Happy International Quilting Weekend!

Happy International Quilting Weekend!

Feathered Star made in class with Marsha McCloskey

Sometimes I wonder why I don't know things... I mean I scan the net pretty regularly but it was news to me this week that March is National Quilting Month and March 16 is now designated WorldWide Quilting Day and the weekend is being given over to quilty activities.

Did you know ? 

No me neither !  So what am I doing this weekend ... decorating! Which is NOT so fun as quilting BUT it is kind of quilting related because my good friend Laura is coming to stay before we head off to a quilting weekend in a few months time and the guest room badly needs an overhaul. 

So no sewing for me this weekend but since I have just come back from 6 days of sewing in Dublin at the Quilters Guild of Ireland Annual retreat that's not so bad is it! 

The retreat was fabulous. Good hotel, good food, good classes ! What more can you say? 

Block by Marsha McCloskey

I took a couple of classes with Marsha McCloskey. Blended Quilts and Feathered Stars.I enjoyed both of them very much although I have to say I almost gave up on the Feathered Star. Confusion set in but the ever-patient Marsha gently guided me in the right direction and I ended up with the fab blue and white star above.

Working the block was really quite meditative. You have to work slow to be precise. This was a lesson in itself. I don't tend to work slow and if a block takes more than 30 minutes to construct I do tend to get a bit frustrated. This block took the best part of 6 hours to construct.  So yes .. I did get agitated for a while but then I got into the groove of slowing down. This block was for me and I wasn't on the clock making something for someone else and you know what ?  I really enjoyed the peace it brought me.

 Will I make another ... YES  (but only for me!)

Friend Yvonne ... who always works so fast made the most impressive triple star! I'm very envious of this and cant wait to see it finished. Looks like a show winner to me.

Triple Star by Yvonne McKee

On another note ...the Akonye Kena Giveaway at VeryBerryHandmade has been picked and the winner notified!  Congratulations Sarah. Your prize is packed and ready to ship to you. 220 entries went into the random generator and the winner turns out to be local to me ... how small a world is that! 

If you didn't win then please visit them in the shop and support this fair trade initiative

So have a good weekend .. quilting or otherwise!

AKONYE KENA and FAIR TRADE FORTNIGHT

Ali over at Very Berry Handmade has written a lovely write up about the Akonye Kena fabrics I am carrying in the shop. I wrote to her a couple of weeks back when I discovered she was writing a Guide to Buying Fair Trade and Eco-Friendly Fabric. 

The Akonye Kena fabrics are a range of hand dyed cotton cloth produced in East Africa by a self-sufficiency group. Founded in 2009, Akonye Kena, meaning  'I will help myself' in Acholi (a tribal language of North Uganda) make paper beads, hand-woven baskets, necklaces and other lovely things as well as hand-dyed fabric. 

Akonye Kena by me in Blacks and Blues!

Over the last couple of years they have worked hard to promote and market their products in accordance with Fair Trade Principles and they currently trade their products at Bead and Quilt shows across America. They work hard too at these shows -- last year they did around 40 shows !  I only did a couple last year and that near killed me,  so my hat goes off to them just for that. 

I came across Akonye Kena while I was at Houston Quilt Market last October. Now I have to honest and say it was my travel companion that spotted the lively looking booth first and dragged me along for a look ... but one look and I was hooked.  The booth was a riot of colour ... beads and baskets hung from the rafters (if a booth can have rafters  ...but you know ..the struts that go across them ) and the fabric just shone. On top of this the booth holder, Richard the Kilt , as I call him (in honour of the kilt and doc martins he sported) was a delight!  He just made me roar with laughter with his somewhat saucy jokes too.  After some discussion and chat I walked away having purchased the full line of fabrics, all 60 of them.

The fabrics are split into 2 groups, either natural dyed or chemical dyes. 

The 20 natural dyed fabrics are called Bark and Berries. The dyes are collected from natural materials local to the area and include wonderfully exotic plants with names like ... The Sausage Tree!   

The natural dyes are very subtle and soft to look at and really have the look of linen to me. They feel wonderfully soft too despite the somewhat coarser open weave.  

The chemical dyes are called Seed to Sewer because the cotton is grown in Uganda, produced in Uganda and dyed in Uganda! There are 40 cottons in this range and they are subdivided into Seasons - Summer, Winter, Spring and Autumn. Now those names are for our benefit because they don't have Seasons as such in Uganda at all. They have a rainy and a dry season and that's it!   

The colours of the Seasons are spectacular though. 4 shades of 10 colours make up the 40 fabrics. Each group gives good tonal variation too. 

Do hop over to the website and take a look at them. Better still consider buying a fat quarter - which by the way is larger than your average fat quarter at 29" x 20" - so really a Tubby Qtr. 
When you purchase ... yes you are buying it from me and I will make a small profit but the more I sell the more I can buy from Akonye Kena and in turn we can all help young men and women help themselves.

We are currently in the middle of Fair trade fortnight and to celebrate this I am giving away a huge bundle of the Akonye Kena fabrics to one lucky winner. 

