Quilt show report

Just back from a lovely trip to Birmingham. The fantastic Festival of Quilts at the NEC drew me there, but also had a nice visit with relatives and checked out the Warehouse Café and ate at Jyoti's (fantastic Indian vegetarian restaurant and sweet centre- 1045 Stratford Road). We’d been to the Jyoti's before, at the old premises, and the food is just wonderful. I recommend the pani puri, and the bhajiya selection is both many and varied as well as extremely tasty.

The Warehouse Café was new to us- how have we overlooked it for 15 years? The raspberry vegan milkshake is perfect on a hot day, and I love the mis-matched table and chair theme they’ve got going. And the wholefoods shop next door was convenient for travel snacks.

But for the main attraction: Festival of Quilts 2009 was exhausting, in a very good way. I’m not much of a quilter, but the stuff on show was so impressive. A friend in the Embroiderers Guild had told me about last year’s show, and this one more than lived up to my expectation. I arrived early, around 10:30, and before noon I was already suffering from inspiration overload. My pictures don’t do justice to everything there.

Best thing at the show: Fair Trade Fabric Ltd stall! For years, I’ve been reluctant to buy non-fair trade fabric, but not been able to find fair trade fabrics for sale. It looks like things are changing for the better! The fabric is lovely to touch and I suspect it will be wonderful to work with. Now I need to find a project to make with it!

A confession: I was really bad and didn’t buy a catalog on the way in, and when I was leaving, my mind was too numb to remember to buy one then; so I’ve been unfortunately negligent in crediting the quilters whose work I photographed and put my flickr page, and I also can’t credit anyone on my blog. How embarrassing.

Quilting stuff to note:

• Loads of ideas for yo-yos or Suffolk puffs, as flowers, berries, sea urchins and as yo-yos


• Folding fabric, almost like origami, so a diagonal square stands out from the background square


• Fabric manipulated so it doesn’t lay flat: peaks, folds, puffs, wrinkles, tassels, ribbons, etc.


• Frayed edges- a stall was calling it ‘fake chenille’- a figurative quilt used it as a ploughed field, another had a frayed edge fringe


• The best of show group quilt wonderfully put together, lovely soft colours (which I see as modern- not part of my traditional quilting lingo). Beautiful. I overhead a criticism that it was a great quilt, but not original, and so of course started thinking of the role of originality in art. And it strikes me that any quilt made here today is art, as in it isn’t simply a functional item. If you’re cold in bed, you buy a £20 duvet and cover set. Quilts are items people just want to make.


• A book made of quilt squares- Flowers of Malaysia- I especially loved the bamboo, like the strip quilts, but representational and not static


• There are so many ways to represent animals on quilts. I loved the Animal-tastic quilt, and another quilt with a snail with bead eyes


• Morsbags were being made! They targeted the audience well, as I noticed several people with lovely quilted bags


• Plenty of products and even a demonstration area on printing/dyeing/colouring fabric. Maybe I can make some of my horded fabrics more exciting


• Embroidered patches integrated into larger quilts, as well as embroidery as an additional element in the quilting

The only bad point of the day is that I didn’t find any nylon embroidery ribbon. I did notice some silk embroidery ribbon, but I feel too sorry for the silk worms to buy that. Shall have to keep looking.

How does your garden grow?

The purple flower is finished and has acquired a safety pin. I’ve got a collection of pins that I never wear, and the flower is with them now. The woven centre worked well; the colour is great but my weaving is a bit uneven (not that I’m bothered). It may have been a bit much to add the three loops of beads at the centre.

The beading made me realize I’d been thinking wrong again, trying to separate the bus crafting from other things I do. The beading had to be done at home, where I could sit still with needle, thread and clear seed beads. I had been thinking that this would mean the flower wasn’t 100% bus craft. It took a while for me to work out that the point of crafting on the bus isn’t to make something entirely on the bus, but to get a bit of hands-on work done during my commute.

Next week, I’m going to try knitting on the bus. It’s school holiday time, so the bus isn’t as crowded as it usually is. Hopefully it will get my Clanger project going again! My planned weaving project will just have to wait a bit longer, conveniently giving me more time to get supplies together.

Actual gardening note: We ate green beans grown on our balcony yesterday! Good has triumphed over best.

Before and after

This is the postcard I wove, from the DIY Weaving Club:

I posted it to Su, and you can see the ‘after’ on her blog! Not undamaged, but I'm so glad I posted it.

Wrong thinking

On the weekend, I thought I should just put away the purple flower crochet, and start on a new weaving project. But that would mean I would have to put away the crochet somewhere, and thinking that made me realise I was thinking about this wrong. I have this ‘issue’ with using up stuff, and I was actually anxious about wasting the purple string on a project I might not like. But why do I have the string if not to use it on this flower? So, rather than putting it away, I started to work on it more. And I’m starting to like it more, with that extra layer of crochet on it.

I also decided to add a nicer embroidery thread in the centre, something less shocking than the bright yellow, then use the yellow just for some final stitches in the centre. A good exercise in not hording.

Additional bonus: P just gave me a bit of cardboard which will be great for the weaving project I aim to do next!

And a note: Finally posted the woven postcard- wonder if it will arrive?

Not writing

My writing on the bus hasn’t progressed at all. I think the concentration needed to edit is more than what’s needed to write. Maybe that’s a comment on my writing skills!

Anyway, I’m switching the writing to an ‘at home’ project for now. On the bus, I’m going to play with a bit of crochet. I had started a Dorset Cross Wheel button at an Embroidery Guild meeting. After starting the edge, I thought it would be better as a flower, but then I lost in on my craft table (yes, it’s in a disgraceful state). The current plan is to see if I can crochet a few petal shapes onto it. Pictures of any successes will follow!

Negative space

Tuesday, I finally got a grip on what negative space is. I’ve been doing a light weight 6 wk course on 2D design at Urbis, and though it has been fun to try batik and some sketching techniques, I hadn’t felt like I was learning much until the exercise last night. The exercise was just the one where you cut out lots of the same shape, then arrange them in different patterns. I had heard of this before, but
never done it.

Cutting a very simple shape (based on a rubbing from a drain pipe fitting on the Triangle, which I had made at an earlier class), then arranging on paper, and being able to see the different shapes that made. It all became clear! At least for a while.

On a bus crafting note, currently I’m back to writing the sprite thief story, taking on board suggestions made and my own ideas for improvement.

What am I doing?

I'm wondering, are bloggers in general over-achievers? Am I comparing myself, or rather my blogging and crafting, to workaholics? In my own mind, I identify as a slacker- I don't have loads of energy and drive. If I try to do too much, I go all scatter-brained and forget stuff (like my keys). Trying to do more is like setting myself up for failure, which does no one any good, and myself a load of bad.

I usually tell myself I just need to get organized, prioritise better, focus on just one thing, focus on what's important to me. But to be honest, I know that won't work. Now I don't want to sit around doing nothing, but I don't want to load my life with pressure to do stuff, especially stuff that doesn't matter much either way. I want to just enjoy life, have fun, and not cause any bother. But I feel like that would be a bad thing to do. Not quite criminal, but bad. Like I was wasting my potential.

Recently, I've been trying to relax more. But I'm annoyed that I haven't been working on projects as much as I want to. And there's always the other stuff to do as well. Never satisfied.