Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share. I’ve left it a bit late to invite you to bring along your sewing project(s) but hopefully you’ll have a few minutes to spare to share in the news, tips and project inspiration circulating through our Worldwide Quilting Community 🙂 Do leave an encouraging comment if you visit a blog – positive comments help to sustain and grow community don’t you think?
Talking of community I’ve initiated a little branch of the worldwide one over on my Facebook page. The ‘Patchwork Beginners’ Learning Hub‘ is now up and running. Current members all have some experience of patchwork quilting but of course absolute beginners are welcome to join – please fill in the membership questions so I can ‘approve’ you into the membership! Thankfully members are being very patient as I grapple with the behind the scenes management of a Facebook Group! It will become less ‘clunky’ as I get the hang of it all I promise!
Outside of Facebook and blogs I’ve been enjoying developing a bit more community by taking part in an in-person craft market for the first time in at least five years! I hired a stall at the South Central Makers event in the heart of the lovely rural town of Alresford (pronounced Alls-ford). Here are some photos of the wonderfully broad main road, West Street, that runs through the town. I love the mix of Georgian and Victorian buildings all rubbing shoulders with each other and the beautiful Wisteria is a bit of a show stopper!
I met some great crafters with skills in spinning, silver-smith-ing, textile print design and more. Sadly, it was a quiet day and while some sales were made, I was not the only one to pack up at the end of the day with no items sold 🙁 Selling handmade craft items IS HARD! And at the moment it’s VERY HARD. I have a stall booked for 4th June at a venue in the, equally picturesque, rural town of Whitchurch. Here’s hoping for a few sales 🙂
With all the prep for the craft market, I didn’t get a lot of sewing done. I attached clasps to the coin purses (I finished two whilst sitting at my stall at the craft market so I actually came home with more completed items than I took! :-D) and I stitched a few strips to the pink Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks I’m making. This coming week there should be more opportunities to sew, I’ll aim to finish the pink RSC blocks and make a start on the designated colours for May – moss and forest green… Although there’s no doubt the call of the allotment is going to be a distraction; for instance my bean seedlings are now 12″ tall and beginning to wind themselves around each other and the frame of the pop-up greenhouse so it’s time I constructed the bean support and got the fast growing triffids into the ground!
Just a few links this week:
Rona gives a behind the scenes view of large quilt shows in her post ‘How to Vend at a Quilt Show‘.
Wendy will be sharing her skills at four separate workshops in October. If you are in New Zealand it sounds like you are in for a treat at Quilt Symposium 2022 being held at Lower Hutt, Wellington. So many classes to choose from, an exhibition and social events too!
In typical British fashion we are slowly catching on to the fact that it would be fun to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee (it really is 70 years since she came to the throne). Thankfully a group of talented quilt designer/teachers have collaborated on a row by row design appropriately called the ‘British Sew-a-row Quilt Project‘ which draws together iconic images such as Tower Bridge, red telephone boxes, teapots, the floral symbols of England, Scotland, Wales & N Ireland and (yep!) umbrellas along with a crown and the EIIR symbol. There’s a sew-along just about to get under way and as it’s a row-by-row pattern there’s plenty of opportunity for makers to mix and match all the elements of the design.
Happy Stitching!
Allison
