International Quilting Day

I spent the day at my local Guild's regional day.  What a fund of inspiration. We had an inspiring talk by Gail Lawther on her series of New Zealand quilts.  All the techniques she used was fascinating and needless to say I succombed to buying her book. But the good news is that I have finally decided on the design for the next BQL skinnny challenge and have made a very small sketch with lots of notes so that I hope to be able to start it next week.

The other lecture was on the Amish people and their quilts by Jan Jefferson (I could not find a website for her) but she has written several books on the life and customs of the Amish people. She was brought up in Lancaster County and was accustomed to their way of life as she grew up. It was fascinating and she managed to put flesh on the bones of the usual stories one hears.  I was fascinated by the fact that although they stand for simple and functional objects, they have a long tradition of hand quilting in very decorative styles - i.e. feathers etc., instead of plain straight quilting.

Needless to say I managed to find some fabric to buy but in my defense they are all for my students at the Centre - one of them is sewing a purple/mauve quilt with pink highlights and she has rejected most of the fabrics that I have in my stash so I thought I had better get some more for her to choose from. Hopefully none of them will end up being added to my stash at all.

Here is a photograph of a quilt that Liz Turner has made in my Thursday class. It is her third quilt and she even quilted it on the machine.

Congratulations Liz - it looks marvellous.

Here is also a quilt by one of the members from the Centre - she chose the fabrics (it is a navy not black) and has worked so hard to achieve this.

I did absolutely no sewing all weekend and hope to have a bit of time to do some this week. Will let you know.