Fat Quarterly Retreat London 2013 (2)

English Paper Piecing with Katy

(Find part one of my Fat Quarterly Retreat recap here)

On Saturday I first attended a stamp carving class with Tacha. I had no idea I had so little talent for this particular craft. I'm not sure if I can blame my headache (which sadly lasted all day) but the result (a wonky owl with one eye) was not great to say the least... Maybe I will try stamp carving again in the privacy of my own home ;)

In the afternoon I had an English Paper Piecing class called Triangle City with Katy. There was lots of chatting and giggling during that session. I forgot to bring paper templates and after the one and half hour session only managed to sew a rectangle on a hexagon.  I have made some more progress in the past few days though! When it's finished it should look something like this.

In the evening there was a 'Quilt Market', where attendees and professional shops had stalls with handmade goodies and fabric. It was hard to restrain myself from buying lots, especially from the fabulous selection of the Eternal Maker! I bought some Liberty Fat Quarters (check out how they folded it in a star shape) from Fabrics Galore and Echino and Melody Miller from the Eternal Maker. Later that evening there was a raffle but unfortunately I didn't win.

After a good night's sleep (and a fabulous cappucino and brioche from nearby bakery Paul) I went to Brioni's Cathedral Windows Class. The great thing about Cathedral Windows is (once you know how to ingeniously fold your fabric and sew it together) that you end up with a finished quilt!

Brioni's awesome Cathedral Window Quilt

Not sure if there is a whole Cathedrals Window Quilt in my future but surely I can manage a cushion cover or a wallhanging or something? Again I was quite slow but was happy to have learned a new technique. Brioni was very patient with me and a great teacher. I'm looking forward to her book (about using pre-cuts like jelly rolls etc) that is out soon!

In the afternoon, Carina and I met up with Sami and Julie and the four of us embroidered and chatted together in the garden of the Victoria & Albert Museum. That was such a lovely get together that I'm a little sad I don't live closer to these ladies so we can do this on a regular basis...

I almost forgot to mention the lovely goodie bag (thank you sponsors!) we received at the start of the Retreat! It was a Liberty bag filled with lovely goodies like fabric, thread and haberdashery and you will find a nice overview here. Over the weekend I received some more treats: a cool Irish themed headband from John (Quiltdad) for when I'm out running, yummy candy from Carina and lovely Hedgehog socks from Julie! Thank you all so much!

Another lovely surprise was this embroidery that Ann brought to the Retreat to show me. It's from my Apple Tree pattern and I think she did a great job and I got all teary eyed when I saw it. :)

Fat Quarterly Retreat London 2013 (1)

                                                    Confusion at Liberty photo by Catrin of I'd Rather Sew

I arrived at London City Airport early Friday morning for this year's edition of the Fat Quarterly Retreat. I was very thankful that I could get into my hotel room early because the 45 minute Tube journey was warm to say the least. So after cooling down a bit I then met up with Carina and we headed to  Liberty  to attend a talk about Liberty Fabrics! There was *some* confusion about where the room was where we were supposed to be so the whole group of 30 (?) women climbed stairs, descended stairs, went outside, went inside again, saw the Liberty Mail room, climbed some more stairs, you get the idea... I think the photo, where you see me on the back at the delivery entrance, says it all. But we got there in the end. :)

The Liberty talk was fabulous. We heard about where the inspiration for the collections of the past years came from and a bit about the history of Liberty fabrics too. Obviously things are well recorded now but about some of the fabrics and designers in the late 19th and early 20th century not all details are clear. Nowadays Liberty regularly works with established artists, like Grayson Perry and Lauren Child, but also with talented art students on their fabric collections.

I loved the many examples of how old Liberty motifs are cleverly transformed into new and fresh designs. I also learned that the name Tana (from the famous Liberty Tana Lawn) came from a lake in Africa. After the talk had ended we got to see a few of the original artworks and sketches that some of the fabric designs had been based on. We weren't allowed to put all of what we had seen on our blogs but I did take some photos for personal reference/inspiration.

Because we arrived a little early at Liberty, Carina and I had a look around in the store. The whole store is lovely but we obviously were mainly interested in the craft department. There were Liberty Fabrics of course, and a generous choice of Kaffe Fassett too. I spotted lots of What Delilah Did cross stitch kits as well (yay Sophie!). Well worth a visit if you are in London!

