Carolyn Forster's Quilting-On-The-Go

Well, I am back from Duxford. The quilts were lovely, and the exhibition space amazing amongst the aircraft!

Here's a shot of my 'home' for the three days. It was great to chat to people and sit and stitch.

There were loads of great shops there selling the fabrics and so forth. My special treat was buying from Fabrics Galore. I brought a whole bunch of Liberty prints as they sell that at a pretty good price. The two small pieces on top right are from  Sunflower fabrics . She sells beautifully co ordinated bundles to drool over.

And the other great thing that I discovered is that Fabrics Galore are now selling on line! So we don't need to wait for a show or trog up to London. You can buy the fabrics on line! Yeah!

It is still worth seeing them when you can in the shop though, as they have so much in there it is hard to get it all on line. And I also hear they will be selling 'Hello Kitty' fabric soon. You might want to get in touch to see when that comes in!

Having a Snow day here, hope you are cosy where you are. 

Firstly let me get this off my chest:

Phew! I am up to date on my Grandmothers Choice! 

Here are the two stragglers:

Now my other big news, well probably bigger news really:

Here's a magazine to look out for:

It's the Australian magazine, Homespun, no 117, Vol 14, no. 2.

I have mentioned that one of my quilts was going to be in it, and ta da da, here it is:

The quilt is still in Australia, and should end up with Lucy of Amitie Textiles for a while. If you want the templates to cut the pieces with a rotary cutter then contact Amitie. I will have some sets too, but I have to wait a while for them to come!

Isn't the quilting world a small world!

I do unashamedly love it when it snows.

Having a dog means that you can't just sit inside and look out at it. So I have been out there twice a day, and it is lovely. 

I don't like all the mud and slush afterwards, but Hay Ho, can't like everything!

Just before the snow came I finished  a little quilt , 'Dogs at a Dog Show'. I have another planned where they are playing and have bones and a ball. But here they are in their best and standing straight.

And this is my dog Bosco having a sleep! You know he is asleep, because if he had been awake he would have been in the middle of the quilt, not the cushion!

Don't worry, He doesn't get this cushion or quilt to play with as they have buttons sewn on, and as we all know, that is a choke hazard.

If you have Dog you would like to sew a quilt for, or even make them a cushion, then pop along to The Patchwork Dog and Basket for date and time, and we can sew one together in their new class room!

At the top of my pile of books that are inspiring me at the moment is Victoria's 15 Minutes of Play. So many times I don't think I have enough time to actually create, and by reading through her book, you realise that it is all the odd minutes that can add up to something great! I love the way the quilts grow organically, and are not started with the end in sight. Too many times people want to know what it will look like before they even start!

Second in the pile is Quilts by Roderick Kirocofe. If you love the improvisational style of the Gees Bend quilts you will love this. It is a self published book of quilts from his private collection.  You order it and it is printed on demand from this site. It is so worth it! Years back I had his book on the history of quilts that is just jammed full of wonderful old quilts, lots that are not often seen.

The middle two in the pile are ones that I have wondered about getting for a long time, and now wonder what took me so long. So much inspiration and so many little ideas that just go to show that there is nothing new!

Inspiring me also has been the loan of some wonderful quilts from my friend Jill of Patchwork Dog and Basket.

Take a peek at this one:

The blank blocks have wreaths quilted in them, but what I love is the utility type quilting over the applique blocks and border:

And these shells around the edge of the wreaths:

For me to play with at the moment I have the Liberty fabrics from Fabrics Galore with a fabric friend from Eternalmaker:

They are just sitting together for a while to see what transpires!

Today the sun is out, well for now anyway, so I got out into the garden (through all the fallen leaves), right to the end where I could take some pictures.

We have here some shots of variations on the Woven Dreams quilt from 'Jelly Roll Quilts and Gifts'.

I love making this quilt design, it grows so fast, I now need to get quilting….. time to try out some ideas from Utility Quilting!

This first one is a setting variation of the strips. I used a similar palette to the Ripples quilt in the book.

You can see my shadow in the bottom right corner: what am I doing with my fingers when I photo things????!!!

This is the regular setting and the fabrics are an old line from Moda, called Curio by Basic Grey. It is one of my all time favourites! The woven strips are an Alexander Henry line.

And this last one is the original. 

Busy teaching week this week. Eternalmaker yesterday, The Quilt Room tomorrow and Just Between Friends on Saturday. Come and say 'Hi!' if you are passing by!

