The Quilt Quine

Corrugated Tweed

Linzi Upton — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:31:00 +0000

I have spent very available moment this week quilting large rectangles of wool tweed that will be cut into triangular shapes to form sections for the round yurt roof. I press-ganged Tania into helping me cut and piece the sections that were not long enough into stripey sections. The tweed was not particularly co-operative as it tends to stretch alarmingly. I had just enough backing fabric and not quite enough of the industrial strength wadding that is so bristly that it could be used to make pot scrubbers. I managed to piece a bit of reject poly wadding and some extra fluffy stuff for the last section. I am so glad that I suddenly decided to quilt all of the roof sections the same in long straight lines using the channel locks. Well, they are quite straight – there is the odd wobble and they not all exactly the same distance apart. The overall effect is fantastic, just like sheets of corrugated iron that are used on so many old farm buildings or the quilted outfits that I have seen photos of Mongolians wearing to keep out the wind. It is as if I made the decision consciously bearing all of these design features in mind...I have realised that I need to start jotting down interesting vocabulary if I want to write a serious book about the project with lots of pretentious references and arty-farty statements. Despite having a foul cold, I kept slogging on with the roof pieces and should have the whole lot done by the end of Monday. I treated my cold with lots of red wine and a Cadbury’s Crème Egg, contrary to the Government healthy-living advice. According to the Government’s latest campaign about women drinking too much wine, I will be dead soon so I’d better make sure that I enjoy life while it lasts!

I only had one outing this week to the Farm Supplies Store where I bought a new, galvanised poultry drinker and a sack of dog muesli. I ordered a box of thread over the Internet and wondered if I should plan an outfit to wear when I am interviewed for British Patchwork & Quilting Magazine. I don’t want to look like an overweight 40+ quilter who lives in jeans and a woolly sweater – I want people to think that I’m really trendy. If I do get dressed up to have my photo taken I will have to get changed straight afterwards because I will just feel uncomfortable and cold.

I had no success with “Furniture @ Work” refunding my money for the office screen so now I have written an official letter that requires a response within 14 days or I will refer my complaint to Trading Standards – it is all such a waste of my precious time! Another time wasting exercise will be phoning Dell to complain about my new and broken wireless mouse. I have changed the batteries, reinstalled the software and shaken it but it is still not talking to the computer. The Podcast microphone has arrived along with a huge manual in several languages. I will have to find time to figure out how to operate yet another gadget and its associated editing software. I have a nasty feeling that there is a Parent Council meeting at my children’s school this week; as Chairperson I really should go over the paperwork and make some overdue phone calls beforehand.

Perhaps Spring is on its way...the snow has been melting at last and a new Boiler Man came and replaced yet another part of the boiler so the house no longer reeks of kerosene fumes. George the Builder came to discuss taps for the ancient workshop sink that has never had running water. But The Farmer and the Bus Driver still reckon that there is a threat of snow over the next few weeks. I have had a couple of clients call and ask why their quilts have not been finished - they had forgotten that I said I wouldn’t be doing anything apart from the yurt until after May.

I have decided that I will try to piece one more yurt panel with equilateral triangles since I have had a revelation over the Shrinking Dutch Triangles. I now know exactly how to join them together without losing the points but I had re-cut some of the Dutch triangles using the smaller, metric template and still have lots of them in an imperial size. Instead of dealing with them and making them all match, I have packed them back into their brown envelope and shut the drawer for a day when I have nothing else to do.

Endurance

Linzi Upton — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:47:00 +0000

We have had days of thick snow, heavy rain and overnight temperatures of -19 degrees. School was closed for another 2 days and I shattered the glass hen drinking jar by pouring on some lukewarm water to defrost it. Dog walking through a foot of thick slush was not that pleasurable but I felt that I really deserved my coffee afterwards. One morning I was quilting in my hat and coat because it was so cold but I did have to take my Wellies off because I was tripping over my feet. I didn’t go out all week apart from commuting to the workshop and made do with what was in the freezer. We had Roadkill venison stew; it was pretty tasty but even a rich blackcurrant jam gravy did nothing to improve the liver in my opinion. I have always disliked liver and have come to the conclusion that I don’t have to keep trying it any more. My spinach and risotto rice soup was less successful as I forgot about it and left it bubbling for hours. It was just like green rice pudding.

I did a lot of intensive yurt quilting this week. I thought it would look interesting if I microscribbled in between the nested Celtic spiros on the Shield panel but it took ages and my hands and elbows became numb after a while. I also finished the Half-Circles panel but after a billion bubbles in 2 colours, became a bit bored with micro quilting. I measured all of the tweed to see how much of it would have to be pieced for the yurt roof – hopefully Tania will give me a hand with that. I ordered another 45 metres of fabric for dyeing and a roll of wadding so I’m just about bankrupt.

I received an abrasive email on Friday that put me in a fairly bad mood. I was so distracted by it that I deviated from my plan for the Pub Carpet panel. I had intended to do some long, smooth vertical lines but instead I produced angry crossing-over lines. I should have stopped and unpicked at this point but I decided to carry on and make it a feature. It did not improve so I ended up scribbling over it all with frustration. It now looks like a Shetland shawl or mycelium (underground fungus growth). I have bound it and put it away for now but may paint over the mess with some gold paint and add some crochet circles to make it look like an intentional design. I am NOT going to experiment any more on this project...!

I made several marathon, fruitless phone calls this week to a Boiler Man who is ignoring my calls about the strong smell of kerosene fumes and the Reject Office Screen Company which is denying that my purchase was ever returned to its depot. I got very annoyed at being put on hold for 20 minutes every time I called and being fobbed off so I am going to call Trading Standards in a last ditch attempt to recover my £135.

Mo is preparing to set off on a jolly to Georgia, near Russia next week with a friend who wanted to take a travel companion on a business trip. She will be collected in a limo from the airport and have dinner with the ambassador at the British Embassy. Tania and I have been pulling her leg and reminding her to take a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates because that is what “The Ambassador” always serves at parties (according to the corny 1980’s adverts). She is also going on a helicopter trip to inspect a pipeline with her friend so we have told her she will probably bump into James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) who will then take her on one of those trolleys under the mountain to a secret rendezvous where they will drink champagne and eat caviar. Well, you never know! She is hoping to visit a market selling folkarty things that would be useful for felting or quilting. Mo has been working hard for months so she deserves to have a great trip.

A Friday night out with Tania and Mo made up for all of the week’s trials. We had a delicious supper at the new cafe at Woodend Barn. Smoked mussels in a shot glass of exotic oil were a huge improvement on Roadkill. The special guest warm-up act was Tempole Tudor who used to tour with the Sex Pistols. He looked like he had been on the road (and something else) for the past 30 years. His guitar was held together with string and was covered in scorch marks and holes but it still bashed out a tune. The main band was called “Hayseed Dixie” from Tennessee. They wore dungarees, had big beards and were delighted that we had worn cowboy hats. They played smokin’ hot bluegrass versions of Bohemian Rhapsody, Mozart and originals such as Alien Abduction Probe. It was the best fun we have had in ages!

Quilt Vandal

Linzi Upton — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:02:00 +0000

I enjoyed a hectic few days with family in Norfolk as it was the February midterm break. We met Baby Daniel and the children loved fussing over their new cousin. We packed a lot into our trip and the time flew past. There was a visit to The Farm where I found myself asking about the milk yield of the new Jersey herd and I wondered if I might have room for a small cow in Scotland. The children made lumpy but tasty sausages with Grandad and enjoyed the novelty of walking to a shop. When a boy on a bike with a fishing rod who was wearing a kagoul and some particularly unfashionable specs, yelled across, “Wotcha!”, I knew that I had stepped into a time warp. My Dad announced that he wanted to look at fountains on the Internet. My mother was not impressed and expressed the opinion that he should really finish a project before embarking on a new one. That sounds vaguely familiar...

