THE 80th birthday party

My cousin John Pridmore, celebrated his birthday in style by inviting 40 of his relatives to a lunch at a very nice Hotel in Derbyshire. His children arranged for him to be collected from home in a Hummer limousine, much to his delight. We were asked to wear hats, and everyone joined in the fun wearing mop caps, stetons, baseball hats, jester hats, deer antlers etc etc.. John's speech had everyone in fits of laughter. A wonderful way to spend your birthday.. thank you John.

Design Wall projects

A couple of projects I am working on.

The notebook has a hand sewn flower, sequin and beaded front.

The four pictures are tests for printing on different types of fabric. The Highland cow photo was taken on a trip to Scotland. The LandRover was on a mud-run last year [ Chris is behind the wheel and I'm a passenger]. I'm with my first sewing machine age about 11 years, and the small coloured fabric print is of my two nieces when they were young. I will probably make the fabric photos into bags or cushions.

TWO more bags

Just complete two more bags, the machine embroidery was done at BSK. I think one of these may be a present and one for me!

Threads and Patches Day

7th July I arranged for a group of 17 of us to attend a demonstration day at Threads and Patches Fenny Stratford. It was so good I forgot to take a single photo!

Arrival meant a drink and cake at 10am.

We then had demo's on hand quilting, twin needles and gridded vilene, twisted bow ties [must make some of these !], Slice Fabrique [want one of these, only problem is the £135 cost!], knitting bags, cushions & cowls [bought the yarn to make one of these], easy drunkards path [the free kit was a nice bonus] and making a little owl.

This was all followed by a lovely buffet lunch and shop till you drop.
Everyone wanted to do it again, so I have booked another day in March 2012.

Another bag day

Spent yesterday on a workshop making a bag with machine embroidery. I actually managed to do the embroidery on two more bag fronts, but I have not had time to finish them yet. I love this butterfly pattern.

Last night was our Hamtune quilters meeting and we had a 10% to funds sales table. I sold a few odds and ends and made £10 which was a nice end to the day.

Baby quilt

The Church I belong to like to give new Mum's a basket of baby items, so I made a quick baby quilt from a piece of Noah's Ark fabric cut into oblongs and sashed with a feathery print fabric. I then backed it with fleece [ teddies] and quilted in the ditch. By setting the oblongs like bricks I did not need to match seams and completed the snuggle rug in under 2 hours.
I think there are another couple of expectant Mum's so I may repeat the process.

Bath time!

In my garden we have a pond and a bubbling large round stone. The blackbird has taken a fancy to the water jet and seems to use it as a jacuzzi!

Welsh holiday

Last weekend we took a 4 day break to Llandudno, North Wales. The weather was mixed but on the Saturday we took a ride on the Tram up the Great Orme, the wind was enough to cut you in half but the views were spectacular. On the Sunday the sun shone so we drove back up the Gt Orme and enjoyed a welcome ice cream.

Design Wall June 21st

My design wall today has 28 blocks attached that I won on the block lotto. I still have a few more on their way to me.

A big thank you to Coralie (Canada), Julie (England), Laura (GA,USA), Linda (Texas USA), Maree (New Zealand), Mary (WA, USA), Ramie (WA, USA) and Sandi (GA, USA).

What do you buy for an 80 year old ?

My cousin John will be 80 years old next month and I wanted to buy him a little present but what? Suddenly the thought came to me to make him a notebook with a fabric cover. I found a photo of him as a youngster with his mother, our grandmother and great-grandmother. Hope it gives him a smile.

Todays workshop at Poppy Patch

Todays workshop with Helen Spence was making an interesting block with 4 FQ's and background fabric. The FQ colours rotate making this a very nice table runner.

Each block measures 15 inches.

Visit the New Blog

Hamtune Quilters of Northampton England have a new blog.

If you want to see the rest of the quilt made for an exchange with Northampton Western Australia check out the site.

hamtunequilters.blogspot.com

Family Tree quilt goes together

Gradually my Family Tree is coming together.

After adding a 1 1/4 inch border to every picture I was very unsure how to make all the different size photos fit together.

