Getting better!

After posting last week about my quilting attempts, I persuaded John to come with me to Quilters Haven with a promise that I would do a couple of geo caches with him (he’s easily bribed!). The shop is in a small village, Wickham Market, just a little way from home – in fact so much closer than I thought it was that I’m wondering why I’ve never been there before! Anyhow, it turns out that there was to be a ‘Quilt Walk’ yesterday which pleased me as it would give me a chance to see other people’s efforts. We pulled into the village and soon saw a derelict piece of land surrounded by ugly wire fencing which had some of the most gorgeous quilts pegged to it – I thought that was a really novel idea!There was an elderly lady looking after the quilts and I confessed to being a true novice and in turn she confessed to not being a quilter at all – had tried it a few years ago but couldn’t take to it!
We wandered around the different locations that housed the various quilts and stood looking in awe at the handiwork involved. However, I am pleased to say that nearly every quilt had something that wasn’t quite right about it – a wonky seam, a triangle that had lost a tip, fabric not quite cut on the square – that made me feel sooo much better about my early efforts!
As a fundraiser for village facilities there was a competition which led you to almost every shop in the village to look for the quilts that were inside and answer very simple questions about each one, this was a very good idea and everybody in the village seemed pleased to be taking part.
By the time we actually got into the shop, John was so fired up with the belief that he could quilt we ended up spending a flipping fortune! I needed a longer ruler as I found out to my cost last week, however I also ‘needed’ all the fabric pictured below! I am please to say that I now have a fabric stash to add to my yarn stash! As the friend that I call Julie said, a girl’s got to have a stash!

The fabric in the blue banding was ‘free’ because we spent so much! It matched some in a bag of scraps that I bought as well which is a bonus!

The owner of the shop has written several books and took the time to show John and I how to make her famous ‘pineapple’ and here is our first attempt! John and I have just spent the afternoon making this square – he cut and measured and I sewed, he can’t quite bring himself to use the machine yet! It got better as we went on – the middle looks very wonky but that’s what makes it unique – by the time we’ve made, I don’t know, another 20 they should all look pretty good!

This was actually a very easy square to make – as I have discovered all quilts have a name this one will of course be called ‘Come on you blues’!!

I’ll leave you with a few of the quilts on display (they were even in the church which was a great place to show them off) I didn’t take many photos in the end because I was too overwhelmed by the quilts!

 

Oh nearly forgot – John found two geo caches as well!!!