Nearly there 

Only 3 days to go until I head up to Rugby to start the course.  I have the course information, some of the books on the recommended list and the basic equipment that I need to take with me.  I haven't done any hand embroidery lately as I want to be fresh when I start the course, but I am working on a super kingsized machine embroidered quilt.  Each block is made from a plain piece of fabric and is heavily stitched to create the design on it - so far I have completed 9 blocks and need 16 for the full quilt.  During the last 2 weeks I have been putting together the blocks that are completed with the sashing and backing and quilting them ready to be assembled together into a larger piece.  Here is one of the blocks created using the patterns from the book 'Aquamarine Ambience' by Simon J Haskins. 

I need to keep working on the quilt as it needs to be finished in the next 2 months ready for an exhibition at the beginning of December.

Prizewinner!

Imagine my surprise last week, while on holiday, when I happened to look on the Irish Quilting blog to discover that they had listed me as a missing person/reader and that I had won a prize in a competition that they ran earlier this year! When I went to the Festival of Quilts last August I picked up a copy of the Irish Quilting magazine out of curiosity and read that they were running a competition in association with Janome to design and stitch a 10" flower quilt block which incorporated three different quilting stitches.  I registered my interest in entering and eventually made the quilt block shown below, having used this design in a Baltimore style wall hanging. 

 

The central section is machine appliqued using my Janome 350e embroidery machine using batik fabrics on a black background.  The border is foundation pieced then attached to the central section.  I then free motion quilted around the flowers, quilted in the ditch around the border and used one of the preset embroidery stitches on my Bernina 730 to do the other lines of quilting.  As I didn't hear anything when the winners were due to be announced I assumed that I hadn't won anything, especially as nothing arrive in the post.  First and second prizes were sewing machines (which I didn't win), third prizes were Janome Mega Tote Bags - apparently there was a mix-up and I should have received one of them, so now I look forward to receiving it.