Quilting on the run

Does anyone else feel that time is rushing past?  I can hardly believe that it's Friday - or that we are half-way through April!

I've done some lovely quilty things this week.

First came a hand quilting / water colour pencil technique workshop with Jacquie Harvey.  I loved seeing her work - the miniatures were truly astonishing - but the workshop piece that I'm making doesn't feel very 'me' - despite by best attempts at brightening up the colours to suit me better!   I'll be happy to finish it and make it into something for someone else to love, though.  For me the best bits of learning were to do with the materials that Jacquie herself uses.  I've indulged in a little retail therapy and bought some wool batting and butter muslin for the backing, and will use some of the cotton sateen that Avril bought us to try some more hand stitching.  I will also investigate how to produce my own quilting patterns in Quilt Pro, as I'd like a speedy but unique way of designing (although I might have to go back to free hand drawing, photocopying and glue sticks - I'll see!).

Then my friend Benta came to tea, on her way to RKQ as a visitor for our April meeting.

The meeting was a fascinating talk by Maggie Rowell - one of the two Fabric Freedom designers.  She was not only both interesting and entertaining, talking about taking a fabric range from an initial idea through painstaking painting to the printing process and on to selling the fabrics, but also very generous.  She had brought a large selection of fat quarters for us lucky listeners to share and then, perhaps because she'd spotted (purely by chance!) a Fabric Freedom print in one of the baby quilts that I'd given to Jenny's husband's foster charity, she gave me a whole Stripper roll, entitled 'In the Pink'.  Well!  I could hardly believe it!  I see more lovely charity quilts being made in the future, and I'm wondering if I could do something for the Children's Hospice that she supports - Shooting Star Chase.  I will have to contact them to see if they accept donation quilts at all.

I'm still slightly star struck as I realised that she was one of the designers of one of my favourite fabric ranges, Coloured Dreams......

I also chose three Christmas FQ's - they will be perfect for making some demonstration 'Christmas Chickens' (not sure why they aren't turkeys, perhaps that's only if they don't turn out well) for the workshop at RKQ later in the year.

All the excitement plus having the girls at home for the school holidays has rather meant that my sewing time has been curtailed, of course.  The casualty is 'Super Nova' which is distinctly lacking star quality at the moment.  I am now more than two weeks behind the quilt-a-long!  Still, I've got an unexpectedly free day on Monday (a silver lining as a Tuesday hospital appointment means that I won't be setting off for the New Forest with the rest of the family) and I will see what I can accomplish then.

Hope that you are all preparing for a lovely Easter break.