Home again ...

... to be fair, I've been back home for almost a week, but this is the first time I've had the time to write. I had a fabulous holiday, thanks to Lovely Lynn and Mr Joe. I loved spending time with with them, Lynn's sister Gail and all her family. I was made to feel so welcome by everyone.

The day after I arrived I went to Lynn's class and met a lot of her Tuesday girls. I loved seeing what they were working on, and just generally chatting to them all. It was interesting to compare quilting in the UK with quilting in the US.

The next day, Lynn and I went shopping,

 and we also discovered a wonderful drink at Starbucks - a spiced pumpkin frappacino.

We went to the Pacific International Quilt show one day. That was just jaw-dropping. In fact, after about 30 minutes I wanted to go home, the quality of the quilts was so high I just felt totally inadequate. I have never seen so many wonderful quilts in one place, and the number of vendors was amazing to me. So much so that I hardly bought anything, apart from a quilt kit. Lynn's sister Gail and a co-worker of hers, Anne were with us and I reckon that if we all compared notes at the end of the day, we'd all have chosen different quilts to photograph. This was my favourite though, although I didn't get a photo of the notes that went with it, so if anyone knows who made it, please let me know so I can give them the credit.

One day we went to a winery, where we may have tasted one or two wines, and I had my first genuine American hotdog.

Then we were off to the cabin with me with my fingers crossed that I would not see any bears while we were there. On the way, we stopped at a roadside pie shop, where they had a really great pumpkin display outside.

The day before the retreat, it rained all day. We stayed in the cabin, all warm and cosy, and Lynn, Gail and I sewed all day to get in practice for the retreat. Well, I say we sewed, we must have done a lot of chatting, a lot of laughing and quite a bit of eating, cos we didn't have that much to show for our efforts at the end of the day.

The next day the retreat started. This was a wonderful experience and I met so many lovely people, who I hope will be friends forever now. Every day Lynn gave demonstrations or little talks on various topics which were very popular. Naughty Nancy also joined us for this event, and I was thrilled when she produced three quilts that she had made when she was pattern testing for me. The photo on the left shows two different versions of Red Sprinkles, and the one on the right is Nancy's take on Colour Boxes.

Dress was informal for the retreat, 

and the food was superb. We often needed to go for a walk round the lake at some point during the day, to walk off a few calories (although I don't think it worked for me!) I did take the bearbells with me though.

Hmm, I must have spent too much time chattering, cos this is all I achieved in three days

All too soon, it was the last day of the retreat, and time for a final group photo. If you look closely, you'll see I'm still clutching my bear bells.

The next day we went to Yosemite. What can I say about that place? Awesome. Here's some photos which say it all far better than I can

After that it was time to return to Lynn's home where we had a relaxing day before it was time to say goodbye again. I had a truly wonderful holiday, met great people and saw some awesome sights, thank you Lynn, Joe and everyone else who helped to make the trip so wonderful for me.

Disclosure: since I could not post photos on the blog, Facebook or Instagram while I was away, I hardly took any, so almost all of the pictures in this post have been stolen from Lynn's blog, without her permission, but I'm sure (I hope) that she won't mind.

it's playtime ...

Look what Father Christmas has just delivered:

There's a special quilting foot and all these rulers so I can have a go at quilting with rulers on my domestic machine. I've been watching videos and am now excited to get started and see if I can do this.

By the way, I've also decided to join the 21st century, and am now on Instagram. I can be found by just typing in the name QuiltSue, I think. This is thanks to Helen, who gave an impromptu tutorial to a few of us while we were on the retreat last weekend.

and I'm back ...

... from my quilt retreat with members of the Yorkshire Modern Quilt Group.

I had a fabulous weekend with 15 friends, lots of chatter, laughter, eating and, of course, sewing. Not that much sleeping went on though and on Saturday night some of the die-hards were still hard at work (chatting anyway) at about 1am I gather.

Scrappy and I arrived early so we had time for lunch on Friday although we couldn't get into the sewing room until about 4.30. So we ordered a sandwich each and a plate of chips (french fries) to share and the portions were large enough that we really only needed one sandwich between us. Still, we managed to eat it all. Other people started arriving and soon we were able to get into the sewing room.

We had a lovely big room with plenty of natural light, room for a table with coffee and tea making facilities and a large "treat" table. That table, I can tell you, was the ruin of any diets for the weekend. What's more, it was magic. As fast as we all ate, it never got empty.

