Category Archives: Blog

Great day to be out and about

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The sun was shining it was a beautiful day and I got to see the mountains around Vancouver.

We started off today by having our morning coffee at Pat’s favourite cafe. 
In Hayley’s neighbourhood we have seen two of these, both different, they have books in them that you can take books from and put books into for anyone to use.


We went to Michaels which is an upmarket craft supply store it’s huge, then we went to Indigo which is a large book store. Came back to Hayley’s neighbourhood and had a beautiful fresh salad lunch, looked around some shops, got supplies in to cook her flat mates dinner yum. A great night.


 This was a block of cheese!! It was huge just the right size to fit on crackers.

Vancouver is a beautiful city, very clean and lots of trees. Walked through a lovely community garden today.

Yay it’s stopped raining

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Today it was overcast but not too cold. Here are some pics of Hayley’s neighbourhood. This is her house.  

    
    
 
This is the house I’m staying in.  I’m on the top floor.  

 
We walked down to the waterfront and walked around the sea wall to Granville Island, it’s a kind of market. Everyone here has dogs, they are all out walking, Hayley said they take them to work in offices and people take them into shops, they are well behaved and I haven’t noticed any poo anywhere. We had a beautiful lunch there and then got a small boat (it holds about 12 people) so cute, over to the other side of the river and walked into the shopping district.

   
    
    
    
    
    
   
We looked into a couple of shops and then went to Victoria’s Secret. It was huge and we were in there for ages. It was 5pm when we came out and it was dark. Time to go home!!

   
 

Remarkable Quilters class

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We had a lovely three day class with Tutor Hazel Foot, she was teaching her ‘Pacific Tribute’ class. It was a fabulous quilt with lots of different techniques to learn. Most of the ladies did bright colours, but I wanted my quilt to be a table runner so it was very subdued compared to the others, to fit in with my decor.

The weather has been so changeable here, with snow, sun, wind and rain, so unusual for us, so it was a lovely time spent indoors sewing away.

Hazel Foot Pacific Tribute Hazel Foot Pacific Tribute II

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Making Gifts

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We have three ladies leaving the Embroiderers Committee. a fellow member, Daisy and I are making them gifts as a thank you for their service to the Guild. I am embroidering their initial and a sewing/embroidery related item and she will make them into little embroidery bags.

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COOTS Retreat, Bannockburn

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We had our October COOTS retreat once again at Bannockburn. This time we had tutor, Cheryl Comfort lead us in her ‘Inspired By …’ class. This fits in with our Challenge for the year of the same name. Cheryl took us through various exercises using an artist, chosen by each person, as an inspiration. We looked at colour, line, shape, what the artist was trying to convey etc. Some artists used were Klimt, Barbara Rae, David Hockney, Matisse. My chosen artist was Lyonel Feininger.

IMG_1154 IMG_1159 IMG_1160 IMG_1162 IMG_1163 IMG_1165 IMG_1166 IMG_1157 IMG_1158 IMG_1155Three days of inspiration and wonderful immersion in our projects without interruption, except, of course, to eat and drink, lol.

my work in progress using a photograph I took in Bath.

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Here is a link to a fellow “coots” member’s blog about the weekend as well.

 

More quilts

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These were the Russian quilts, quite folky and three dimensional
 
The Japanese quilters were next, they were in a beautiful big chateau.

 

They were giving lessons for one day only

That’s probably enough for now, I’ll show more to the Coots and layers ladies when I get back. I was running out of time but decided to squeeze one last exhibition in, OMG so glad it was the best and made the whole travel debacle worth while, 

This is Olivia, the artist

Quilt exhibition

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For those who aren’t quilters, skip this post now, lol

This exhibition is massive over 20 different venues spread over 4 villages, I only managed to do 3 villages and not all exhibitions, due to my late start.
It was interesting that the Europeans tend to focus on design and not execution, their designs were fabulous but some of the execution was not quite to how we would do it, there were a few Australian quilts and they were densely quilted, like we do, compared to the European ones, although the photos of the ones I liked were well quilted.
 

 

There were lots of mono printed fabric or painted fabric, and a variety of textures used.