I would like to be a fan of British public transport but somehow it always lets itself down. I took the train to Colchester to do some longarm tuition with Janette. I missed the first train because some crucial traffic lights had broken down. When I finally arrived we had a really good day. She is not a novice so there was plenty of time to practise free-handing techniques and discuss her plans for a new studio in a log cabin. On the way home, my train was cancelled because someone had been run over. This meant getting on a crowded commuter train to Ipswich then catching a connecting train to Norwich. In Mumbai 20 people are run over by trains every day but the trains still manage to run on time! The journey back to Scotland was less eventful apart from the old bus that replaced the train from Norwich to Peterborough in thick fog. A Canadian tourist enquired hopefully, “Is there a bathroom on board?” The great thing about train journeys now that the children can occupy themselves with IPods and don’t need to go to the loo very often is that it lets me read a book. I am reading the latest Diana Gabaldon tome in the “Outlander” series. It took me a while to get stuck into this one as I had forgotten who all the characters were but after 6 hours between York and Stonehaven I was back in the Americas of 1777. I did try to check emails using the wifi on the train but it was quite slow and typing on a moving train is quite tricky. I bet all the commuters take ages to check their work for typos or perhaps they are just pretending to work and are really playing solitaire.

I have a few more technological challenges to sort out. My Quilt Quine email address wasn’t working because my mailbox was full. My IPod has decided that it won’t let me sync all the podcasts that I told it to. This is annoying as I am trying to research what makes a good programme. I have been jotting down ideas for content and have ordered a hand held microphone so there is no backing out now. My husband was very puzzled when he told me that my computer had been making a funny noise like a phone ringing. That must have been Skype which is another gizmo that I have yet to master – a bit like Facebook. I have avoided taking my laptop out into the workshop because I’ll never get any work done if I do.

I did get a lot of work done on Saturday because I got up at 5.30am to drop Freya and 2 other Girl Guides off to meet the coach for a day trip to Edinburgh. We have had a lot of snow in our valley over the past few days and it was very icy. I had to defrost the Landy doors and start it up for about half an hour to clear all the ice from the windows. When it was time to leave the doors had frozen shut again. I drove slowly into Banchory and got out to see the girls off but when I tried to get back into the car the doors had all frozen solid again. Luckily, I was able to prise open the door of the boot and climb over all the seats.

I have completely finished 2 yurt panels and sewn on the binding. I actually finished another one but didn’t think the colour was right so I dyed it a wonderful gungey green. The trouble was that a hot wash was necessary and the panel is now 3 inches shorter so may have to have an extension to get it back up to 54” in length. Not content with shrinking it, I decided to paint large areas. However, the washed and dried panel is now all crinkly so it is not going as smoothly as it should. I will need to work considerably faster than this and I dare not even look at the calendar as there are 22 more panels to go AND a roof. My target for the week is to complete 2 (preferably 3) panels and cut up all the pieces of tweed for the roof. The first Stunt Quilter panel arrived from California. Sharon did a great job of the feathers on her Celtic knot. I could not resist adding about a million more pebbles to make the feathers pop out more. Then I decided to celebrate them even more by highlighting them with some Jacquard Lumiere paint. I LOVE Lumiere – it goes on so smoothly but doesn’t run. David reminded me that I really don’t have time to add all these details until later. He may have a point – I should just quilt everything and complete the panels at the exhibition with my tiny paintbrush and pots of paint.

No Time for Frivolity

Linzi Upton — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:06:00 +0000

I think I am having a hard time posting blogs in 2 places... I used to draft it in Word the post it and add pictures but Blogger won't let me paste Words docs in and it also won't let me put the pictures where I want them. There probably IS a way but I haven't worked it out yet. This week I posted straight into Blogger and hoped to copy & paste the article onto the website blog but it wouldn't let me do thet either! Instead of getting to grips with blogging, I am now looking ahead at podcasting gadgets to confuse myself even further.

I have quilted 2 yurt panels this week and started to embellish them depite knowing that I should forge ahead and quilt up the rest and add finishing touches later. Adding paint with a tiny brush is fairly time consuming. I had a fight with Razzle-Dazzle and used Aurifil 12 instead as an embroidery detail around the jagged traingles. I will have several days away in East Anglia in the week ahead visiting family so must do something else useful instead like jotting down notes for the yurt books and ideas for a Quilt Quine podcast with Doric expressions, recipes and interviews.

The stunt quilters are all gathering their fabrics and ideas together and raring to go on their panels. I have been encouraged to install Skype but haven't had a real conversation yet. I did a test run and realised that I should smarten myself up and put on some face cream before having a chat with anyone. All these late nights are beginning to take their toll!

To see more info on the panels and what else I wasted time doing on the Internet you'll need to head over to the Blogger blog. I may have to make a blog choice soon rather than publish in 2 places unless I can find a straightforward way of doing it!!

Currying Favour

Linzi Upton — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:41:00 +0000

Mo promised Tania and me a spicy Friday night curry if we helped to do a couple of felted masks for a project that she is working on. She is going to run a series of workshops on mask-making with adults who have undergone trauma in their lives. They may have had no previous artistic experience so she wants to have a few samples to show that anything is possible. My two friends both worked on lion heads but I wanted to make a dragon of sorts. This proved to be a very fluid idea... I laid all sorts of purple, green and blue fluffy fleece out and added a few dreadlocks at the edges and decided that it would be a lady instead. I added large eyes and a wobbly mouth. I have to confess that I don’t really enjoy wet felting as it is rather hard work but I did have to earn my supper so I got on with it, rubbing soap suds into the fleece to mat it together. The results are never quite what you expect. We decided that the face looked a bit odd when we laid it onto a mould in order to get a 3D effect so we turned the whole thing upside-down. Now the lady is far more interesting, especially now that her lipstick is on her forehead.

I have been getting faster at typing in Hungarian. I had to send off 2 orders for dye and carefully copied out the spellings of the colours. My typing in English is not great. I never learnt to touch type and I have to look at the keyboard and spell the words out with a few fingers. I did not add any Hungarian accents to the words but I now know what some of the colours are without looking at the chart – dark blue is “fermerkek” and greenish-yellow is “bananzold”.

There were 2 longarm machine enquiries this week that were a little unusual. One person’s first question was, “So – how do I get to be a dealer so I can get a cheap machine?” The other (English) one was sent to me via Germany as she had been advised by that Claudia Pfeil was her nearest APQS sales rep... Ho-hum!

Since deciding to post the blog on Blogger as well as on the website, I have been tweaking the layout of the new BlogSpot. This is a very time wasting activity. I cannot figure out how to get a slideshow to run despite reading all the instructions carefully. In order to do this I have set up several Picasa web albums that can be accessed via the Internet. http://www.picasaweb.google.com/thequiltquine These all have to be sorted and labelled. It is a curiously addictive pastime. It is possible to change all the fonts, add blinkies, geotags and adverts! I am in danger of becoming a blog nerd. I bought a back issue of a patchwork magazine in order to read an article about online journals only to discover that I knew far more than the blogging expert.

Ellen is spending her recuperation reminding me to get on with writing a book about the yurt project and pointing out that it is time I started to do podcasting too. She is quite right, of course. There has been some serious interest taken in the yurt project in America that may lead to some exciting opportunities so a book in the pipeline is exactly what I need to get on with. I have asked all of the stunt quilters to keep all their sketches, notes and take lots of photos of work in progress. The stunt packs have started to arrive in the USA. My tiny local post office didn’t bat an eyelid when I sent off lots of packages of fabric; it’s a good job there wasn’t a queue since I had to fill in quite a few customs forms. The postmistress informs me that I am her best customer, or at least - I send the most interesting parcels...

I have already started to plan a series of monthly podcasts and spent some time on the Internet researching voice recorders. That proved to be pretty fascinating. I could get a small hand-held gadget that is the same type as those used in police investigations or a tie-pin microphone from an online Spy shop. There is a vast choice but if I want to do any interviews on my travels I will need one that doesn’t require lots of trailing wires and complicated software. I can pretend that I am really a secret agent. I watched a how-to video on YouTube so I now know about mp3 and wav signals. (I may know about them but will I know what to do with them?!)

I managed to finish piecing 3 more yurt panels that had been in bits for some time. I will try to get some quilting started with a simple panel involving randomly placed concentric circles and some fillers. I tried to do the outline in thick cotton thread but could not get it to co-operate. I slackened the tension discs so much that they weren’t doing anything but the top thread was still far too tight. I think I have decided not to work with tricky thread on such a large project as any delays may lead to me having a nervous breakdown or eating far too much chocolate. I am also considering ways of attaching the panels together so that they can be alternated easily. Heavy duty zips or velcro is an option but I may have to make some interesting dangly things in case there is any bulging at the joins. I will measure all the tweeds for the roof panels in case I have to do some piecing if any lengths are too short. It looks likely that I will have to get another roll of wadding and some more fabric for dyeing. I may have to do a couple of customer quilts as well so that there is some money left in the bank!