There was a great goody bag for each person with gifts like magazines, fabrics, threads, vouchers and all sorts of lovely things.

 We were able to sew, eat, chat, repeat, as often as we wanted and I managed to make a quilt top (no photo for some reason) and sort of master machine applique with my new machine. I have never had a machine with a button-hole stitch before, so I had fun playing around using that and trying out different threads. This was the beginning of a quilt, until I realised that I did not have enough of the right fabrics, so they will become a table topper I think, and I will make the quilt from different fabrics.

I then moved on to a different applique project and am making slow progress with it and having fun.

We also had a raffle and a quiz, and, on Sunday a little fresh air was called for, but don't worry, we had a good reason for abandoning our sewing machines, as you can see. A fire alarm went off and we all had to evacuate while the firemen came and extinguished the fire (which I was told was in the kitchen, but we still got our meals served up so I'm not sure). We also had snow, but not enough for us all to have been snowed in. (What a hardship that would have been, snowed in while staying at a hotel for a quilt retreat.)




All in all, a great weekend thanks to L & H (the organisers) and everyone else who was there and now I'm looking forward to the next one.

Hello ....

.... is it safe to come out now? I have been hiding away over New Year as I really did not want to do the traditional review of 2015/planning ahead for 2016 thing. 2015 was not a good one health wise for either my husband or my father, and who knows what this year will bring to them? Neither of them are suffering with things that will get better unfortunately. I have not really done any sewing since October when my father became seriously ill and I have spent a lot of my time caring for him. This meant that I have been beyond tired and not had the energy to do much when I had free time. However, things are improving. Dad's improved to the point of getting up every day and although he is very weak, he is a little more independent. Starting last week, I have had some help with him and he now has a carer coming in twice a day which gives me some free time and I am starting to recover.

Next weekend I am off on a 3 day quilting retreat with members of the Yorkshire Modern Quilt Group. I am really looking forward to it, and have started gathering up my projects and making plans. I have gifts ready for my mystery gift swap, treats ready for the treat table and am good to go. The great thing about this retreat is that it is only about 15 miles away, so I can get home easily if I need to.

As part of my "getting ready" I decided I needed some zippy bags to organise things into, so I ordered some from Amazon. They came in a pack of 5 A2 size and were delivered this morning. below you can see the box they came in on the left, and the actual bags on the right. Slightly over-packaged maybe?

Also I am going to "try" and make a scrappy quilt while I am there, and worked out how many scrappy strips I would need, so I could cut them ahead of time. Well, I am so insecure about this scrappy lark, that I have actually cut enough strips to make three quilts!

Well, I'm here, ....

.... but is anyone there?

I know I've been very quiet lately, but it's been due to ill-health unfortunately. It started with Mr Fixit developing a virus which gave him a temperature and a horrid cough for some weeks. Fortunately, he is virtually over it now. Then my father was ill again. This time he was confined to bed for quite a while but he is now making slow progress. Father was taken ill before we were due to go on our quilting retreat to Bridlington, so unfortunately I could not go. That was a shame cos I'd been looking forward to that and had projects planned, fabrics bought, etc. and I was really looking forward to the food. Still, that's how things go sometimes isn't it? Then, not to be left out, I decided I ought to have my annual chest infection a bit early this year, which has wiped me out for the past week. I'm getting better too and I can now talk again, but I'm still prone to coughing a lot.

One good thing about not going on the retreat is that my son and his family came up for a few days. They were here for Halloween, so here's a picture of young Mr D all ready to answer the door to Trick or Treaters.

and here's a picture of the pumpkins they carved

So all that means no sewing has been happening and if I don't get my act together soon, Christmas won't be happening here either.

I forgot to show you ...

... my sort of modern wedding ring quilt.  I started this last year and acttually finished the top at the quilt retreat last October.  It didn't get quilted till after Christmas and the binding finally went on a couple of months ago. It took so long cos I fell out of love with it when I was making it. I had all sorts of issues with biases (yes Bilbo, I did use starch too) so the blocks were not fitting together properly.  Originally this was going to be a much larger quilt, but I decided enough was enough so it's quite a small throw instead.  Now I've finished it I am happy with it and it is currently decorating the back of the sofa.

Here is a close up of the quilting, and also, my pieced backing - I was obviously determined to use up all the odd bits of fabric from the front, as even the binding is pieced.