Visit VeryBerryHandmade to join the giveaway.

WHOOPPEE .. It's a GIVEAWAY!

UPDATE 

.....the 500 facebook page like giveaway has closed and we have a winner !

THANK YOU so much to everyone that took part. 

I am tickled that so many of you entered.

Congratulations to our Winner !

Well I finally made 500 Facebook page likes over at the QuiltMeHappy FB page and I'm over the moon. Its taken me ages to get the shop noticed and I along the way I have thought more than once about giving it all up.  The hours you need to run an online shop are long and as more and more independent online fabric businesses spring up you have to fight even harder to get noticed. 

Writing a blog post more often might help ( so sorry my last post was November) but honestly there are only 24 hours in the day and there is only one of me.  I must spend the best part of 15 hours a day at the moment on business stuff - shop, longarm quilting or teaching and I do ask myself  'why'  quite often but when small mile stones are reached it makes it all worthwhile. Reaching 500 facebook likes is really making me do a real happy dance!  So to celebrate this amazing achievement (lol) I am celebrating and THANKING all my supporters with a £50 Giveaway of Fabric and notions of your choice from the shop. 

To enter the Giveaway hop over to this Giveaway App Link and join the party!  You can enter several ways and the more you do the more chances you get to win:

1. Like the Quiltmehappy Facebook Page
2. Share the Giveaway on Twitter or 
3. Leave a comment on this blog post to say you have liked and shared - just be sure to tell the Giveaway app too so you get an additional entry!

The Giveaway is ongoing until the 4th March and you can earn extra giveaway points by sharing on twitter once a day!   The winner will be picked at random on Tuesday 5th March 2013 and the winner notified. Good luck everyone! 

Do go and take a look at all the new fabrics I've loaded at the shop this last week too  here - there are some beauties!  Choose a favourite and let me know what you pick.  I choose a bolt of the day and reduce it by 25% ...so you never know ... the bolt of the day could be the fabric you picked! 

Just a heads up, I am away to Ireland next week to teach at the Quilter's Guild of Ireland Annual Retreat in Dublin, the shop will be open and you may place an order but it won't be posted until March 16th.  If you are interested in a very last minute holiday at a good hotel and to take a class with Marsha McCloskey I think there are a couple of spots open still. Hop over to the Quilter's Guild of Ireland website here to see details of the weekend.

Due in Store soon!

Sunkissed by Michele D'Amore For Benartex 

Little pickers wear bigger knickers!

"Little pickers wear bigger knickers" ... thats one of my hair dresser favourite sayings. He tells me all the time and of course its true but sometimes its just too tempting to pick, especially when you've been on holiday.  In this case though the picking wasn't foody bits (although I did indulge in some wonderful sweet treats)

 ... it was crafty supplies! 

 I am just back from 10 days away in Houston visiting Quilt Market and then the Quilt Festival. It was FABULOUS!   Its been over 10 years since I have been to Houston and I was amazed at the size of both market and festival. If you haven't been think football pitch ... 9 of them !  All filled with row after row after row of vendors with beautiful things to entice you to part with your dollars and frame after frame of gorgeous quilts to stop you dead in your tracks. 

 It has to be seen to be believed. 

Friday Night of Market is Sample Spree 

Queues of people waiting to go in! 

I found some UK talent at Market!

Aneela Hoey at the Moda Booth

I found some Modern Inspiration

Bill Kerr at his Modern Quilts Studio booth

Saw Linzi Uptons amazing Quilted Yurt!

Tried the new Juki Lonagrm

(Trudi and Emma ...if you read this is was VERY good!)

Ate some great cakes!

Selected Olives from waaaay too much choice

and was inspired walking on this carpet!

The quilt show was good too ! 

Best of Show 2012 ! 

America Let it Shine by Sherry Rogers 

I didn't go with a shopping list which was a big mistake as I kept seeing things I couldn't resist. Fabric, thread, patterns, quilt hanging systems, longarm bits and bobs, ruffle fabric, elastic, ribbons. Oh my goodness it was just too much and I did pick!  A little here and a little there and before I knew it I had expanded out of my suitcase and had to buy another one (on top of the spare one I took with me!)  You should have seen me and my travel companions on the last night - packing and stuffing our goodies into the cases and frantically borrowing scales to make sure we didn't overrun the weight limitation per case. At one point I was sure Laura - my room buddy - was going to sit on her case to close it.  What a scream!  

The week went very quickly - too quickly but we squeezed so much into it, even a trip to the Johnson Space centre ..which was amazing. I got to go inside a space shuttle and even took a photo of a space loo! And of course we stopped via a mal to do more shopping.  

