Conference and playing with fabric

Last weekend saw me in Dundee, attending The Quilters' Guild of the British Isles Conference. This dramatic lighting shows the front of the hall used for the Conference. A marvellous place to meet.

This photo shows a little drilling stand. I think it has something to do with the V & A's new building on the waterfront standing in the River Tay. Behind you can see the famous Tay Rail bridge peeking out from the haar, a river mist.

I couldn't resist taking this photo of the underneath of the Tay road bridge. The colours were amazing.

The Tay road bridge as seen through the haar from my hotel window.

A gorgeous building from the centre of Dundee itself.

Some things bought from the traders at the conference. The book was bought from the delightful Katie Pasquini Masopust. She gave the after dinner talk at the Gala Dinner. Such an amazing speaker. She kindly signed her book for me.

I also bought this set of blocks. Colouricious is a company owned by a lovely lady called Jamie Malden. I was lucky enough to sit next to her at the Gala Dinner. I was really impressed by the way the company package their products. The sturdy plastic box housing the fabric paints above, and the delicious fabric bag for the printing blocks. Look carefully at the white picnic basket holding the goodies in the last photograph. Such a good idea.

Would you believe I won the contents of the three photos above? I did. I couldn't believe it either. I won two of the prizes in the Chinese Auction at Conference. It was overwhelming. I can see a wonderful playtime in my future............. I just need to abandon everything for a day or three to indulge.......... Oh yes!

Oh, I'm also playing with fabric making a picture for the Sky's the Limit group. Sadly, I can't post a photo just yet. Not until it is finished.

Fabric book covers, knitting and finding inspiration.

Well the shawl is nearing completion. I have added a picot bind off to the edge since I didn't fancy either the garter stitch edging or the ruffles of the original pattern. It will be interesting to see this after blocking. Not many more stitches to go.

I've been playing about with making some simple paper notebooks lately. The book cover saying "East of India" was a paper bag I really just couldn't throw away or recycle.

This is the latest fabric book cover. This time I have covered a plastic A4 file. It has been made using African fabrics as befits the title of the file - "Africa". It now houses my small collection of printed African fabric and two pieces which have been languishing deep within my collection of UFOs. I bought the fabric here.

Both are based on this beautiful carved wood head which my daughter brought back from Tanzania. I managed to get a few photos of it before it went home with her. The photo has been altered using Photoshop to minimise the number of colours.

I really should do something with those pieces, but I don't quite know what yet.

I've been searching for inspiration lately for the latest challenge from the "Sky's the Limit" group. The latest challenge is entitled "Inspired by................" So I rooted around the library and found these wonderful books on Architecture. Whether I shall use them for the final piece or not remains to be seen. I am enjoying looking through the pages of these books for now.

I loved the photos of fences and bannisters in this book. Beautiful work and so ornate.

This one contains some wonderful buildings.

Where do you find your own inspiration?

Flying and a cake-eating cat.

Yes, you heard me right, this week has really been rather crazy.

I had better start with the cake first. This was a bit of a disaster, edible and quite nice, but not good. I tried a recipe from a new book I had been given some months ago. Queen cakes - an old fashioned style of cake I had made many times from a recipe in my old recipe book. (I think the Americans might call these cup cakes, they are basically a small sponge cake made with sultanas, rather than the type covered with sweet icing.) The resulting cakes were good to eat, but rather greasy for my taste. Next time I shall halve the amount of fat used. They really were far too oily.

Well, I left these on my wire rack to cool. There is not usually any danger to cakes left like this. However, when my husband returned he found the unmistakeable signs that the cakes had been lovingly licked by a cat. Felix!

The cakes that had been definitely touched were thrown out for the birds. Well, I should say here that the birds never got to touch these. Felix found them on the lawn and we were treated to the sight of our idiotic cat licking and nibbling the bits. Madness. Needless to say I threw out the remaining cakes since we could not be certain which had been touched and which hadn't............

This morning, by comparison was surreal.

We were out of the house by 5.15 am. Yes, you did read that correctly. We had been given a present months ago - a ride for both my husband and myself in a hot air balloon.

Take off was gentle. We slipped away and up into the air. The burners are switched on every so often to keep a certain height above the ground.

When these are not on, it is so quiet, you can even hear the sound of the ducks on the water.

Its astonishing to think that the basket is only held up by hot air. It is a basket too. Hefty and strong enough to carry the weight of twelve passengers. Can you see the sky through the sides?

I took around ninety photos. I know I shall use these as inspiration over the next few months. I loved the patterns of the hedges, the colours of the fields, those long shadows, the textures, colours...................

The landing was an interesting experience. A couple of bumps and we were down. The basket toppled onto it's side and we were dragged for a few yards.

It was a wonderful experience and one I would urge you to try if you ever get the chance. We had an hour long flight, starting at an interesting place called Dearnford Lake, near to Whitchurch. We travelled for 16 miles due east, landing in a field not far a place called Madeley.

As I started writing this, Felix came to join me. I quote

"ow-oweraw-ohaw-owaw-owow-mmhr-mehrow"

He likes to have the last word, my opinionated cat.

Being Appreciated.

I was truly astonished to receive a Sunshine Award from Toni recently. Apparently, the award is "for bloggers whose positivity and creativity inspires others in the blogging world."

Well, since I write this Blog mainly for my own amusement and to keep track of all the projects I have completed, I was astounded to feel that I might inspire someone else. If I do, then I am humbly grateful that you like my work and wish to try some ideas for yourself.

Now Toni is an amazing person who talks about her experiments through her Blogs. She spent the last year avoiding processed foods and sharing a lot of information about food additives as a result. This made for a fascinating series of Blog posts on her "A little off the beaten track" Blog. Her second Blog, "A little yarn on the side", details her interest in knitting. I met Toni some while back through her Yahoo group, EZ Fans. We are also both members of the excellent forum known as Ravelry.


Well, here are the rules of the award:

*Put the logo on my blog or within a post
*Pass the award onto 12 bloggers;
*Link the nominees within your post;
*Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog;
*Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award!

Now to choose twelve. This is not easy since there are a number of bloggers whose Blogs inspire me. However, here they are. I have not placed any of these wonderful people in any set order in my list:


Karen, of the Selvedge Blog.

This is an amazing Blog which taught me to use every single scrap of fabric. I am currently saving all my selvedge pieces to make up into something one day and am having such a lot of fun fantasising about what exactly that might be. Thanks Karen for showing me just how much can be done with even these narrow strips of fabric.



Roberta, of Simply Ninepatch.

This amazing lady galvanised so many of her fellow quilters into sending quilts for the youngest victims of the major earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy in 2009. It was such a privilege to have been a part of the project - Mille Colores per Abruzzo.


Jenny, of Jenny's Australian Needleart Journey.

Now Jenny is one of the members of Stitching Sisters. Her work is always a delight to see and so varied too. It has been wonderful to get to know her a little through the Round Robin we have both been working on.


RobinM of Yarncrawl.

Robin is one of those interesting people who always blogs about the clothes she is sewing and knitting. A frequent reviewer of sewing patterns, it is always interesting to see what she has to say about the different patterns she uses.


This Blog post is getting longer by the minute as I write, so I shall break now and add more in my next few posts.