These couple of quilts below, are made from wool felt, and stitched by hand! They were massive

There were lots of this Yoko Saito quilt by French women, the one above is Yokos and the couple below were just two of the many variations

Here is a Kaffe Fasset one, lol

I will post more soon

Journeys

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Before we left home I had booked flights, accommodation and a rental car to fly from a Nice to Strasbourg to attend the European patchwork and quilting exhibition for one day. Air France decided to go on strike this week, good on them!! They cancelled my flight to Strasbourg. Anyway I decided to get the train – a 9 hour journey. I set off from Villefranche to Nice by train, got to Nice and needed to print out my online ticket, only thing is I couldn’t understand the machine, so I lined up at the information counter, got to the front and asked if the guy could speak English, he said no and asked if I could speak French, no luck, I was a bit worried as my departure time was fast approaching. I decided to approach a security guard and asked him if he could help he could speak English but told me to queue up at the ticket counter, the queue would’ve been half an hour long, sigh, I must have looked upset cos he got another guard, who spoke better English to help me and I explained to him that I would miss the train and I just needed to get the ticket printed. He took me to the front of the queue, yay, got my ticket printed and headed off to check which platform I needed to be on …… My train was delayed for 30 minutes, oh dear, could’ve waited in the queue after all. Meanwhile this is what the others were doing.

 

They were in Monaco, they didn’t like it and only stayed a couple of hours.

Meanwhile I was on my way …. They guard came through checking tickets and spoke to some of us in the carriage, all French, I couldn’t understand any of it, but he kept saying Marseillies and gesturing that he would look after me, anyway the train stopped in Marseillies and everyone got off, a lady gestured to me to follow her, so I blindly followed along, we got onto another train, guards and all, it was a nicer train and off we went, very fast, luckily I made my connection at Lyon and arrived in Strasbourg at 10pm. Meanwhile I was trying to contact the rental car company at the airport to advise them I would be late picking up the car but kept getting a French answering machine, eventually I got through and she spoke English, yay, she said they were closing so made arrangements to get the car at 8am in there morning. Got a taxi to my hotel.  Got to the airport the next morning to get my rental car, o !@&$ I had my international license but not my NZ drivers license, shit, they wouldn’t let me hire without it, what the hell was I going to do now, I had one day to view this massive exhibition, the rental lady told me there may be a train to the place. I went to information, they said to get back into the Strasbourg train station and do it from there, o boy I was totally p’d off.  Anyway off I go back to Strasbourg and thankfully eventually find an English speaking ticket lady, I have to take a train and then a bus, time is marching on, off I go and finally arrive at the exhibition at 11am. The exhibition is held between 4 villages the main one being Saint Marie aux Mine.
This quilt exhibition totally takes over this village and it is inundated with women, and a few men, they take advantage of it and put out little stalls and sell things, I was too busy looking at the more than 20 exhibits to take too many photos of the surrounding areas.

Bath

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Awake at 5am this morning, the sleeping is getting better.
Yesterday we went to Bath for the day, an hour and a half train ride from London.
 It is a touristy small city, very old and has hot water baths there. We did the hop on hop off bus to get a good over view and had a Cornish pasty for lunch.  The others looked around the centre and watched buskers while I caught the shuttle to the American Museum to the Kaffe Fasset and gold work embroidery exhibitions. I don’t know how to add a link to words on the iPad, so here it is http://americanmuseum.org/about-the-museum/current-exhibitions/kaffe-2014-the-colourful-world-of-kaffe-fassett/
It was a great exhibition

 

There was also a display of embroidery in the local cathedral. (For the embroidery ladies) This alter cloth was done by Jane Lemon and a group she belongs to

It was a stunning day and very warm. The train ride back was fast (125 miles per hour!) we headed out to Picadilly Circus last night to the hustle and bustle and we to Thriller Live a tribute show to Michael Jackson, followed his life from Jackson 5 to his last hits, the cast were amazing the dancing was incredible and one particular guy was very believable as MJ a great night.

This pic was taken at half time those two people up the front had nothing to do with the show.

Every morning we go to breakfast to a franchise here called Pret a Manger the food is all organic, freshly created on site and delicious, we also went there last night for a salad for dinner and Jenny and Kelvin found one at Bath and got their lunch from there yesterday as well, lol. (Hayley, the little cup on left is coconut yoghurt, yum) the little cup with lid is espresso, big cup of peppermint tea made with the large silk tea bags so yummy.
We have managed to conquer the underground here and I have an app on my phone that tells us what trains to catch to get to where we want, it is a life (and marriage) saver.
Today we are going to the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey and Harrods.