Food

I promise that this is the last post about my weekend away but I hope some of you will think it is the best! I simply love the windows of French food shops and I found several lovely examples which I want to share with you.

All these came from the same window!

well what can I say - it's chocolate.

I even managed to include some felt flowers in this one!

And in the market there were the following lovely things to appreciate

Look at the fantastic colour of the mushroom stems.

OK I promise that is enough of the holiday snaps and I will concentrate on sewing for a bit.  I will post again when I have finally finished something.

Flowers

Here is another set of photographs from the weekend trip which I hope will bring a smile to your face on this very dreary day in London (just waiting for the rain to arrive).

I just loved the containers in this photo.
The blocks of colour of flower stalls are just inspirational and make one want to grap fabric from the stash I find.
And finally....

This is a statue outside the International Train Station!

I managed to find a shop that sold masses of felt and made the most beautiful objects with them - cushions, bags etc. I did not buy any of the patterns but several bits of the fabric found their way into my luggage and here is a photo of the display in the shop

I have an idea of a felt applique cushion in the back of my mind but first I have to finish some of the projects I have on the go.
Tomorrow will be the final photos of the trip - I think you may agree they are worth the wait!!!

A wonderful weekend

I am just back from a wonderful weekend in Lille - lots of shopping and good food. What more could one ask for.
Here are some photographs of the local architecture

A magical courtyard near the Opera where they were holding a book fair

A typical street scene - notice all the cobbles - they are absolutely everywhere.

The west facade of the main church which has been totally rebuilt over the years.  A great use of modern design to complement the mediaeval church.

Fantastic decorative detail on lots of the buildings

I could so move in here tomorrow.

Just love the charcoal grey paint.

Slightly made building and there were huge plants behind the first floor window giving a Day of the Tryffids look.

This was created by filling in one of the many canals to create a small lake where there were locals fishing.

Just loved the detail on the pavement in one of the main streets - perhaps I should have copied it entirely for my racing track quilt.

On the sewing front, I managed to find two quilting shops and another full of buttons and beads - but more of that tomorrow.

Spent a lovely day hand appliqueing the third block of my Roseville quilt. I should be able to finish it this weekend.

More photographs tomorrow but on a different theme.

Hoffman batiks

Have just discovered a blog referring to the Hoffman range of batiks where as you scroll down you can see the names and inventory numbers of all the recent Hoffman prints.  Don't think I will be printing all this out but it is a very useful tool. 

Enjoy!

Fabric swatches

I have not had time to do any sewing so have nothing new to show you.

I was browsing Sandra Leichner's blog and she referred to a marvellous new idea (perhaps it has been going for ages) that Robert Kaufman fabrics have introduced. You can print off all the fabrics with their inventory numbers.  I think this is a great idea for keeing track of the batiks you have in your collection. I don't know about you but I seem to forget what I have got when I am at the shows and just buy more - only to get home and find I already have that fabric. I reckon that if I printed off a few sheets of the collections I like and mark those I have at home, it would save me a huge amount of money and stop the stash increasing. All stashbusters should be happy with that. I am not on "no buy" but am trying to keep the increase down to a dull roar. I think this is particularly useful for batiks as they do not have any registration marks but it is also useful for printed collections.

Anyway I hope you might find this useful.

I am off to France for a long weekend and so will not be blogging for the next few days. I need a break as I have been doing too much preparation work for too many projects and not achieving a great deal.

Happy quilting!

Progress

I have finally managed to sew all the sixteen blue blocks for the Beth Ferrier quilt

and I am nearly half way towards completing the 117 small circles. I am doing them in a variety of blues and will post a photograph when they are all complete.

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.