Trying out a New Blogspot

Linzi Upton — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:39:00 +0000

I have set up a new account with EBlogger. There is no limit on bandwidth and it should be easier to post comments.

I will still publish the weekly blether here and also at www.thequiltquine.blogspot.com

Let me know what you think because eventually there will be a winner...

Stunt Quilters

Linzi Upton — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:20:00 +0000

Yurt panels ready to quilt

I used to love a children’s comic strip called “The Numbskulls” where The Man had lots of little people living inside his head, controlling his actions... I think that if I have Numbskulls inside my head, one of them has spilled a big bag of “Space Dust” (the candy that crackles and fizzes). My head is bubbling with ideas, schemes, things to do and organise. I made the decision to step back from the School quilting project for a few weeks since I just don’t have a long enough hours to fit everything in! As late night TV relaxation viewing this week, I have become addicted to watching “Miami Ink”. It is a weirdly fascinating docu-soap about a tattoo parlour. The artistry is really impressive; the most talented tattooists work freehand and some of the motifs are just like quilted feathers.

The New York and MQX trip is gradually taking shape. Tracy managed to book the flights so that we could figure the itinerary around that. There was a bit of chat about it on the APQS forum and we have had several offers from NYC quilters who would like to show us around their city. This opportunity is very exciting. One lady is a member of the Empire State Quilters, who happen to have a guild meeting at the NYC Fashion Institute while we will be there. We have had another wonderful offer to stay with a quilter in Brooklyn – she happens to be a Big Apple Greeter. It is fabulous that quilters are so generous with their time and hospitality. People have also given us advice on hotels, public transport and places to eat.

I managed to get on with yurt panel piecing: some panels were almost the right size but just needed a border or a trim. I have almost got 11 panels of 30” x 54” ready to quilt. I had another look at the measurements of an 18ft yurt and realised that I would actually need 24 panels altogether. This left me with a feeling of dread. I would have to compromise on the complexity of the panels considerably in order to leave time for exciting quilting. I decided to give one of my dormant ideas a try and appealed for Stunt Piecers just like movie star stand-ins. The response has been amazing. I will send out a selection of Oakshott cottons and gold lame to a batch of very keen volunteers; they will help me to formulate some of my ideas but will put their own spin on it by adapting patterns and adding in some of their stash if necessary. The project has now taken on a new lease of life. It will be more diverse but also a more exciting collaborative effort. Already, questions have been asked about how to get the yurt to travel to USA in due course. I worried that I might not have enough fabric but spent a day cutting and realised that there is plenty. All I have to do is put cotton wool in my ears when I take the packages to the Post Office. What I need more of is Hungarian dye, backing fabric and wadding. The fabric wholesaler sent the wide fabric in pieces instead of on a bolt so it has not been cut as efficiently as I had planned.

Since I have been drumming up interest in magnetic prewound bobbins on the Internet, Filtec Threads has asked me to write a testimonial about their products to put up on their website as “an internationally renowned quilter!” Just as this accolade was about to swell the size of my head, my Mother countered with, “Well, no-one has heard of you in Chedgrave...!” A sponsorship deal from a company like this would be most welcome. I don’t suppose so much of this goes on in times of recession. While I am concentrating on the yurt project I am not working on customer quilts. I need spending money for the MQX trip, pay for the workshop improvements, finance the FOQ stand and hotel accommodation, save for a Lenni, reserve funds to become the Hungarian dye distributer for the UK and keep a little money in the bank for emergencies like tax (if I ever make a profit...!)

I finally managed to enable most readers to leave comments without the rigmarole of setting up an account and logging in. The only hurdle is now typing in the wonky secret message to prove that the reader is a human and not a computer. Annoyingly, the blog has been disabled until February 1^st as it has exceeded its bandwidth. I could top it up by paying extra but that’s only 12 hours away. I wonder if other Blog providers limit the amount of views each month? Surely Ricky Tims gets more than 5000 hits... No-one I’ve asked seems to be able to answer that question. I upgraded to “Professional” and my webhosts don’t believe that I could possibly require any more bandwidth than the maximum they will let me have. Perhaps I need a Geek to sort me out!

(no offence meant to incredibly clever computer literate people – I mean Geek as a term of grave respect)

Not Cutting Down

Linzi Upton — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:51:00 +0000

Apologies for a brief and slightly late blog – it has been another hectic week... I even forgot to take photos but I am hoping that someone will send me some copies to add to the blog later.

I have eaten rather a lot of cake lately. It was my birthday last week and there seemed to be a prolonged period of chocolate consumption. I may be reaching the point where I will need to cut down. I had made up my mind that I needed a tweed jacket. The reason that tweeds are supplied by landowners to their gamekeepers is that they are so warm and also repel Scotch mist. Since we have had damp, grey days I thought it would make a smarter change from living in an old hippy jumper. I tried several jackets in various sales but they were all a bit tight or too blokey or I looked like I might be off to saddle up a horse. Eventually, I bought one in the sale at the fishing and shooting shop and have lived in it ever since.

I did not get a lot of sewing done which gnawed away at my conscience but I have moved almost everything into the workshop and absolutely love working in there now. George the Builder blocked up the last rotten window and I had to wait a few days before slapping on the white paint. My books are all on their shelves and I have a stash of neatly organised fabric in trolleys under the quilt frame. The windows all got polished and a rug thrown on the unpainted bit of floor so that everything was shipshape for the Longarm Machine maintenance class. Tracy kindly brought me yet more items from IKEA as my personal courier and now I have the challenge of a 9-drawer unit for threads to assemble.

My guest for the weekend was Mark Caraher from APQS in Iowa. My family and I enjoyed his company and he did a super job of teaching 4 longarm quilters how to check and fix their machines. He had already managed to fit in a similar session in Surrey for the owners in the South of England. The manual that we were talked through is great as it is all illustrated so I will feel more confident at trouble-shooting from now on. My Milli was in good shape; the frame got raised up again and all checked over. After thrashing over the dimensions with Tracy and Mark, it looks like I won’t need to do surgery on my quilt frame in order to squeeze a future Lenni into the studio if I simply add castors. It was most enjoyable hanging out with other longarmers for a couple of days, discussing threads, gadgets and sharing techniques. We had a lovely supper of organic local produce at The Milton Restaurant on Saturday evening to spend some time getting to know each other. All I need now is guest accommodation!

I was disappointed to hear from Ellen that she can’t now come on the MQX trip and the side jaunt to the New York Garment District. We always have such a laugh on out trips together and I felt that it just wouldn’t be the same without her. It’s not that I get lonely on my travels but people-watching is better fun as a shared experience! However, she has some getting better to do and should be fit again for a quilty trip later in the year...

Meatballs and MDF

Linzi Upton — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:05:00 +0000

Despite heavy rain and very wet roads with thawing snow I made it to IKEA in Edinburgh at last! I spent a small fortune on MDF bookcases, a half price linen cabinet and wire trolleys to keep my fabric stash under the quilt frame. You can’t go to IKEA without having meatballs for lunch so we did. We were amazed at what people were trying to squeeze into their cars. A plump couple were cramming a kitchen into their very small car. The suspension looked strained, the boot had to be tied shut with string, the driver could hardly do any steering or see out and the wife would have to be pulled out with a winch after she got wedged into the back seat. Another couple realised that the double bed and mattress that they had just purchased would not fit into their car. The Landy just about coped but it is designed to carry sheep, not flatpack so everything was piled up higgledy-piggledy.

I spent all of Sunday assembling my new furniture without help. I find instructions very hard to follow but I figured it out and impressed myself by putting together the linen cabinet – there were hinges, drawers, catches and all sorts of fittings to contend with. It was interesting to note that my quilt frame is obviously not altogether level as the trolleys did not all fit underneath as they should. I have decided to leave the Milli untouched so that the maintenance class actually has something to see and do. I used to tidy up frantically before the cleaning lady came when I was a teacher; she would complain that I left her nothing to do - so this is the same principle!

