Exhibition Reminder...

Just a quick mention that the Saints of Cornish Churches Exhibition at Truro Cathedral starts Monday 30th June until Monday 14th July.

Please try and support this exhibition, there is never enough of these events in Cornwall and a lot of people have put so much hard work into it, from the organisers to the makers.

Keep an eye out for our piece on St. Enoder and I'll be stewarding on Friday 4th July from 2.30 to 5pm if you would like to pop in and say hello.

Hope to see you there
Sue

Crossing the border...

At 7.30 last Saturday morning we set off for Honiton to visit South West Quilters at Awliscombe. It was a lovely drive up and leaving so early meant we missed the holiday traffic. We were invited there to do our Square Strip Cushion Workshop, which was inspired by a slate water feature I saw at Hampton Court Palace Flower Shop a few years ago.

After a brief explanation and a word of caution from us that Quilt-As-You-Go is an addictive method, everyone got into the swing of things. Here is a snap of the work in progress...

work in progress

Thank you to everyone for making us so welcome and to Gill for arranging our visit and providing us with a delicious lunch. We'd love to see some photos of finished cushions please.

Our Free Machine & Painting Workshop is booking up nicely, but there's still time for you to book and learn how to free machine a variety of patterns and then highlight areas of the stitched design with paint.

Free Machine & Painting workshop

You can book via our website through Paypal or by printing the booking form and sending with a cheque to the address provided.

I hope you're enjoying the beautiful weather and like me, taking some time to enjoy the garden.
Bye for now
Sue

Such joy and relief...

The Saints quilt is finished and ready for the exhibition at Truro Cathedral from 30th June to 14th July. As you may know we are great fans of Kandinsky's work, so we've used his style as our inspiration by stacking the carved images, then overlaying lines to represent the sundial, lead markings on the windows and the arches.

Obviously I can't show you the whole thing just yet, but here is a section and a brief summery...

St. Enoder

This piece is based on a time line starting with a painted footprint onto hand dyed fabric showing the changes St. Enoder has gone through over the years. We then used hand dyed scrim for the font and the carvings on the altar and pews.
We overlaid a window to represent looking through time made from bias strips using hand dyed fabric. It was then a case of bringing it up to date with machine quilting and finally the couched lines. For the binding we used more hand dyed fabric in purple this time, which is a colour often used in religion.

I'll put the whole piece up when the exhibition has started, but I hope you've enjoyed seeing this detail and if you get a chance please visit the exhibition, many people have put a lot of hard work into this and it's wonderful for Cornwall, so we want it to be a success. I'm stewarding on Friday 4th July from 2.30-5pm if you'd like to pop in for a chat about our piece or anything else.
Also, after this exhibition the quilts are going to be travelling to quilt shows around the country, so keep an eye out you may get a chance to see them there.

And finally, we had our Recycled Logs Workshop last week which was wonderful and everyone got into the spirit of recycling clothes, furnishings, even 42 year old lace. Here are a few pieces of work in progress...

Recycled Logs Workshop

Saturday we're off to South West Quilters in Honiton with our Square Strip Cushion Workshop, so we'll be sure to take some snaps to show you next week.

Thanks for reading
Sue

The joy of stitch and gardening...

Apologise for the absence but I've been rather occupied with this...

Saints Exhibition

 ...as we mentioned a while ago we are making a wall hanging as part of the Saints Exhibition and as always the deadline has crept upon us. I've finished the quilting so now it's time for the hand embellishments which will be a nice evening job.

It's not been all work though, I had a chance this week to go to a workshop by the wonderful textile artist Jean Littlejohn. I can't remember the last workshop I attended so it was nice to sit back and let someone else take over. It was a lovely day of hand stitching techniques with bark/trees in mind. We started with thick wool, very large stitches and continued to build the layers to form a raised surface.

building layers

We then went on to a different stitch with foiling and chiffon over the top and filling the spaces with stitch. I love this result, it will need a lot more hand stitching but it's a good sample with lots of possibilities.

stitch with foil and chiffon

And finally...we stitched onto water soluble fabric and tried Jean's embellisher. Now, I've eyed these machines from a distance thinking...I don't need one of those...HA!!! How wrong was I, it was the same feeling of freedom you get from free machining but without thread, so if I go missing at any point you'll know I'm in the sewing shed with something new to play with. Here is my small sample so you can see how easily I'm led!

embellished sample

A quick garden snap for you, last year my dear friend Fran gave me some foxgloves, so I thought as they are so gorgeous I would share them with you...

Don't you just love this time of year in the garden, with Chelsea Flower Show to inspire us and the bonus this year of Monty Don presenting.

Thanks for reading, bye for now
Sue

Changing Times...

Dear Friends,

As life commitments change it is with great sadness that we have taken the decision to dissolve Beyond Patchwork.

We are continuing until after our existing workshops - Recycled Logs on Thursday 5th June and finally Thursday 24th July and our old favourite Free Machine and Painting.

Thank you to everyone who has come to our workshops and to the groups that have made us so welcome. We have met many fantastic people and we would like to thank you all for you kind support.

While this decision hasn't been taken lightly, it will allow us more time to use the experiences gained for our personal work and we are sure to bump into you on the quilting circuit.

Thank you all for four wonderful years.

Carolyn and Sue

Begin Patchwork...completed

Here are five of our ladies with their wonderful quilts from our Begin Patchwork Course. From left to right we have Ruth, Christine, Caroline, Pat and Denise...

Begin Patchwork Quilts

..just a little hand stitching to finish but I think you'll agree they are looking rather gorgeous. Thanks ladies it's been a lovely six weeks, we thoroughly enjoyed your company.

Here's another snap for you this time from Linda, who kindly brought her finished piece to show us from a Fabric Collage Workshop we did recently at Creative Textile. Such a beautiful piece of work which even has lichen attached. Thanks Linda, it's always nice to see finished pieces and allowing us to share it here.

Linda's Collage

 
Hope you enjoyed seeing these pieces.
Sue

Better late than never...

As promised here are some photos from our latest workshops. Carolyn mentioned in her last post how we had a lovely day with Trevithick Quilters and our Marvellous Markals.
After demonstrating the technique for applying Markals everyone ran with it, from using their garden as inspiration to gathering vegetation from around the building.
Here is a taster of some of the pieces created...

As you can see it was a very productive day with beautiful work being created. Thank you ladies for the warm welcome and lovely lunch. We had a wonderful day and the journey brought back memories of visiting my Granny in Knave-go-By as a child.

To finish, here's four of our Begin Patchwork ladies and their beautiful quilts, just the borders and binding next, aren't they looking wonderful...

Begin Patchwork - work in progress

Thanks for reading, enjoy the Bank Holiday.

Sue