Sorry it's a bit scrumpled looking, but my back didn't feel like I should be crawling around on the floor to smooth it out, so what you see is just how it landed.

Yippee ....

.... last night I paid for my place on a five day quilting retreat in October.  This is at the same place as last year, right on the coast and about 60 miles from home, which is a very easy drive. We went there last year, and the food is fantastic and there will be plenty of time to sew, walk by the sea and eat.  I am really looking forward to it and planning what I am going to work on.

Then in January we are going on a weekend retreat. This is being organised by a member of the Yorkshire Modern Quilt Group and is actually being held about 15 miles away and very easy to get to.  More projects to plan for that.

and now the party's over ...

... and just in case you were worried about how quiet I was, the reason was the internet connection at the hotel.  As I said in my last post, it was was broken, then it was fixed and we could all get online for the day.  I don't know what happened, but overnight I lost access again and could not re-connect until I got home, although other people were able to.  I could connect via my phone, but there was no way I was going to write blog posts using the phone.

Anyway, now we're safely home again, after a great 5 days.

Our days went rather like this:

Eat, walk, eat, sew. Repeat. I think the hotel proprietors were worried in case we felt hungry.  The food was all superb and everything was home-made by a great chef.  The walking was essential as a weight-limitation exercise, but I'm not sure it worked in my case.  We were on the coast so the walks were along the seafront and as it was really outside the holiday season, it was all fairly quiet. Of course the walks may have included visits to the local quilt shop by some people.

Here we are, just a few hours into our five days, aren't we looking neat and tidy?  That soon changed I can assure you, but no, there are no photos of the same areas later in the week.

As you can see, there were some very talented people making some wonderful quilts.

Of all the projects I took with me, several of them did not even make it out of their bags, but I did finish one quilt top, made some test blocks for some ideas I have for the future, and prepared the pieces for the blocks for another quilt.

By the end of the week, some people went home with completed projects, as you can see.

Scrappy decided to lay some blocks out on a bed, to see what they would like in a quilt.  I felt she needed a glamorous assistant to show them off, but she didn't.  Guess who won that battle?









It was a great week, thank you so much QuiltHaze for organising it.  Now, what date is the next one?

we're here ...

Firstly, I apologise for the 24 hour silence from me.  There has been a problem at the hotel with the internet, but that got sorted out this evening.

Do you think we've got enough "stuff?  Well, just in case, we've also got things on the back seat of the car, and my machine had to travel on the floor behind my seat, poor big Brother.

Anyway, we arrived safely, despite the best efforts of a couple of motor bikes on our way.  By the time we had taken our bags into the sewing room, and our clothes to our rooms, (yes we did just about find room in the car for a change of clothes and our toothbrushes) it was time for afternoon tea and home made cakes.  Then there was time for a little sewing before dinner. The dinner was superb, and the hotel proprietors definitely think that we all need feeding up if the dinner was anything to go by.  A little more sewing after dinner and it was time for an early night.

Breakfast was a 3-course meal again.  After that Scrappy and I went for a brisk walk along the seafront into the town and wandered around town for a little while.  Believe me, we needed to walk off the breakfast, but guess what?  When we got back, we found that morning coffee and home made biscuits were laid out waiting for us.  We did fit in a little more sewing, before lunch, followed by sewing, afternoon tea, a walk, sewing, dinner, sewing and then the internet was back, so here I am.

So that was yesterday, and today. Tomorrow I'll try and show you what we've been working on.

Ready to go ...

In a couple of hours I'm off on a five day quilt retreat.  Do you think I've got enough "stuff" to work on?

I've got three machine projects, (all throw size quilts, only one of which has been started so far), one hand applique table topper and a  load of experimental things to play with.  I've never been on a retreat before so I am very excited, but really don't know how much I should take with me.  I must remember to pack a toothbrush and change of clothes somewhere too. And I'll need my camera, and my Kindle, my phone and my laptop, oh yes, and all the chargers, some sachets of my favourite hot chocolate for when I'm awake in the middle of the night, and I've just remembered I need to take some Steam-a-Seam and some freezer paper.  Now I just need to keep my fingers crossed that Mr Fixit and my father stay fit and well while I'm gone so I don't need to come home early. 

Assuming the hotel has wifi, I'll be back soon to tell you what I've been up to.

By the way, don't forget my giveaway, here