I have enjoyed working in the new studio. The new electric stove is terrific – it looks quite realistic and can easily be shifted. A woodburner would have been nice but not so adaptable. After figuring out where to put a design wall, I have ordered an office screen that can be moved and both sides can be used. It was great that everything was in one room so that I didn’t have to wonder if it was in the house or workshop. I spent 2 days cutting large pieces of Oakshott into random strips that I will use for some simply pieced panels. I feel that most of the panels need to be fairly simple to allow for time to do some intricate quilting. I also started some piecing but didn’t get as much done as I had hoped by the time I had also fitted in cooking, school activities and homework. At least I seem to have managed to spend slightly less time on the computer.

There was a discussion on the Accuquilt Studio cutting system on the APQS forum. It sounds like I could have got my cutting done in a fraction of the time using this gadget which seems to be like a giant pasta making machine for fabric. However, it is $950 plus shipping and customs so it will have to wait for a while! I collected my parcel of Filtec threads and had to part with an extra £30, most of which was handling fees. It would be more economical to place smaller orders so that the total value of the packages is less.

I received an email from Road to California with judges’ comments to say that my quilt looked good at the show, was well pieced but did not hang absolutely straight. I was impressed that they took the trouble to inform everyone of the winners and give some feedback so promptly. It will be shipped to Bonnie in New York after the show so I’ll see if she can work some magic on it to flatten it out before MQX. It is always a bit of a worry that it will be a bit squashed after travelling so far and hanging around in a box for weeks.

This week I have to get organised for the maintenance class with Mark at the weekend and do some spring cleaning in Fenella’s room. I was hoping to get on with the yurt piecing but George has reappeared to block up the last remaining old window so it looks like I will be getting rid of the dust and doing some more painting. It would be nice to declare it done. The inside looks fantastic but I will have to blindfold visitors outside so they can’t see the walls that are desperate for fresh paint when some warm, dry weather returns. I must remind myself not to start pig-keeping or any other time consuming “hobbies” until all of my renovations are complete!

Blind Fury

Linzi Upton — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:09:00 +0000

This was the week that was meant to be spent spring cleaning the studio, sewing room and clearing out old clothes and toys... Due to snow and ice, school was closed for the whole week so none of these jobs could really be done. I was hoping that the new workshop carpet would arrive on Wednesday so that I could put all the tables back that had been cleared away. There was one on top of the chest freezer and the others were piled up in the longarm room. Needless to say, the fitters cancelled due to adverse road conditions. By Thursday I had cabin fever as I had let David borrow the Landy for several days and I had not been out all week. I took Fenella and Fergus with me on a trip to buy blinds, an electric screwdriver and yet another oil-filled radiator.

It seemed like a good idea to buy the cheapest, plainest roller blinds for the studio. However, you really do get what you pay for. After cutting them all to size, I found that the Chinese measurements given for setting the brackets were wrong so the first one simply fell down and smashed the mechanism. This meant another trip back into Aberdeen to get a replacement. It took me quite some time to get the roller blinds up and I have to pull the cord VERY gently or they simply fall off their crappy brackets. I wondered whether I should have made 3 pairs of curtains but had decided that it would take too long. I probably will make curtains now anyway because I can’t see the roller blinds lasting more than a few weeks!

All the disruption this week put me in a most frustrated mood. I was unable to use the workshop so just didn’t feel in the right frame of mind to get on with the yurt panels but I eventually found several useful things to do. I bonded with my new computer, loading up files from the old one which caught a really nasty virus and has since had to be reformatted. Luckily I backed everything up in late November so only lost a couple of documents and my old emails. I watched Claudia Pfeil’s DVD on longarm feathers which I really enjoyed because she seems to tackle them in the same order as me. It made me realise that my occasional feather phobia is down to confidence, not technique. In the end, I got rid of the doldrums by working away at a simple jelly roll throw.

The workshop carpet was fitted on Friday, despite the men complaining that it wouldn’t sit flat because the room was too cold. I was able to spend the weekend sorting out a new workspace.

I still have not made it to IKEA to buy bookcases and a storage system for fabric but at last, all of my sewing stuff is in one place! There are still some jobs to do like new lights, plumbing, shelving, and blocking up an old window but it is ready for me to work in and resume classes. It will free up a room in the house when everything moves out. Then we will have to decide what this room becomes. It has only ever been a playroom, sewing room or junk room. I think it should be a study or posh den but everyone in the family has a different opinion on what it should become.

My fingers are crossed that the children will return to school on Monday, I will go to the Post Office with a couple of packages and then I will get stuck into the yurt project at last...

Chilly

Linzi Upton — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:14:00 +0000

After waiting 2 days for the paint to dry in the workshop, I splashed the second coat on top of the ice crystals that had formed on the walls. It really was Arctic and my hands must have been so cold that I didn’t feel the hefty knock that my finger took when shifting the old porcelain sink until it went purple later. I did enjoy listening to Radio 4 plays and interviews. I find that I can only enjoy talking radio when I don’t have to think about anything else. By January 1^st I was feeling a bit frustrated with the holidays. I was itching to get the workshop back to normal, ready to tackle some yurt panels. I persuaded my wonderful friend Mo to help me get the ceiling drapes up. I had a go at it myself using a hand staple gun but it was far too difficult. She is a pro and has an industrial compressor staple gun.

The continuing snowy weather made a trip to Edinburgh IKEA impossible but I braved the roads to order a new piece of carpet from the Cheapo Carpet Shop. I crawled along sensibly in the Landy but met quite a few cars that were driving far too fast for the conditions. The main roads were passable but the side roads were white. There was a surreal sight as I passed a farm with ostriches in the paddock, scratching around in the snow. I wish I’d stopped to take a photo! Dog walking has been more of a trudge this week. Mabel has been sinking in up to her oxters. I can’t imagine wanting to be a polar explorer tramping through snow for months on end. It would be good exercise, though!

We braved the crowds in Aberdeen to do a bit of Sale shopping. Freya got some jeans, boots and a coat after a lot of searching and eye-rolling. Fenella bought a rabbit from the Bear Factory and I came away empty-handed. But I did see something that took my fancy in Schuh... so I ordered a pair of shiny gold Doc Martens when I got home. They are very C3PO but I think they will be great when I am exhibiting the finished Yurt to pay homage to the touches of gold lame in the panels!

I have been pondering how to fit a Lenni quilting frame into the workshop in the future as the new longarm room is not quite big enough and I want to keep the larger room as a classroom/studio. I have trawled through the IKEA catalogue and cut bits of paper up to see how everything could fit in. The trouble is that, there are things that I don’t want to get rid of such as a large cutting table that I found outside and renovated and a couple of old treadles. They are not really essential items but I like them! I still need a cupboard to store quilts properly and I’m supposed to vacate the sewing room in the house eventually. I have worked out that my 14ft Milli frame needs to be 12”-18” shorter. I think that importing a smaller frame will be awfully expensive so I need to investigate a skilled metal worker who could cut it all down a bit and drill some holes back in the correct places.

The family computer seems to have caught a serious virus and would appear to be broken. Luckily I had backed everything up onto an external hard drive recently apart from emails. It meant that I have had to get to grips with Windows 7. So far I think that it is all a bit long-winded. Copying, moving and saving are a palaver. It should have been a simple task to transfer documents over from the HD but it did not just do it all automatically and logically. It makes me wonder if a Macbook might have been easier. I just need to spend a bit more time bonding with the new laptop. My main resolution of 2010 is to spend less time on the computer and more time quilting but so far I haven’t stuck to it successfully!

Leftovers

Linzi Upton — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:01:00 +0000

I have just spent half an hour in a very hot shower attempting to defrost after a day spent painting in sub-zero temperatures. I could quite easily have settled for a day finishing the latest Dan Brown novel and eating my way through a stash of chocolate but I decided that the workshop needed a lick of white masonry paint inside on its concrete block walls. One high part had never been done so will need at least one more coat. I had to climb a ladder because one end of the utility farm building that houses my workshop is quite a bit higher than the other end! At least I had an excuse to listen to Radio 4 all day from The Archers Omnibus and Desert Island Discs to Festive Gardeners’ Question Time. I will have to spend at least 2 more days on this chore. It is not until repainting starts that you really notice how badly it needs doing. Some areas were pretty flaky from damp but the walls should be much sounder now with new windows. Painting is a job that I always dread starting but I secretly enjoy once I am underway. I had a quick cup of coffee with a mince pie and cold stuffing for lunch then some cold bread sauce on parsnips for afternoon tea.

