We are off again to the UK and Europe, specifically France. So apologies in advance to those who read this blog for its textile content, although you will get your fix as I will be going to here and here.
Whilst that the recent Embroidery Conference in New Plymouth I spied several women with these great bags, they sit open on the desk and are easy to see what is inside them, apparently they are called a stable bag. Of course all the ones I saw, had lovely hand embroidery on them, but I didn’t have time for that!! So I whipped one up using my trusty Bernina, yay
The members of COOTs were issued with a wee challenge by a local quilt shop, Christofer Robyn Quilts, to use a piece of Kraft Tex and make something and present it at our August meeting. I immediately thought I would make a box – but then thought no, thats what everyone else would make so I made a concertina ‘book’ and put it inside a gift box (we get given beautiful cheese every christmas by one of our subcontractors and the boxes are too lovely to throw away). Here are the photos of what I produced. I didn’t like the colour of the kraft tex so spray painted it, stencilled it, used matte medium and shellac on it – and it held up well, didn’t distort or change its hand in any way.
Seems to be a time at the moment for making leaving gifts. A friend is leaving Queenstown and moving to Dunedin, we will miss her from our wee group, so made her a sketchbook bag to hold her moleskin journal and other arty things.
I have been very humbled to have had my ‘I am from …’ quilt accepted to travel with some others to represent New Zealand at World Quilts. The New Zealand quilts are co-ordinated by Helen Marshall, here is a link to her site showing the Quilts that went this year. And there is the website that shows all the venues that my lady will travel to.
