FQ Retreat part 2 – Saturday

The first workshop I attended was taught/directed/led by Lu Summers (she of Summersville fame).  I saw one of Lu’s quilts at the Festival of Quilts last August and was blown away by it, I remember Emily and I standing there saying ‘how is that done?’

Lu brought a few of her quilts with her for us to drool over look at:

For much better photos’ go and take a look in Lu’s flickr stream – they are truly amazing pieces of work.

So after an explanation of sorts and then visual aids I got sewing and came up with this:

Challenged to go and try a slightly trickier ‘porthole’ I used Lu’s template and made this:

I’ve yet to do anything more with these, but think they well become cushions for the girls.

The technique is brilliant, someone may well have written instructions for it but nothing beats Lu’s direction and that moment when it all becomes clear…

Thanks Lu for a brilliant and fun workshop, I’d do it again just for all the laughs we had!  Thanks too to Pfaff for loaning machines for the weekend, the Ambition 1.5 , I had decided not to take my machine and was delighted that I hadn’t, the Pfaff was easy to use and so modern and quiet (after my 15yr old machine).

After the first workshop it was time for the sample swap and lunch, we picked numbers out of a jar and went into that group, I swapped with 4 lovely ladies (there were no horrible ones at all),

This is what I got:

The owl embroidery was from Jo, triangular ‘handbag’ pouch by Christine, London survival kit by Amy and purse by Tammy. Thanks ladies it was great swapping with you.

After lunch I had quite a therapeutic afternoon in Tacha’s English paper piecing class.  This is not what I made but Tacha’s sample:

Intrigued to see what the back looks like?

The afternoon was wonderful, I knew this would just be a sewing session with no hope of a finished article at the end of it and it needed little brain power just some concentration.

So we sewed and chatted, asked questions about technique and learnt that the best way to cut out templates is to staple 3 or 4 sheets of paper together with the printed template on top and cut through them all at once!  I’ve not got a photo of my progress but it is continuing and one day it will be finished.  One child in particular was up early on Saturday morning so I took her downstairs and paper pieced while she played (I’m not suggesting more of those early mornings would be a good thing).

(Judith, Tacha, Terri and Katy)

During the class (yes that is how relaxed it was) Katy introduced us to the wonderful bears that she makes:

When the workshop finished there was time for an ugly fabric swap (at least I think this was when it happened!), we stood round in a circle clutching our 5 pieces of ugly fabric and passed them all to the left, we then selected one we ‘liked’ from what we were handed and passed the remaining 4 on, continuing until we had 5.  Wow were there some ugly fabrics, I was stood next to Brioni who had some outstanding ones, full on scary dinosaur print.  At the end of it I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that I was coming away with some ugly fabric!

Ok so they could have been a lot worse and I did manage to avoid the dinosaurs!

I headed off back to my brothers at this point and enjoyed his cooking and the lovely company of him, his girlfriend, her sister and a house mate, so you’ll have to read someone else’s post to find out what went on back at the retreat.