I did get the huge bedspread done in an even easier “contemporary” design of wiggly horizontal lines. This meant that I could spend the days before Christmas drinking sherry in the yurt and cooking. Tania, Mo and I exchanged a wonderful collection of gifts that good friends give each other. They always include Bombay Mix and I give them daft things like sweets with silly names and smoked paprika. Christmas Eve is always my favourite day of the Christmas holidays. I love the guilt-free whole day spent in the kitchen listening to carols and preparing for the Christmas Dinner. I glazed a magnificent gammon with treacle and spices. This gammon might have been Ginger but I am not convinced. The butcher was very shifty when I collected a fairly small box of meat from a pretty large pig and didn’t charge me. I think he ate, lost or sold the real Ginger and feels very guilty indeed. I collected a very substantial free-range turkey and used the imposter’s sausage meat as stuffing. I was thrilled that the replacement Kenwood Chefette arrived in the post and decided to rearrange the junk in the pantry to make a space for it. I was mortified to discover the original model underneath a stash of recyclable shopping bags – still, now I can mix 2 items at once just like a spaghetti western sharp shooter.

I thought that the festive snow would melt before Christmas but despite several attempts to thaw, it has hung on and is now solid ice with white slush on top. We are forecast for some more but I would like it to disappear when it is time for the children to go back to school and George still has a workshop window to block up.

An exciting new technology has arrived in our house. I ordered Sky TV for Christmas which is something I thought I didn’t need before. It is really amazing being able to pause and rewind live TV. For the first time in years I have been able to work out how to record programmes and if bored there are hundreds of obscure channels to choose from. I am told that vintage Eleanor Burns quilting programmes can sometimes be found on Rural TV in between the Country singers and tractor shows.

I’m hoping to make a trek to IKEA for some workshop storage racks and other non-essential but incredibly useful Swedish objects during the week. Perhaps that should be my “reward” if I manage to complete the painting marathon.

‘Tis the Season to be Merry

Linzi Upton — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:54:00 +0000

After the children’s school carol service it started snowing, making everyone feel very festive. I hope it doesn’t peak too soon and melt before the end of next week. I flew around doing last minute gift shopping until the school phoned to let me know that Freya had hurt her thumb and I ought to have a look at it. She was horrified when I turned up in my second-hand Drizabone waxed jacket and Doc Martens at the school party to inspect it. She was worried that I would take her away for an x-ray and miss the rest of the party. Far from it, I still had shopping to do! I decided to tackle the wrapping so I don’t have to do it at the last minute when I should be drinking sherry. It seemed to go on forever but I am not buying anything else – apart from groceries!

One thing I won’t be wearing over the Festive Season is the diabolical skirt that arrived in a plastic bag, shoved in the door by the dress-maker who made the unbelievably awful waistcoat. I had completely forgotten that I had asked her to make me a matching skirt in August. Maybe I can enhance it with the addition of some buttons or some clever quilting but I doubt that will do much to improve it. I imagined a panelled tweed skirt, cut on the bias but what I have is a tartan and tweed elasticated sack of wide strips… It will look great with my latest haircut. When I was at the hairdresser a short, trendy crop seemed like a good idea. Now that I am at home it looks like I may be considering becoming a nun or a convict. Still, it’ll grow back eventually.

At least I won the bidding on a retro Kenwood Chefette on Ebay. The postage was twice the cost of the mixer. I just hope it arrives before I have to whip any cream. I should look for knee-pads on Ebay. I have been constructing another enormous bedspread but my workshop is lacking tables and a carpet so I had to crawl on the freezing concrete floor to pin the borders and cut the backing. Putting it together will have taken longer than I intend to spend on quilting it. I am simply doing wobbly lines of quilting horizontally and will turn the whole quilt and go back the other way to get very lazy but contemporary cross-hatching. I think this is what I will do for my yurt roof on the whole.

I spent a few evenings watching Jamie Oliver cook up easy-looking festive dishes. With imagination, you could just pretend that a stale mince pie and custard is one of his recipes. I decided that I will roast a proper free-range turkey this year. It was a little eerie to drive past their empty field this week after watching them grow up since the summer so I will try to do it proud and keep an eye on it on Christmas Day so I don’t burn it.

I quilted at supersonic speed and got the Bloody Big Xmas Bargello finished and bound! I was quilting so fast that I think I have loosened the bolts on my quilting table – the whole thing feels decidedly wobbly so it could all do with a check-up.

I declared Friday a yurt day and night as I felt that it was all a bit neglected and there was a bit of mould on some of the rugs due to all the damp weather. I lit the stove in the morning and enjoyed coffee and sherry with friends. My Uncle paid a surprise visit for afternoon tea and as the fire was so toasty, Tania and I shared a bottle of fizz in the evening as snow fell outside. I think the yurt is perfect for Christmas entertaining so I gave it a Solstice Clean and filled up the baskets of logs and peat ready for the holidays. All I have to do now is finish the enormous bedspread, get annoyed in the supermarket, not let the children eat any of the Christmas food, start the workshop painting, run over the butcher if I can’t get Ginger back and decide whether to poison my friends with curried venison.

I hope everyone who reads this blog has a great Christmas week – eat, drink and be merry. Enjoy a bit of Christmas telly and sneak off into your sewing rooms when you get a chance… Merry Christmas!!

Reward offered for Missing Chefette

Linzi Upton — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:47:00 +0000

It would seem that a burglar has broken in, ignored all the modern technology and Christmas presents in the house and STOLEN my ancient hand-held Kenwood Chefette mixer. It has simply disappeared. This trusty old blender is irreplaceable – it has 2 sturdy beaters and a very fast motor that doesn’t get hot. It has gone a bit yellow with age and has a dodgy plug but I can’t live without it. I needed it to make frosting for Fergus’s Dalek cake. The substitute modern flimsy beater whooshed icing sugar all over me, the toaster and the wall so I threw it out! After watching lots of make-your-own Christmas telly, I decided that I would make some biscuits for Freya’s teachers and friends. I will have to write to the Domestic Goddess who wrote the recipe and tell her she got it all wrong. I had to double up the quantity of flour and they got burnt. The venison was delivered but I was informed that it was a bit “ripe”. Hmm, I don’t think you are supposed to get a whiff of Camembert every time you open the freezer. The Americans on the APQS Forum all gave sage advice on field-dressing deer but I don’t really think mine had the same care and attention. I will defrost it and re-sniff but Bambi Balti may be off the menu.

I spent a whole day in town doing Christmas shopping, helped Barbara at Milton Studio with her fabric sale and dutifully went out for lunch twice. I had been keeping a low profile with Quilters and only had 2 more customer quilts pending. This meant that I could start the New Year doing the Yurt stuff. However, a customer arrived with a basket full of quilts that she wanted me to baste/tack. I said I would rather not do that. There was one with large areas of appliqué which she wanted untouched and I have had strict orders not to “over-quilt”. There are 2 more that are crying out for intense custom which she doesn’t want. I will have to pluck up the courage to attempt some feathers and proper cross-hatching on a large scale.

My time-keeping is taking a turn for the worse. I arrived for the quilting project at School a whole hour early as I forgot that the time on my mobile phone is an hour ahead. I had to take Freya to Church as she was playing her flute with the School recorder group. She had already complained, “It’s so inconvenient – why does it have to be on a Sunday?” (I did point out that Church is usually held on a Sunday). I knew that she had to be there at 3.45pm so why did I decide that I needed to leave the house at 4.30pm to be there on time? I was even writing Christmas cards before we left as I thought I had half an hour to spare!

I finally started quilting the Bloody Big Bargello. For ages I thought about how I would quilt it - possibly a simple cross hatch or maybe I should use a template board… in the end I realised that all those seams had to be captured so shells were the best option. I had a frustrating first hour where the tension went peculiar. The test area of backing and wadding was fine but as soon as I reached the pieced area, the stitches were all over the place. The only different thing was the wool wadding. I think I need to adjust the height of the hopping foot but the screw is too tight and I can’t shift it. After some tinkering, I got going but I was not pleased with my quilting at all. For one thing, I have decided that I don’t like variegated thread. When the dark green part of thread crosses onto the cream squares, it looks odd. The trouble is that I am in a tearing hurry. I would have liked to have done tiny shells but then it would never be finished by Christmas 2009. It really is a shame if my own quilts get a lower priority than other people’s quilts. Really, BBB is meant to be a simple bed quilt so I should stop being so fussy and just get over it!

