Re-Surfaced After The Quilt Show

Back again. the quilt show has come and gone and I am still working on my Christmas Table Runner. Well, better late than never.

This is how far I got

All the sheep outlined, stitched down and background quilted. In two minds about putting something in the red sashing. Might leave it and stitch down the black border with some stars. However this will have to wait a minute as life is a bit busy at the moment.

My show quilt looked fabulous, however did not win anything. This was no big surprise as it was a bit unusual, but I was happy enough just seeing it there. Always a thrill.

I did two classes at the show. The first was with Canadian quilter Kathleen Riggins about combining designs. This was just a lecture, so nothing to show for it. It was quite enjoyable and there were a few more unorthodox ideas that I really liked, like quilting over an already quilted area with a different thread colour. Unusual, but very effective in the quilts that she showed us.

My second class was with Tasmanian quilter/embroiderer Helen Stubbings...colouring in your quilting to make it look like applique. She calls it Colourque or Faux Applique. Again very enjoyable...I sat there for hours colouring in but only got a very small section done.

On the right is the elements coloured in with pencil and that lone motif on the left has the textile medium on top of it. I thought that I would really like this and I did to some degree, however I did not rush home and continued on it as this is a huge amount of precision work to be done. The colouring does take forever and I can see this becoming a UFO. Also must say that my colour choices were a bit sus...all a bit too pastel for me, I think I would do better with stronger colours. So hopefully I will finish this over time.

Well, then came the shopping...fantastic!

Bought more rulers 😏...to make myself feel better about my lack of self control, I went through my rulers when I came home and decided that I will get rid of some. I bought the HQ set of the smaller swag templates. Had my eye on that for a while as I find the swags very useful in finishing off the borders on some of the smaller quilts. Then I passed the Bernina stand where they had a selection of Amanda Murphy's rulers and bought the Wave set...again, find waves useful for borders. Did I need them?...probably not! Apart from that stocked up on some blades and found the Invisafil thread box that had both red and grey in there which I needed for my Christmas sheep table runner. Interestingly I bought this Bohin marker which says (in English) it is a chalk marker however when I came home and inspected it a bit more closely the info on the packet states in German that it is a ceramic pencil, so I am actually unsure whether it is chalk or ceramik. I suspect it is ceramic, so now I got two ceramic pencils. 

So now back to the daily grind and finishing off that Christmas Table Runner.

Karin