do one. So the idea was born, to make a quilt of my dragon tattoo. Only two little problems. I wanted it to be very clearly the same dragon and it needed to be in a different pose. Fortunately I am still in touch with the artist who did my tattoo work, Glenn Wallbridge and he kindly agreed to draw me another dragon. Even better he came and traced the full size one for me too. This quilt then became a test piece for 'Bad Rain', which we will get to tomorrow. I wanted to keep the style of the original artist, not overwhelm it with me. I learned a lot from this quilt, which will actually have some more quilting added to it, as I can see where I haven't quite got all the shading he put in. It's OK now, but I know it can be better. This is another quilt that provoked interesting reactions. It regularly startled people who approached from entrance 5 behind it, but more interesting to me was what people saw in it, especially children. A lot of adults commented on how scary it was, some said it was threatening. Children though got it, it hasn't made up it's mind yet, she's just watching. Yes she has rather large claws and is in general quite big, but she is just looking and deciding what to next.

While we were still setting up one of the fabric traders came round and looked at the quilt I was binding, he asked if any of the fabrics were his, I wasn't sure. It was lovely later in the show to run into him again and send him to look at 'Dragon'. All her green fabric came from his stand at Sandown. In fact I thin k most of the staff got to come and see it too. I love the idea that traders can get to see where their fabrics and threads ended up. So often you sell something and it's gone. Much more fun to see it grow up. One lady who picked a lot of brown fabrics for me and posted them special delivery so I could finish my cows was very proud when it won at the FOQ last year. I really enjoy being able to share the buzz with others. Sometimes when I teach I will take my latest show project with me to work on in quiet moments. That quilt then becomes that groups special quilt too. It's so good to see them when they first see 'their' quilt finished, and I think the enjoy it too. Tomorrow the last of the quilts. I've also added a couple more links in Link Frenzy.

Not in the plan

Today I had a very simple plan. Drive to Kent, see the osteopath, drive home, sew. See nothing to it. Until I got to the traffic jam on the M25. They had closed one short section and it has caused chaos. I left home at 9am. I turned around 2 jusnctions before the roab closure and I still haven't made it home at 3pm!

Still all is not lost. There isn't much you can do when you are stuck in traffic and you are the driver, but you can think and plan. At the NEC I bought some rather nice fabrics, and didn't entirly have a plan for them. I do now. The Farbstoff cotton sateens I will make a very simple quilt. It will have very minimal piecing and a lot of space for quilting. If I've got the maths right I might have enough fabric to make two similar quilts which could be fun. The idea is to really show off the hand dyed fabric, but include the shaded colour packs and make a large bed quilt. I'm looking forward to getting home and measuring up.

I also bought a selection of Oakshott fabrics. I've been looking at these for some time but never bought any as I didn't realise they sold yardage. They do and I have enough to make something really fun. I think I have most of this quilt worked out too. It's a lot more complex which worries me a little. I have no idea how stable the Oakshott will be. I guess I will find out. I can't wait to get home and draw these up. So enough chat. I'll finish my drink and get on my way.

FOQ - Gallery - Wholecloths and more

So we left the gallery through the second entrance next to the nudes, we will now turn right and walk around to the first entrance we saw in FOQ - Overview. The first quilt we come to, 'Flying Feathers' was also the hardest to photograph. White wholecloths seem to resist any attempt to get good pictures of them, still I think you can get a general idea from the photos. This quilt was made as an attempt to please show judges, and I hope it is my first and last white wholecloth. Although technically it is the second white wholecloth, the first never made it to completion. I had planned for this quilt to have shadow trapunto, I was going to fill the raised feathers with black wadding so they would show grey in the finished quilt. To work, this requires a fairly translucent top fabric. It turns out I really don't like quilting on that type of fabric. Strange I know but true, I hated it. I didn't like the feel of it, and I didn't like the look of the stitches. Plan B. I love working with cotton sateen but it was a lot harder to mark. Still quilting on it was a lot easier and the double wool wadding gave a good trapunto effect. However this quilt hadn't finished causing trouble. The machine played up, I ran out of the pink thread and then it's final trick was to break my cheek bone. While I was packing the quilt it managed to flick an empty beer bottle into the air, which landed on my face. If you find the photographs from last years Festival you will see I had a black eye.

Moving on we come to a pair black wholecloths. 'Guide Me' is another quilt that is the second generation quilt. It is the one where I started always matching my bobbin thread to the top thread. I got about half of the way through the quilt when I decided I couldn't live with the occasional spots of the top thread on the back so I started again. Of course being me I was on a very tight deadline and what happens when you are in a hurry? You make mistakes. I managed to quilt what should have been a blue area in green leaves. It took me about 12 minutes to quilt it, and over 12 hours to take it out. I don't recommend making mistakes on cotton sateen, it is a nightmare to unpick on. This quilt is one of my most traveled pieces, and won the traditional machine quilting award at the World Quilt Show last year.

Facing 'Guide Me' is one of my favourite quilts, 'Winter Star'. It is another wholecloth, this time on plain black cotton. It was made to hang in the Longarm Gallery at the Festival of Quilts 2007. The design had to be monochromatic with one colour. The main design is stitched in a range of grey threads. I marked the piecing lines, but all the fill in stitching is free hand, as are all my quilts. The colour is hard to spot, especially in a photograph, it is in the piping.