Bringing Home the Bacon - some of it…

Linzi Upton — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:45:00 +0000

I collected a box of lovely tender Ginger bacon but the rest of the meat was not on the premises so the butcher promised yet again that he would drop it off “sometime”.

The one good thing about it being December is that I feel you can officially eat mince pies and drink a small sherry with friends at coffee time. We don’t tend to do this during the rest of the year so it’s quite a treat! I arrived for my coffee at Mo’s in a more dishevelled state than usual. I told her that I had been foraging and had something in the back of the Landy. She made a comment that most people forage for berries or wild mushrooms and don’t usually appear with a large deer.

That morning the dogs headed into the gorse 2 fields away from the house and started barking. I found them having a go at a wounded deer that had struggled up from the road with both of its front legs broken. I decided to take the dogs home and return to put it out of its misery. The sloping ground was so wet that I couldn’t drive the Landy up, remembering the poachers who got stuck on a neighbouring farm last week. Armed with a Stanley knife, I thought that if I cut its throat, it would die quickly. This is where TV gives a totally false impression of events. The deer seemed to cling onto life for quite a while with its big Bambi eyes looking accusingly at me. Rather than leave the carcass to the mercy of predators, I decided that Mo and I could make use of some nice venison so I pulled it out of the bushes where it turned out to be larger than I first thought. I planned to carry it across my shoulders like a gamekeeper but it was too big so I had to drag it back home which was heavy going. Surreal thoughts went through my mind - like if you ever murdered someone it would be VERY difficult to move the body!

It was a week of unusual happenings, actually. When I was driving back from Banchory on the back road one evening a huge cat shot across the road. It was the size of a fox, stripy, with tufted ears and a lynxy tail. There have been several sightings of Scottish Wildcats in our area and this was most certainly one of those.

I had an argument with receptionist at the Hairdresser. She told me that I did not have an appointment on Tuesday but I was insistent that there was a note on my fridge to the contrary. When I got home I shamefully admitted to myself that I had missed an appointment in November. This was the second time I have done that this year!

I received an email from “Road to California” to inform me that LSD has been juried into their January quilt show.

I will not be going to see it in person but decided that I will send it on from there to MQX as it will already be in the USA. I went to the Post Office to buy a parcel box but was told that they had been flooded a few weeks previously and the stock of boxes had all got wet and spoiled. This reminded me of customer services in Bethlehem 2000 years ago when local hoteliers all knew a large census event was taking place but they didn’t plan ahead and ended up with “No room at the Inn!”

I got dressed up in my new frock and shoes to accompany my husband to a posh work do. It was an absolutely fabulous carol concert in the Chapel at Haddo House. It is National Trust Scotland property decorated lavishly in 18^th Century style and crammed with enormous old portraits. It was also unheated apart from a few log fires so visits to the loo were kept brief. Champagne and canapés were followed by a sumptuous dinner in the library. It actually put me in the Christmas spirit and I have had to stop denying that the proverbial goose is getting fat.

The coming week is going to disappear… Mo wants me to squeeze in a bedspread, 2 sets of friends want to go out for lunch, I want to try and get to grips with the new laptop which won’t communicate with the existing modem and there is a fair bit of clearing up to do in my workshop. The messy stuff is almost done so I will have to repaint the walls and floor, hang new calico from the ceiling, wash everything down and put everything back. Finally, I will be able to use it as a proper studio again. I am organising my first APQS training session at the end of January when a technical expert from USA comes to stay. I also have a fairly large project to attend to!

Vodka and Sardines but No Bacon

Linzi Upton — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:47:00 +0000

I managed to squeeze in a quilt for a friend for her elderly mother’s birthday and load up another one ready to start next week. I decided that the “Bloody Big Bargello” is big enough at 96” square. I wanted to give it some borders but laid it on the bed which is not actually king sized and realised that it is already huge. Now I have to decide whether I can be bothered to piece the back or buy some wide fabric. The choice is not inspiring but it is quite expensive, especially since I want to use wool wadding and would prefer to get it all from one supplier so I don’t have to pay twice for carriage.

A letter arrived from the QGBI President informing me that my bid for the travel bursary had been unsuccessful and that they have awarded it to someone who has never been abroad for a quilt show. I wonder if the recipient will pass on as much knowledge on her return as I would have done. The Guild could have done with a resident longarm expert – YUK, the taste of sour grapes!!

My sister’s baby arrived safely so now I am an Aunt to Daniel. I have not been an aunt before so I suppose I have to decide whether to be indulgent or formidable! She and her husband are delighted by their new arrival and I’m advising her to ignore the health visitor even though I know she will feel obliged to do everything she is told by a professional, just like my Mother told me to ignore the health visitor…!

I attempted to go and fetch the bacon pig twice but on both occasions the butcher promised he would be driving past and drop it off. I have decided that I will need to hold up the butcher’s shop if necessary in order to reclaim Ginger – and there will be trouble if my Tamworth bacon has been swapped for a common pig!

I had a frustrating couple of days when the email was on the blink. It turned out that my website server had been hit by a virus or maybe lightning. It drove me mad and made me realise that I am completely addicted to email. I received a great letter from an ex- teaching colleague but she has moved to Skye and doesn’t have Broadband yet so it looks like I will really have to use pen and ink to reply.

I packed up lots of thread, gadgets and books for my trip to see 2 APQS customers in the middle of England. As it would have been a very long trip of more than 8 hours for the Landy, I flew from Aberdeen to Birmingham. Angie and her husband collected me at the airport. She had a mini quilt to wave in case she didn’t find me but the green boots were a giveaway. They looked after me very well and we spent several hours over the next 2 days testing out threads and freehand techniques. Angie was a very willing pupil and was relieved that we had managed to sort out a major thread jam over the phone the evening before I flew down. We even fitted in a jaunt to the impressive “Bramble Patch” where 3 workshops were going on. It’s a big shop with lots of studio space.

I travelled onto my next destination by train. I always like to give public transport the benefit of the doubt but there was a major breakdown in Birmingham so the short trip was diverted around the whole city and I missed my connection to Shrewsbury. By this time, it was chaos at Birmingham New Street and the trains were full. People were tightly packed in like sardines. No-one ever seemed to get off at any of the stations but more people fought their way on. A young couple drank most of a bottle of bright red vodka then he struggled his way down onto one knee and begged her to have children with him. She was understandably moved and everyone on the train was grinning. I wonder if they will stick to their decision after the hangover wears off.

Diana’s husband met me in Shrewsbury and we drove towards Oswestry (that’s almost Wales). I was made very welcome there too and after supper we spent a couple of hours in Diana’s studio giving the machine a good going-over. She had not managed to bond with her machine previously. There had been some teething troubles and eventually she received a replacement. We decided to start from scratch and talk about thread, tension and technique. She is actually a dab hand at pantos and even got me doing one. When I was a beginner I thought you had to stay right on the line but it always went wobbly. Now I see that you just aim in the general direction with confidence BUT lining the next row up and planning where everything goes with the tricky ones is a bit of a science! Diana has a studio and shop above a dental technician business called Castlecroft Quilter. She has an impressive line-up of tutors and a fantastic and refreshing range of fabrics. Since she struggled with tension issues in the early days she has a vast collection of thread. We tested a lot of them and decided that a different colour of the same type and weight of thread can behave differently to one that worked perfectly well before. Diana even demystified the Towa tension gauge for me. Hopefully she has gained some confidence and will now be able to enjoy quilting with her machine.

I was impressed by Aberdeen Airparks who had been looking after the car. They picked me up as soon as I had landed and had the Landy waiting – engine running, heater on ready to go. It felt great to be back in my own vehicle again. I had even toyed with the idea of getting a more practical car for my travels over the weekend but I just love that muckle, green beast!

