Festival of Quilts Part Two & Holiday Project

I am away on my family holiday in Cornwall at the moment with no sewing machine!  What is a girl to do? English Paper Piecing of course!  While I was at the Festival of Quilts I was given a Moda Jelly Roll - French General - Rue de Jardin, not my usual choice but very pretty and ideal to take away and perfect to EPP with.  

The pattern I have decided to do was inspired by some of the quilts I saw at the Festival and also has a Christmassy feel to it.  

I will put it together with some Kona Snow as a Christmas Quilt - seems a bit strange to be working towards Christmas while on the beach!

The stars are made up of diamonds and triangles into that wonderful hexagon shape, the amazing 60 degree angle!  I can get four stars with four strips and am averaging a star a day - hmmm may take a while as I doubt I will keep that up when reunited with my machine!

Here are couple of the quilts that made me decide on EPP stars...

Festival of Quilts

What an amazing day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I was in heaven!

Just look who I managed to get my photo taken with!!! The fabulous Amy Butler! She was so lovely, I felt rather in awe of her.  I was fortunate enough to go to her talk, which was both sickening and inspiring.  Amy showed how she goes about bringing out a new line, and what she and her team get up to.  She has an amazing studio and beautiful set home/office which she uses for all her photos, which her husband takes.  Someone asked how she got started and she told us how she moved from an illustrating career with producing patterns in her spare time to how the fabric and patterns took over and now keep her, her husband and a team of 10 extremely busy.

Amy and her husband David

The Rowan stand looked beautiful, with loads of Kaffe Fassett, Amy Butler and a few other Free Spirit fabrics.  I didn't manage to speak to Kaffe Fassett but did catch a picture of him.

One of the most interesting things at the Festival was getting a good look at a the Go! fabric Cutter by Accuquilt.  I have seen these on several American Blogs and they look amazing!  I spent ages at their stand chatting with their rep and getting a good look at it in action.  She demonstrated how easy it was to cut up jelly roll strips 6 layers at a time, and how to cut out applique shapes. Within seconds she had cut out flowers and a vase - just stunning.

I so so so want one!!! What an amazing tool.

In general I was a bit disappointed in the fabrics, there was very little Modern Designer Fabric and I didn't really buy very much, but it was just wonderful to be surrounded by fabric every way I looked and gadgets and notions.

I met up with the lovely Paula Ozier at her stand and bought some of her gorgeous Elephant fabric.  I was lucky to get some as she was selling out of it.  We went for a coffee and I managed to talk her into letting me stock some of her fabric!

I also bought some beautiful Echino fabric, which was also few and far between at the show.

 

Other than that I tried out several long arm quilters and frames.  They were such fun and I would love to have taken one home with me, but alas they have a huge price tag and take up too much space, maybe one day.

I will post again in a bit about some of my favourite quilts from the show.

I am being featured on Gen X Quilters' follower Friday!

I am being featured on Gen X Quilters' follower Friday this week, go and check it out!

This what Anne Marie has to say about her site:-

"Why Gen X Quilters (&Y too!) started

In June 2010, I went to my first NQA Quilt Show in Columbus, Ohio. It was fun and inspiring, however, I kept noticing I was one of the very few under 50.  The show inspired me to create this blog to network with quilters closer to my age.  Gen X and Gen Y Quilters.  I know you're out there!!


I hope as this blog matures, it will include all the things that great crafty blogs need:

-Guest bloggers and Follower profiles.

-Topic Questions: skills, tips, ideas, etc.

-Tutorials, Patterns and Quilt-Alongs

-Contests"

Trip to Bristol and Classic American Quilt Exhibition

Warning - this post contains an awful lot of pictures!

This weekend I took the kids down to Bristol to visit my dad and stepmother, we had an amazing time despite the awful weather! This weekend the Balloon Fiesta is on and on Friday we strolled over the Clifton suspension bridge to watch 100 balloons take off.

I had a play with the hipstamatic app on my iphone, who takes pretty cool pictures!

