Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share. Hope you can take a moment to sit down and join in with the sharing of tips, ideas and projects that’s been going on via our Worldwide Quilting Community. Just click on any of the links that take your fancy and join in by leaving an encouraging comment wherever you visit.

It’s been a funny couple of weeks for me. There was the wonderful high of being reunited with DD and SIL after a 20 month separation and being able to share the joy and excitement of seeing her very evident baby bump – due end of April! They then visited SILs family before travelling to their short term accommodation. They are now on their  ‘UK tour’ catching up with colleagues and supporters.

Thankfully the precious time spent with family came before I succumbed to a bout of ‘flu. It’s not been pleasant 🤧🥵 🥶 Of course just as I’ve started to recover DH has gone down with it. We have suffered slightly different symptoms. I’ve completely lost my sense of smell – very weird cooking a curry with no olfactory input! My sense of taste is slowly coming back – I could taste the BBQ sauce on my Bangers & Mash today – so that’s a definite improvement. DH was so congested yesterday he just about gave up talking but today has been better and he can still taste and smell but is not hearing well! What a pair we are!

What with the shivers n’ all it’s taken me a while to get the guest room converted back to sewing room mode. I did manage to finish my Beginners Course quilt, here’s a sneak peek of the funky Zebra stripe binding …

I’ve also had a little project take me on a Meander (my Word of 2023). A friend commissioned pincushions in particular colourways to gift to her friends. I had a rummage through my scrap boxes and made three 5″ cushions in quick time.

And now it’s Confession Time: In January I signed up to Karen’s ‘Declutter Challenge 2023’ and then…? Well! I meandered instead of knuckling down to the challenge 😁 But this week I’m ON IT! As the sewing room had gone through the conversion to a guest room I decided once our Dear Guests had vacated the room I would work through the shelves of patchwork supplies, paper work and sundries before returning other equipment and materials to the room. I’ve binned/recycled quite a wad of out-of-date admin papers; sorted patterns, drafts, workshop and course notes into files; and even worked through my stash and scraps, sorting and discarding!

Sewing Room minus cutting table and sewing machine! Book shelf (bottom left of photo) needs some serious sorting…

The cutting table and sewing machine are now back in situ but the declutter challenge isn’t over. My next step is to clear some magazines (day 3) and books (day 4) from their crowded shelf… I’m not looking forward to this as I have a very poor track record when it comes to culling books 😕

This coming week I’ll be working extra hours as holiday cover is needed so I don’t think I’ll be getting much sewing time but very soon I’ll be going on my first ever Quilt Retreat with the possibility of sewing from 7.30am to 12am every day! Read more about the weekend away and our resident tutor, Carolyn Forster, by clicking this link.

Here’s just a wee small selection of the patchwork-quilting blog posts to have caught my attention over the past week:

Cathy has used a 21″ UFO block as the inspiration for a medallion quilt. The central block is a square ‘Castle Wall’ block. Cathy has created a rectangular quilt by cleverly adding complimenting borders to the top and bottom of the quilt top.

New to me: microwave-able ‘potato bags’! Laura has been making them and stirred up quite a lot of interest in the comments section of her blog post 🙂

Christa Watson has released a new video sharing her spray basting technique using a table rather than her usual design wall. In this video Christa is basting a king size quilt and using silk batting. She provides lots of tips throughout the demo.

Do you like to learn new techniques and practice a variety of skills whilst working on one project? Sonia Spence has just launched her beautiful, multi-technique quilt pattern, the Beaufort Quilt. There’s an option to purchase just the pattern or to purchase the pattern along with video lessons demonstrating all the techniques used including English Paper Piecing, Foundation Paper Piecing and Applique. Find out more at Sonia’s website, Fabric & Flowers.

Happy Stitching!

Allison