George had fitted a new workshop door and insulated the workshop ceiling while I was away so all I have to do now is get the rest of the work done, re-paint, re-do the ceiling calico, get rid of the dust…

The new computer did not get delivered as I was out and they can’t say accurately when they can redeliver so perhaps I will have to go into Aberdeen to fetch it. There was snow on the hills this morning and I’m afraid the blog was a day late as I caught up with washing, unpacking, emails, customer queries and helped Barbara at the shop. And still plenty more to fit in this week…

Sunshine and Showers

Linzi Upton — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:15:00 +0000

This week’s weather is a mirror of my fortunes. Beautifully still and sunny one minute but torrential rain and gloomy the next. That’s a bit melodramatic but this week has brought several ups and downs! I have obviously been preoccupied since I haven’t taken any photos. I’ll have to go and find something on the web for this week’s photo…

What about a tattoo... shall I get one? This is a transfer so it would wash off if I didn't like it!

I finally finished the Kaleido quilt with spirographs and it looks great. Some of the designs are not absolutely central but it’s hardly noticeable. I even made full use of my channel locks to do piano key quilting; I only had to listen for the magnets to click into place for horizontal or vertical. I also worked away on the Bloody Bargello and have half of it all sewn together, the other panels are ready to attach and I really can’t see the mistakes now. So that was all good progress BUT still no sign of George the Builder, the Boiler Man or the Butcher.

I finally made up my mind to purchase a second laptop, small enough to take on my travels. I had hankered after a netbook but they don’t have DVD drives. I made some calls for advice, posted a query on the APQS forum about what everybody likes, talked myself out of a Macbook and settled on a red Dell. I purchased it online with my credit card BUT the cash that I had put onto it at the bank had not cleared so it was declined. I decided to use my brand new Business card but it was refused too. This is the card that I can’t read the PIN number on because it is a scratch and reveal system so sensitive that every time I get one I scratch it off completely. The bank said the card was fine and I had funds so then I called Dell back. After I had been put on hold, transferred several times and been cut off, I wondered if I had made a good choice. It got ordered and paid for in the end.

I was feeling great that I had been paid commission for my APQS sale and would be able to pay for the flights down to England on my credit card BUT then I received a bill from the architect who drew up the plans for the workshop conversion. He wants 6% of the lowest tender which is £10 000!! I had to call him and say that since the work wasn’t going ahead on this over-priced project, £10K seems a bit steep. I reminded him that the original brief was for accommodation costing £80 000 max, that would give me an income to pay off the ensuing mortgage and now that I can’t afford to get the work done I have no income. I explained all this calmly despite feeling hysterical and he said he would draw up a fee based on the time spent working on the plans. I daresay he will still manage to charge £5000…

On Friday I gave 2 ladies a thorough Longarm Demo. They wanted to figure out whether they should invest in one to start their own quilting business. They had a long list of questions about cost, reliability, VAT, insurance, what sort of a market there is for longarming, extras, and techniques. They were very impressed by the R&S boards and the Quiltazoid as an economical alternative to a computerised system. They went away seeming very enthusiastic with plenty to think about and discuss.

I handed Tania a vast pot containing a bacon hock, lentils and veg and asked her if she would turn it into soup for the Quilters coming to the Area Day on Saturday. She made a wonderful vat of soup; I decided to forget about home-bakes and get Mr Kipling to make some “exceedingly good cakes” for me. The Area Day went well and I didn’t forget anything crucial. There were only 15 quilters there, including 2 very enthusiastic Young Quilters, aged 6 and 8 but they all enjoyed the project , admired my half finished Bloody Bargello, produced some wonderful quilts at “Show & Tell” , and proclaimed Tania’s soup delicious.

Operator Error and Mechanical Malfunctions

Linzi Upton — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:34:00 +0000

In a week where I lost 2 whole quilting days to working in the shop, attending meetings about forthcoming meetings and a school project it was obvious that the remaining time would be taken up by things not running as smoothly as they should. The boiler repair man failed to appear because he went to the wrong house, the dishwasher blew up with a bang and I spent 3 hours unpicking 3 minutes worth of longarming. I thought I had the sequence for setting up Quiltazoid spiro designs off pat; I had read the instructions several times, after all. I stitched a super spiro design but it was decidedly off centre. I looked at the DVD again over a cup of coffee and realised that I had not completed the set-up properly. I started all over again, checking that everything was in place but still the design was not as central as expected. It was at this point when it dawned on me that I have been working on a very wonky quilt. The blocks are not equal in size and the whole thing is skewed. I decided that this piecer would not notice what I was noticing at close range so stippled around the spiros and used my channel locks for some rather nice piano key quilting.

I had 2 new enquiries about APQS machines this week. I am delighted to be able to offer detailed and helpful advice but there are still details that I need to check and lots of emails or phone calls to the USA or Australia for advice. I had hoped to get 2 customer quilts done but that didn’t happen so the yurt project has gone untouched for another week!

I have made some progress with the “Bloody Christmas Bargello.” Something got out of sync in one of the first 2 sections despite keeping very orderly piles of strips. Perhaps I should have tackled this project all at once and not moved until it was done. No-one apart from me will be able to see the mistake and it is not destined for a show BUT that is not the point and I expect it will annoy me for some time to come!

My bank account is in serious need of funds. This week I have ordered Claudia Pfeil’s new Feather DVD, 5 sets of Darlene Epp Pocket Guides for Freehand Quilting, and plane tickets to Birmingham with a rail detour to Shropshire for a weekend of tuition at the end of November. I also phoned the Westin Inn, Rhode Island and made a booking for MQX since there was no availability on the Internet.

I can always spend quilting money without a qualm but I had to do some other shopping for a posh Carol Service that my husband’s company is hosting. After unsuccessfully trying to get a frock on in M&S, I dashed into Phase Eight where I instructed the assistant to locate a little black dress with sleeves that would last me forever so that I would never have to buy one ever in my life again – I gave her 20 minutes…she did it! I informed the shoe shop assistant that I needed black evening shoes that were wide and comfy, didn’t look like old lady shoes and would do for every posh occasion that I am ever invited to in the future. She had a sense of humour and that mission was also accomplished.

George the Builder managed to fit 2 new windows in the workshop and I have compromised on the stopcock issue. The new door will go where the old door was so we don’t have to dig up pipes and can get on with the job.

I had a near disaster when I attempted to take Fenella to a pony-riding birthday party but didn’t actually have any directions. I thought it was somewhere on the way to Stonehaven, realised it wasn’t, texted a friend who believed it was near a garden centre, flagged down a cyclist and a dog-walker and discovered that it was somewhere entirely different. In the end I found it, off the dual carriageway near Dunnotar Castle and was only 15 minutes late. I apologised profusely, the lesson was still getting underway and Fenella has been sworn to secrecy not to tell anyone at home how lost we were!

New Gadgets

Linzi Upton — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:26:00 +0000

I was determined to learn how to operate my 2 new gadgets. Typically, I expect to attach the gadget and produce perfect results without practice. The reality is that it all takes a little getting used to. I bought some long template boards for quick and easy customer quilts and to show beginners how quickly they can get going. These were easy to set up but I had the occasional wobble and being a bit of a perfectionist, was a bit put out. I decided that if I was a complete beginner I would have been quite happy and on a busy quilt this would be completely unnoticeable. I decided to get a shorter stylus to eliminate any “play”. The other contraption that I played with was the Quiltazoid. At first I felt like I was learning how to drive and wondered if I would be able to remember all the steps of putting it all together but after a few spirographs, I was having great fun. The designs are fast and accurate. I especially want to produce Celtic looking patterns. I have even ordered a Spirograph kit from Amazon to fiddle about with some doodles.

I am irritated that new licensing laws in Scotland mean that I can no longer go shopping before 10am. Well, I can go shopping but I can’t buy any wine. I really feel that this is a penalty that the Government is imposing on housewives in particular. I want to go for groceries first thing then get on with all of my other activities. Hardened alcoholics won’t be up and about at that time of day…!

The registration opened for classes at MQX in Rhode Island on Monday. I sort of knew it was coming but hadn’t really been thinking about it. When I received the email notification I felt like a rabbit caught in headlights – what decision to make? MQX or elsewhere or Houston? If I did decide to go how on Earth would I decide which longarm classes to book? Several emails flew between Ellen until we decided that Boston or New York should be the easier and cheaper flight from Scotland. I asked my husband if he would mind me going to USA for 2 weeks next April and before he had time to really consider it, booked 4 classes. We only have to sort out the accommodation, flights and the rest of the trip! It will be great fun. We are wondering whether to make a mini trip to New York while we are at it.