We haven't actually gone back in time!

At the fiesta Jamie had fun in one of these ...

We sat for a while and watched five balloons inflate, 

and deflate again :(

But never mind we had fun at the fun fair, and five balloons was still pretty cool.

On Saturday my dad and Suzanne took the kids off and I went to Bath for the day to go see the Classic American Quilt Exhibition at the American Museum.  Unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures so here are a couple from the book, they haven't come out very well so I won't post too many.

The exhibition was fantastic as were their quilts on general display, there were several Amish quilts (see below) and one Gees Bend, some stunning log cabins (see above) and they were all beautifully displayed.  I was disappointed not to see more slave quilts, in fact there was very little about slavery in the museum at all.  Years ago I had seen an exhibition of slave quilts in Atlanta, which was amazing and this what had inspired and interested me in quilting in the first place.

I managed to spend four hours at the museum including quite a while in the shop!

I picked up some cute things, some of which will be going to my swap partner in the Modern Swappers swap.

On the way back to Bristol I happened to note a fabric shop - oh what a shocker!

They had some lovely Nicey Jane so I had to buy some for my stash...

Some Verna to go as backing with my Verna Jelly Roll...

and a few more FQs from the fabulous Amy Butler.

I am now on a fabric diet!!  Except for my shop of course! Hmm, actually the diet starts after the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham next week!

Just look at my gorgeous pup!




Mandy xx

Location:My fourth baby!

Giveaway winner!

Thank you everyone for entering, but unfortunately there can be only one winner :(

The random number generator chose - 141 MoeWest

Congratulations Maureen!



Mandy xx

All caught up!

Step two of Karrie-Lyne's Charm Pack Quilt Along finished!!  I am now all caught up, roll on step 3!

Squaring up finally finished!!

I am taking part in Karrie-Lyne's Charm Pack Quilt Along, and step one was preparing half square triangles.  Not a few but 150 of them!!  Not only did they all need stitching together but they all needed squaring up.  Now this is a step I usually skip, being one for fast results, but Karrie-Lyne is far more of a perfectionist than me and I think this quilt will be perfect because of it.  I shall take not and try and make sure I square up properly in future!

These are just a few of the off-cuts, it took me four days to complete this step so most got thrown away.

Some of my blocks, can you see which fabric i am using?

Gorgeous, gorgeous Plume by Tula Pink for Moda.

150 finished blocks yay!!!!!!

Festival of Quilts

Is anyone else from blogland going to the Festival of Quilts? I am going on Saturday the 21st and going to the Amy Butler talk, so so exciting! There are loads of spaces left for some reason, don't know why, I mean, who wouldn't want to go see Amy Butler!!


If anyone else is going and fancies meeting up for a coffee and mutual stash envy let me know.



Mandy xx

Giveaway!!!

I have recently got some Moda Scrap bags in stock which are amazing and thought as I am approaching my 100th post I would celebrate by giving one away!!

I had always thought that the scrap bags would be a mish mash of different lines, but when they arrived I was amazed, each bags contains an entire line and the selvedges from when they cut the jelly rolls.

Out of the bags I received I got...

Breakfast at Tiffanys by Fig Tree and Co

Fresh Cottons by Fig tree and Co 

Park Avenue by 3 Sisters

and Summers End by Kansas Troubles

They are just gorgeous, you get nearly as much as a jelly roll, loads and loads of selvedges and only £12.50 in my shop.

Anyway, now for the giveaway to receive a yummy yummy scrap bag.
You get three chances to enter:
1. Follow me and let me know in a comment.
2. Post on your blog about the giveaway and let me know in a separate comment.
3. Visit my shop - Simply Solids, come back and let me know in a separate comment which is your favourite Kona Cotton Solid that I stock.

I will pick the winner randomly on Thursday the 12th August.

Good luck!

New Stock!!!!

New in the shop Flora and Fauna by Patty Young

and Poppies by Laura Gunn

go check them out!