I am back from France, and ready to try to share with you what a great time I had!

I flew out on the Wednesday morning and bumped into Sue and Sue on the bus going into Nantes. I was so surprised to meet two English ladies, and then to realise that I read Sue's Blog! You can see what she has to say HERE.

The show has three main parts, the shops, the Rooms with the selected quilters in and then some quilts from a challenge in a gallery area.

Today I will show some of the shops to give you a feel of the place, and what to spend your Euros on.

There were lots of stands with knitting and crochet as well as patch work fabrics. This is something that the French seem to combine very well.

There was a lot of lovely linen fabrics by a company called Stof.

And there was this stall which had vintage motifs printed onto linen:

There lovely things from the English magazine Selvedge:

And there was a stall which had beautiful old linen and monogramed linen:

It is interesting to see what is popular in France compared to here. At this show there were vintage linens, and bright Kaffee Fassett fabrics and yarns to knit and crochet with, but not a Jelly Roll in sight!

The show is very stylish as many of the stalls have strong identity. They had tempting bundles and I loved the fact that 'Fat Quaters' were called 'Coupons'!

I''ll tell you more next time, but look at these blogs for some other views of the show:

Quilts in the Barn

Material Obsession

Davidscottage

Thanks so much for all of the great comments.

I hope you all had fun seeing the other blogs and seeing what the book had inspired!

So without further ado, I shall reveal that the draw winner was comment no. 252

This was Gill, who wrote 

Just to say I added the comments from the second post on to the original, as there had been a glich. So everyone who commented got a chance!

And in keeping with the Utility tour, I was in one of my most favourite places yesterday teaching a Utility Quilting class.

I was in Lewes at Patchwork Dog and Basket. They have a great new space for classes, roomy and light.

As ever, some students I had met before, one of whom was Walter.

He was good enough to let me see the finished quilt from a class he did with me a while back. This is his Hidden Stars Quilt.

Doesn't it look great!

And here are a few shots of the day:

Have a quilty weekend!

While I sit and wait for the sleet to stop before I walk Bosco, I thought I would share with you some quilts Jill had on show last year at 'The Patchwork Dog and Basket.

I love this grid quilting over the tiny baskets:

Grid quilting again, all over a quilt from the same era:

Diagonal lines cover this striking quilt:

The boldness of this is great:

Look at the way the fabric for the baskets has perished. I wonder what colour it really was? Something strong to not be lost against those flowers and stems. And interesting quilting with those double lines in the background:

Check out their website for an exciting new range of workshops too. They have a new space, upstairs opposite the shop and full of space and light! It was a great venue for the quilt show they had last year, and will make a lovely studio for classes!

On March 1st I am doing a class there, so if you want to come and have a go and find out how useful Utility Quilting can be for you, give them a ring and get booked on!

If you want to hear me talking about  utility quilting and the book this week, then tune in to Mark Lipinski's Creative Mojo on Wednesday at 3pm (US EST) or over here it will be 8pm UK time.

Had busy few days at the Ardingly Quilt show! So many people to see and chat with whilst I sat in my little booth. Thanks for coming by everyone.

And thanks for all of the wonderful comments about the new book. It will be available from The Quilt Room, Dorking and Kaleidoscope, Glasgow. Both do a brilliant mail order service, so it is easy to get your own copy of Utility Quilting!

I also met some lovely ladies who I had bumped into in Houston last autumn. This time they (Jane, Linda and Emma), were running their lovely fabric stall at the show, and I was thrilled to see they had fabrics by Mary Fisher and Marcia Derse.

I love those two designers, but no one that I knew of (until now) had the fabrics for sale in the UK. So if you want to splash out on this great fabric (like I did!!), pop over to www.finstallfabrics.com.

I choose these Mary Fisher Fabrics:

And these Marcia Derse:

And from an old favourite, Fabrics Galore, I had these:

So probably I should get down to some sewing now don't you think!

Have a productive sewing week!

Teaching for 2012 kicked off with a great start this last weekend with ladies at Three Bridges, Crawley stitching 'Japanese Bag of Squares'. A busy day, with most ladies stitching all four bags – Well done!

This Wednesday 'Start with Stars' begins at The Quilt Room Dorking. And to get you in the mood for that, this is what the ladies from the course at the end of 2011 made:

Well done Ladies!

And on Friday, the Spring Quilt Show is at Ardingly. So come and say 'Hi!'

What a great quilting start to 2012!