Chris [ usually called Mr Fixit ] suggested making them all either 6, 9, 12 or 15 inches plus the 1/2 inch for the seam allowance.

As I had been using a jelly roll I just added a strip to each side and then cut them down to various sizes.. all went together well except I had a 6 inch slot missing, so I added another photo of my in-laws wedding and I now have it ready to quilt.

June Block Lotto

The block for the June entry in the Block Lotto, was a simple three piece green, blue and purple set. I managed to make 9 this afternoon.

It is fun being taken out of my comfort zone, I would never have put these colours together!

Block Lotto

Wow I won on my first attempt.
36 blocks will be winging their way to me from all over the place, Florida, Canada, New Mexico, Derbyshire, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, New Zealand and Washington. This is so exciting.
My blocks to send to other people that won are off to Georgia and Oregon tomorrow.
Check out the link button on my side panel if you want to play.

My design Wall

I have all the photos printed on fabric ready for my FAMILY QUILT. Today I finished putting on the first borders and now have to decide how I am actually going to put them together.

In my research I managed to find photos of all my immediate family members back to all eight Great Grandparents, some are photos of paintings. I have also added other photos to make it more interesting, there is a business card from a family member in Hawaii, letter from an uncle while a prisoner of war, wedding announcement from the newspaper for my parents etc etc..

I have used part of a jelly roll, and I now have the rest of the jelly roll to fill in spaces and bulk it out, but how I am going to handle this part of the quilt I have no idea!

Machine embroidery

This has been a hard time for me and I did not trust myself with a rotary cutter!!

To pass the time I did a lot of machine embroidery on my Brother Innovis 4000D.

I love the cowboy hat and boot full of flowers, and the frog design has been on my "to do" list for a long time. They measure about 8 x 6 inches, and I have no idea what I am going to use them for. Maybe a bag front, cushion, picture.. who knows?

The family

After John R Glasspool [Jack]'s funeral the family took the wreathes and placed them on his wife's grave. He will be interred in the same plot eventually.

L to R : Eleanor kneeling down, Abigail in pink, Jacqueline and Richard together, Ken and Carol [ Chris's sister and husband] and then Chris is his new suit.

Help needed for Joplin

Judy Laquidara is offering a wonderful quilt on her blog. She lives near Joplin in the USA that was devastated by a tornado last week.
For every $25 you get an entry for the quilt... etc Please read all about it and support her effort.

http://www.patchworktimes.com/help-joplin/

John Robert Glasspool

John [Jack] Robert Glasspool 3 Feb 1913 - 19 May 2011

My father in law sadly lost his earthly life yesterday. He was a wonderful man and at age 98 still managed to live on his own. His jest for life, whatever was thrown at him was an inspiration to us all. He will be greatly missed.

BSK Bedford day

Yesterday Penny, Clare and myself enjoyed a day at BSK Bedford. Because the project was so time consuming, we had two embroidery machines each, to make a large table mat. You can see in the picture my two machines, both busy sewing a quarter each of the outside lace edge. I love this design so much I already have another colour way sewing out on my own machine.

SunBonnet Sue is finished

Yesterday at Poppy Patch, a local Quilting & Patchwork shop that have a sit and sew day, I managed to finish the binding on Sun Bonnet Sue. I have made this into a wall hanging.. now all I need is a BIG wall! The other pictures are some of the ladies "Sit n Sewing" this is a very friendly group that I attend twice a month.

Abigail's Butterfly quilt

Yesterday I managed to finish the binding on Abigail's Butterfly quilt.

This was actually inspired by a pattern from Judy Laquidara. For the main part of the quilt I used the same multi-coloured fabric, with highlights of lavender, purple and gold. To make it a bit of fun for Abigail who is 7 years old I am adding 3D butterflies made on my embroidery machine.

Lotto Blocks

Having recently seen a link to Lotto Blocks [ see side bar link] I decided to join in the fun. The May challenge is to make one to nine blocks using white or WOW fabric for the squares and triangles, plus two grey and 2 gold in each block, the rest random colours.

I decided to make nine, and now have them ready for when I recieve the link to put them on the lotto blog site.

Not sure how this all works, but it was fun making the blocks.