As we go into the gallery you can see 'Dawn and Dusk' pinned to the end of my quilting frame. This is the quilt from our first self published pattern of the same name. It is a reversible quilt which uses ombre (shaded) fabrics. If you would like to purchase the pattern for this quilt use the contact me button to the right to get in touch.

Moving on across the gallery we come to 'Herd Mentality' hanging over my longarm quilting machine, which we will come back to in another post. 'Herd Mentality' was inspired by a herd of cows I met. When I say cows I am not entirely accurate, but then neither was the farmer who asked if I minded cows, I don't. I do mind bullocks. Quite a lot actually especially when they are trying to mount me. Very flattering but really not my type. Once there was an electric fence between me and the 'cows' I grabbed a camera and took some pictures. It was sunset and with the fantastic sky they looked really impressive. The first time I showed this quilt was in my gallery at the Dissenters Gallery I was surprised at the effect it had on people. They played the sky game, where you look at the patterns in the clouds and see what you can find. It kept people entertained for ages. After the FOQ 2008 where it won the pictorial prize it went on to the Houston Quilt Festival. I was a little shocked when it won the visitors choice, but really surprised when I found people blogging about the pictures they in the sky. I guess the sky game is international. I did notice that people from different countries do see different things in it. What do you see?

Moving on across the gallery there is 'Where is the North Star?'. Do you remember I said I had some "seemed like a good idea" quilts? Well this is the quilt I was thinking of when I said it. I guess I should start by saying I am very pleased with how the quilt turned out, getting there wasn't so much fun. The whole quilt is foundation pieced. That part was simple and gives a good mottled effect to represent the night sky. However I had decided it would look more organic and natural if I offset all the blocks around small squares. Well yes it does, but.... To assemble this quilt I had to lay out all the blocks on my bed and position all the small squares. I then grabbed a few pieces and went downstairs to sew them together, a time consuming process given all the partial seams. Then back upstairs to pick up the next pieces, of course by then the cats were on the pieces, so I picked up a cat, removed the pieces of quilt from it's feet and put the next bit together. Just sewing the blocks together took all day, from getting up to going to bed. Finishing the top with it's borders wasn't a problem, and then it went on the longarm. This was only the second quilt I managed to persuade my machine to sew on. The quilting went very well. I made a star guide so I could put little stars in to the quilting and it was done a couple of days before it had to go to a show. Next came trimming up. I generally make my quilts a little bit larger than I want them and trim them to size, but as I said this was one of the first I had quilted on the longarm and I had foundation pieced the borders with very little spare. Three corners squared up perfectly, the fourth was another story. This was the moment Tet decided to explain the problem with quilt to me. The bottom corners of a quilt on a bed can be quite a trip hazard as they stick out, so he suggested I cut them off. Just a safety feature honestly. Well it solved the problem and I love the look of the quilt. I wish it didn't have white binding, which looks great but is a dust magnet, but I am very fond of this quilt. It is the quilt people most often request as a patter, but I'm sorry I won't be writing it. I like to produce patterns that work and people will achieve without going mad, this just isn't it.

Opposite we have our last quilt for tonight as we leave the gallery again. This is a students quilt, made by Eileen. I had hoped to be able to hang the cover quilt from my book but I ran out of long walls. So a quick hunt through the reserve quilts found me this one. I have to admit it isn't my colours, but I think Eileen did a great job for her first quilt. She was one of the first people to work through my book with the benefit of all the errors. She kept at it and produced this quite impressive bed quilt. I guess I really aught to let her have it back soon as it has been touring with me for several months. I really must thank all my students for their support, without them my book would not have happened. I also owe an apology to one of them If you have the book you will see a quilt on page 58. It is the odd one out in that it's owner isn't listed at the back of the book. I don't know how she escaped, but I am mortified she did. I know she was really looking forward to her piece in the book. Unfortunately I can't fix it now, but I would like to introduce her to you all here. Meet Vanessa, this is her story,

My name is Vanessa, and in an attempt to redefine myself, I stumbled across Patchwork Corner and went in for a look. £182 later, I came out and felt I had found my soul. Things have never been the same since. Six years on and Thursdays are still my favourite day of the week when I attend a class at the shop. There's always something new to learn.

I now know what the first correction is for the second edition, I just hope it isn't too long before I can do a second print run and get Vanessa back into the book. I am so sorry she missed out on this edition. I know every book goes out with an error but did it have to be this big? On with the show.

Link Frenzy

Thank you to everyone who has been sending in links to people talking about my quilts, it is much appreciated. I hadn't planned on sharing them until this one came in this morning,

• Quilt Photos On Flickr

I have to admit those are some great photos, especially the close ups of my quilting. Thank you so much for crediting me too. Then I got thinking, if I am going to publicise one why not all of them. Some give interesting alternative perspectives on the show. Bear in mind my perspective went something like, person - question - answer - person - question - answer. It was just so busy I don't think I had time to really take it all in. The first one on the list goes just to a blog as there are two posts that really seemed to capture the event for me.

• Another Dilettante
• The Ragged Man
• Geek Syndicate
• Margreeth
• Hobby Holidays
• Quilt Quine
• Lynda Hill
• Forbidden Planet
• Feather on a Wire
• Sfufen zum Gericht
• Margaret Cooter
  

If you come across any more that deserve a mention please do let me know. I like to see where my work wanders off to when I am not looking.

The holiday quilt is progressing well. I hope to have the center together later so I can show you it. Of course that does just tempt life to get in the way :)