In addition to the bits I brought back I have a few more in transit - oops!  But these truly are gorgeous and I know you will love them too.  Robyn my other travel mate is a very bad influence on me and I'd like to say it was her fault I succumbed to Richard the Kilt from Akonye Kena fabrics.  Richard is best described as colourful character. Instantly recognised by his kilt and Doc Martins, his personality is an equal to his dress sense and his products even more so. The shelves of his booth were dripping with colourful beads and baskets - real beauties but the Ugandan fair trade cottons he had were divine!  100% 58" wide cottons in 60 colours.  The range is called Seed to Sewer because the cotton is grown, woven and processed in one area.  The whole range is hand dyed using both commercial and natural dyes from local plants and berries. There are 20 natural dye colours in the range and these looked a lot like linen to me. I have samples to work with now but the main line should arrive soon after Christmas. The max run length is only 5yds per piece though because they are hand dyed, so it may be a case of first come first served on this line. 

Other lines I ordered include some  Maywood Woolly flannels - which are 100% cotton but look like wool and due next April the whole line of Jason Yenter's Modern Solids from In the Beginning Fabrics. These are 100% cotton that look  a lot like silk! 

(Oh look at that ... I ordered cottons that look like linen, cottons that looks like wool and cottons that look like silk! ) 

Now its back to work again. I took this week off to recover - I'm not a good trans-atlantic traveller and I knew I would be tired - I'm still tired but I'm forcing myself to work today!  The shop will reopen on Monday 12th but just a heads up I will be starting a grand clearance sale on Monday 19th Nov to make way for all the new stock coming in. 

A bit woolly!

Yesterday dh seconded me to help him in a cross-country mission to collect his new toy. Lunch would be thrown in and a visit to an Art and Fabric shop was promised so it didn't seem such a hard task to abandon work for the day and enjoy a stroll around Petworth. As it turned out the weather was lovely and the 45minute drive was well worth it. Even better was the chance find of a Bronte recycled wool picnic blanket in OakApple, made apparently using a process called 're-weaving' (anyone know what this is?)

The colours are very earthy mustard/olive greens and heather pink/purples. Its made in the UK and only cost £17.95 too so I was a very happy bunny.

 Speaking of bunnies.... a quick hop over to the Bronte site revealed these lovely grey blankets ....

 ....these lovely door stops

and this gorgeous weekend bag

So dh,  if you read this post ... any/all of the above are on my 

birthday/christmas list.

and just in case you're wondering,  this is dh's new toy,

that I have to say I quite like too!

Felt Roses

 Yesterday we were invited for dinner with some good friends and I had intended making and taking along a pumpkin pie. Time escaped me though and since the kitchen is not my favourite room in the house I opted instead to take chocolates. To spruce up the offering and hide my baking inadequacy I made a bunch of felt roses to embellish the top. I enjoyed making them and the gift was well received so I thought I'd share how I made them with you.

Now I suppose I am lucky that I have a Sizzix Big Shot and this lovely 3-D Flowers #2 die.  The larger flower produces a rosette around 3.5" and the smaller around 2.25".  The Big Shot is a die cutter - a bit like an Accuquilt (I have one of those too ... yes my secret obsession is emerging here!) Die cutters make life so easy when it comes to cutting odd and complicated shapes - these flowers included although you know I think you could easily get away with cutting this shape freehand and still get great results.  Its hard to see but the die essentially cuts a very long scalloped strip of fabric that spirals round and round and once you have your strip you simply roll and glue to make the rosette. Simples!  It did take me a couple of goes to get the shape right mind.  But anyway heres how I did it in pictures!

Sizzix 3-D Flowers #3 Die number 657153

 I used a 10" square of the Xotic Bamboo/Rayon blend felt we have just got in the shop for each rose and I cut out the larger flower size.

For the chocolate roses I chose Fuchsia, Sangria, Passion Flower and Pina Colada 

(Great names aren't they!)

For the tutorial here I am using Pirate Cove (thats the green) and Macaw Red

 Cut out the spiral scallop strip 

This is the spiral uncurled 

Now you need glue. I tried sewing them first and it just didn't work as well so sorry folks I have resulted to textile glue.  

I used Gutermann HT2 Textile glue since I had it on hand and it works brilliantly.

 Put a drop of glue on the end of the spiral that starts at the outside (not the bit in the centre)

Fold it over and start to coax it into a curl.

Add more glue dabs at each scallop tip.

When I made the first few I added glue right along the inner edge but you don't need to add that much at all. A small drop every now and again is enough to keep the shape and stop the rosette unfurling.

Start to roll - trying to keep the bottom edge even.

Add more glue drops as needed.

Once you get to the bottom put a larger dab of glue on the base and sit the rose upright. Press lightly to create the rose.  You will have enough time at this stage to mess around with the shape before the glue dries. 

Some rossettes I rolled quite tightly and other I left a little looser.

Let the roses dries for half an hour or so and then add to your chosen chocolate box!  

To fix them to the lid I used strips of double sided tape which is enough to stop them falling off but not so permanent that they can't be removed and used for something else after the chocolates have gone! 

 I'm going to make more red and green roses now and make a christmas wreath next I think.

 

This is the spiral shape by the way. I think you could easily cut this with scissors but it will take a good deal longer than a die cut of course. 

 What do you think  .. should I add some die-cut felt pieces to the shop?