Family Tree quilt

In response to a question about my family tree quilt and photos.
I decided years ago to make a family tree quilt but never got around to it, so when I thought "now is the time" I looked for photos of my immediate family.
I found I had pictures of all FOUR grandparents, plus to my amazement SIX of my Great Grandparents, this led me to search for the missing two GG's an Aunt said she had a painting of one of them so I hot footed it over to take a photo of the painting, and to my surprise she had found a photo of the eighth GG.
I also have a photo of a painting of my GGGrandfather, but that's as far as I can go.

Parents: Stanley SIMONS and Catherine ASHBY
GParents: William SIMONS m Ellen STEVENSON
John ASHBY m Annie PERCIVAL
GGParents: Joseph SIMONS m Emily CHENEY
Charles STEVENSON m Mary SNEATH
William ASHBY m Sarah ASHBY
George PERCIVAL m Hannah HICKERSON
GGGparent: William PERCIVAL born 1804

If you think you might be related to me I would love to hear from you.

Also I belong to the Guild of ONE NAME STUDIES, and have been researching GLASSPOOL's from around the world.

A lace pansy

I have finished my first piece of lace for ages.. it is great being back in the lace mood.

I have not decided what to make next, maybe another pansy in a different colour.

This pattern was designed by Eeva-Liisa Kortelahti, and I needed something easy to make at Lace Days.

Hamtune Evening

Last night was the evening meeting of Hamtune Quilters, Northampton.

We celebrated our 6 years with a beautiful cake, sit and sew and raising money for our nominated charity.

A 10% sales table was a big success, considering it was the first time we had done this. Plus what a great way to sell off your unwanted craft items. We raised £17.15.

Our occassional raffle brought in another £41, so a good start to this years gift to the Parkinson Society.

A new project, Family tree

Having wanted to make a family tree with fabric I have at last started it!

The print out of my ancestors and desendants has been copied onto fabric. Also I have managed to find photos of my parents, grandparents and even Great Grandparents to add along with snippets of other information, like newspaper cuttings and a birth register document.

I intend using a jelly roll to join the fabric pictures together, and will start by adding a 1 inch border to each photo, then attemp to join them altogether into a wall hanging.

Bournemouth weekend

On Thursday Chris came home from work and on the spur of the moment we decided to take a special offer Shearings self drive break the following day!

Friday was THE Royal wedding and I did not want to miss a minute of it, so up really early to shower and pack and then TV from 8am until they went into Buckingham Palace for the lunch. What a wonderful wedding and something only Britain and our Royal family seem to know how to do. The weather was fine and Kate Middleton and Prince William looked so at ease and happy.

After a quick lunch we were on our way and made a stop at Thatcham to see Chris's dad who is in hospital, at 97 years old he is just in for observation.

Finally arrive at the Majestic Hotel in time for dinner.

Saturday we took the chain link ferry at Poole and just enjoyed the wonderful weather and countryside. After dinner at the Hotel we enjoyed the company of a couple we met and watched the evening entertainment, an Elvis impersonator, he was brilliant!

Sunday it was off to the New Forest, where the donkeys roam the streets, and a mother duck was seen swimming with eleven babies. Again we enjoyed the evening entertainment a musical act. Monday after breakfast was the journey home feeling relaxed and having had a wonderful time.

Abigail the starfish

This is my first attempt at putting a video clip on my blog, so hope it works! I made my granddaughter a star fish costume for her "under the sea" show. After the video I sewed sequins etc.. all over the back.

Mini IAM 26th April 2011

Today being an extra days holiday for the schools, it was decided to have another mini IAM day at my house. I collected Abigail (7yrs) early in the morning and then Jenny and granddaughter Olivia arrived plus Penny.

The start of the class was ribbon weaving in 5 bright colours of ribbon, stuck to heat-n-Bond and cut to basket shape. Next an assortment of artificial flowers, sequins, Tintzl glitter were added, and the whole thing covered in netting. Finally the whole thing was random machined, and three of us turned them into pictures and Penny made hers into a bag. Mine is still to be finished!

With a little spare time at the end the girls designed labels for the back on the computer and printed them on fabric.

A very enjoyable day was had by all.