After a quick stop at the wonderful Wholefoods store for lunch (all yummy healthy and organic stuff, expensive too!) we headed back to the hotel to prepare for our afternoon Retreat Class. I wish I could say I made some PJ trousers in Kerry's three hour class but I didn't managed to finish them. Even with a great deal of help from both Kerry and Trudi. I now have two separate legs, which is a good start! :)

In the evening I started working on my Bird the Squirrel embroidery and continued to do so between classes the other day. People who saw him said they didn't realise these embroideries were so tiny, so I put a ruler next to him in the photo to show his true size, which is a little over an inch :)

Find part two of my Retreat recap here!

Fat Quarterly Retreat 2012 (part 1)

Friday morning, very very early I traveled to London to attend the Fat Quarterly Retreat. My journey (car, plane, tube, walk) went exactly as planned and I arrived (somewhat tired) at my hotel at 9 in the morning! My room was actually a cupboard in the attic which they cleared especially for my arrival (just kidding, it was a single bed room in the Edwardian Radisson in Kensington) but I was quite happy with it. It was clean, quiet, had a good bed and an interesting view on a mew. Mew is also my new favourite English word. :)

I spent much of the afternoon with Carina and it was lovely to finally meet my &Stitches colleague in 'real life'. I found out she has the tiniest hands and apparently (according to Carina) I have a heavy Dutch accent when I speak English, haha. Carina gave me some lovely gifts (fabric, chocolate and ribbon) as well. I brought her some Dutch Stroopwafels. I treated myself to the cute Jubilee Cookie Tin you see pictured above.

Mid afternoon we thought we'd squeeze in a visit to the Museum of Natural History (that's me in front of it) but I was actually too tired by then to really enjoy it. So I must come back and visit it again properly because it is a beautiful museum.

In the evening there was a planned visit with some other Retreaters (is that a word?) to the very lovely Tikki Patchwork shop in Kew Gardens. Obviously I had to buy some fabric and I went for some 'classic' Kaffe Fasset fabrics (some grey Roman glass and Millesfleur) and a cute fat quarter of unknown origin. (photo in tomorrow's post)

I was up early on Saturday morning and after a not so wonderful breakfast in the hotel (slightly sad I missed out on a tasty full English Breakfast) it was time to go the Baden-Powell house (if I remember the name correctly). I was more than a little nervous about meeting some of the peeps there but as soon as I entered the building I was recognised (apparently my blog picture looks a lot like me) and warmly welcomed at the desk by the Fat Quarterly Team (which included hugs from John aka Quiltdad and Lynne from Lily's Quilts) so all was ok.  I even received a stack of mini-charmpacks (petit fours) because it turned out I was the very first person to buy a Retreat ticket! Fear of missing out on an awesome event/impulsive buyer, moi? ;)

More tomorrow about the classes, stuff I made (and didn't finish) and the fabulous people I met!

Tag & Scraps

In less than a months time I will be attending the Fat Quarterly Sewing Retreat in London and I'm very much looking forward to it. And I'm a bit anxious too about going all by myself and not having actually met anyone else who will be there, even though  I 'know' people from Twitter and Blogland. :) Anyway, I will be attending classes about English Paper piecing, Wonky Log Cabin Block making and Frame Purses. I have absolutely no experience in either of these so I'm sure I will learn lots.

Earlier this year I signed up for a Name Tag Swap for the Retreat and after many hours spent on failed attempts I finally came up with the hooped tag you see pictured above. You may recognize it as a variation of the pattern I did for the Pretty in Patchwork Holidays book.  I still have to receive my name tag and I'm very curious what my (secret) swap partner came up with!

I have also been 'busy' sorting through my fabric stash this week and was amazed by the amount of scrap fabrics I had hidden in there. I have ordered this book, partly because it deals with scrap sorting and storage! I have been cutting some of the smaller scraps into 2.5' squares, planning to make another Scrap Vomit Quilt some day. I'm thinking of sending out some Scrap Vomit Starter Packages (with 49 different squares to make one block) if anyone is interested!?! I will write another post about that so if you're interested, keep your eyes peeled for that. :)

P.S. before I forget: I'm a bit late to the party but I'm also on Instagram these days. You can find me under the name Followbunny