My first longarm pupil came to stay this week. Breda arrived from Ireland and we got along very well for her 2 day visit. She wanted to see if she should invest in a longarm machine for her small business making baby quilts. We discussed business strategies, suppliers, varieties of thread, techniques, gadgets and everything else under the sun. We went to visit a George machine in a table and she established that it would not be a realistic solution for a quilting business. It was a very packed couple of days. I was a bit of a slave driver and kept Breda practising so that she began to feel more confident with the machine. I have officially sold a Millennium on behalf of APQS this week so now anxiously await its safe arrival in the UK and need to schedule in a teaching weekend before Christmas.

It must be a sign that I have been rather busy and have not taken any pictures this week apart from Breda’s cat quilt. I managed to get it done on time so that she could see how various different patterns can be used.

I did some more piecing on the enormous Christmas mystery bargello for the Aberdeenshire Area Day but it is still a long way off being finished. Another week has gone by without any yurt progress and the forthcoming week is filling up with commitments, meetings and distractions. If I don’t make any significant progress by Christmas, I will have to batten down the hatches in January – refuse all customer quilts, not switch on the computer and stay in the workshop until I have used up every spool of thread and piece of tweed!

Water Witching

Linzi Upton — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:05:00 +0000

Aberdeenshire has had an incredible amount of rain. Water just runs off the fields. Our garden usually drains away pretty well but it is so waterlogged that a vast puddle is lapping up to the door of the yurt. I think sandbags might be a good idea. Despite the rain, I had a go at dowsing for the lost stopcock. I can’t plumb in the sink in my workshop or move the door until we find the tap to turn off the water and it is hidden somewhere deep in the shrubbery. I was delighted that Mo and I both managed to pinpoint the same area with our divining rods. One set even spun around wildly. We have followed a line from the outside tap to an area where I need to persuade my husband to dig to see if we have dowsed correctly.

The other magic involving water has been dyeing with the Columbus powder from Hungary. I want to dye larger pieces than is actually recommended so I decided to compare boiling in a large pot on the cooker and using the washing machine. The colours are fantastic. I have used white cotton prepared for dyeing from Whaleys just to see how true the colours are. They are very close to the colour card. In future I may use unbleached cotton for an even subtler effect. The dyeing can also be done in a jug in the microwave but obviously only with smaller pieces. My first attempt on the cooker was a little patchy but only because my piece of fabric was far too big to mix properly. I decided that I love using the washing machine. It was all rinsed properly and no dye residue was left behind in the machine. I bought 15 colours but there are actually 58 altogether. I think I will definitely invest in this product to resell in the UK.

I spent a whole day doing admin; emails, phone calls, filing and accounts. I began to get withdrawal symptoms from my workshop but I did get a lot done. I have persuaded Aurifil to allow me to order wholesale direct from Italy, The Edgerider Wheels company is keen for me to become a UK agent and I completed my first order form as the UK Sales Rep for APQS. I have been asked to do a talk and workshop in October next year by a quilting group and I will feature in a book on contemporary Scottish quilters published by Loch Lomond Quilt Show! I still don’t know where I will be going for Advanced Longarming classes next year. The QGBI has not yet announced who will be awarded the travel bursary – it would be fantastic to receive it. I spent an afternoon at Durris School launching a sewing project for Festival of Quilts 2010. I decided that they should enter the School Competition on the theme of “Cityscapes”. I actually offered to do a project last year when I was slightly less busy but my offer was only taken up recently by the school staff and I could hardly refuse…

I put up a super sturdy shelf unit from Costco. Once I finally worked out what the instructions were getting at it was really easy. My piles of tweed and other stuff look really professional now so feeling all organised, I finally felt ready to do some quilting. It took me a while to get started. I really felt rusty and lacking in imagination at first. I did a simple Christmas tree log cabin mini quilt then got started on a funky cat quilt with 3D parts. I was torn between doing simple quilting and doing my usual of “less is not more.” Now that I have decided, it is going well and Aurifil Mako 50 cotton is my new favourite thread. The tension has been absolutely perfect (sshh!)

HM Customs received £118 from me so that I could redeem my new Quiltazoid from their care. When I unpacked and saw all the bits involved I wondered if I would be able to understand how it all works. The instructional DVD is so clear that it looks like it will be a great tool. It is one of those gadgets that needs me to spend time to familiarising and practising all the functions – and some imagination to make the designs look really unusual. I want to make up some Celtic designs but I will want to fill in all the spaces, no doubt. It will be interesting to see if I can use thicker thread for the motifs and maybe paint…

Tempted to buy a Vineyard

Linzi Upton — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:04:00 +0000

The French holiday continued to be fantastique! I had a great time trying to remember my very basic French and picking up new ones… par example: “Wellington est un epangleur mechant!” The weather was bright and sunny until the last 2 days. I really enjoyed the markets, sitting in cafes, drinking wine and reading a book in the afternoon, stationery shops and the beautiful scenery of endless vineyards. I did not find any French fabric and the patchwork sections in the few Merceries that I went into were pretty sparse. I left the directions to the shop in Narbonne in the car – doh! As we drove further north from Edinburgh airport back towards Aberdeenshire, the rain got worse and it has hardly stopped since. The trees have now almost lost their leaves and everywhere is sodden. I could be quite easily persuaded to move to France. I could keep wild boar, make stinky cheese, run quilting retreats and wear my favourite stripy jumpers…

I remained in a holiday mood for another couple of days. There was a mountain of post, 439 emails and 10 phone messages. I need a whole uninterrupted day sorting all of my correspondence out. I have had a couple of requests to teach Longarming and even do a talk so I need to jot these all down in my diary. We had Fenella’s 6th Birthday party. She is delighted with her little red sewing machine and is quite happy just sewing scraps of fabric together to make Sylvanian Family blankets and pillows. We had hoped to have a campfire and some fireworks but it was too wet. We had traditional party games in the house and dangled doughnuts from the kitchen lights. There was pumpkin soup, followed by Splodge burgers and the usual party fare of crisps and cakes. Now I need to write out some Thank You letters for Fenella to finish off.

We spent Sunday moving and adjusting Milli into the newly insulated part of the workshop. It is definitely warmer in there now. This is a task that I had been dreading but we tackled it methodically and everything went back together again. I used the opportunity to put the Edgerider wheels on at last. I have had a very quick doodle and haven’t quite decided whether it is slightly stiff but it feels pretty good. I felt very rusty and in need of practice but I never feel that I do anything worthwhile on scrap fabric. I need a real quilt to make me try harder. It is tempting to move more sewing stuff into the studio but I need to leave a space to shift things when the other part of the studio gets insulation and new windows. If the postal strike allows I should have a fun quilt coming to squeeze in before a weekend of longarm tuition so that should help to blow the cobwebs away.

En Vacances

Linzi Upton — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:17:00 +0100

Je suis en France! I'm on family hols near Carcassonne where it is cool but very sunny. The history is amazing. I read Kate mosse's " Labyrinth" in a couple of days. I've been drinking lots of very nice wine and practising my very rusty school French. No patchwork shops yet but Narbonne or Sallels d'Aude... Decided I need a netbook! I'm sending and receiving messages by iPod, not easy! I don't think I want an iPhone any more. Hope this posts ok and I'll do a longer one when back in wet and windy Scotland.

Pigs and Ladders

Linzi Upton — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:47:00 +0100

It has been one of those weeks where not much quilting has been done but lots of other useful things were sorted out. Milton Studio has had several requests to replicate the fabrics used for “Silent Movie Star”. Small shops only get a few metres of fabrics in at a time and when they finish a bolt they don’t tend to get the same again. I have had to call people and explain that while not all of the originals are still available, I can choose a selection that will work just as well. It will be fascinating to see what other people produce using similar but not identical material.

Tuesday was Ginger’s Last Day and I am pleased to report that the whole operation went very smoothly. She had really taken a fancy to her new home on wheels so all I had to do was toss in a couple of apples into the trailer. I felt like a proper lady farmer as I hitched up the trailer, opened and shut various field gates and drove off to the abattoir sedately. Because I knew the way this time, I did not have to back a trailer up in any awkward places and Ginger arrived snoozing, totally oblivious to her fate. It may sound heartless but I would rather send off a happy pig than an upset one any day.

George the Builder managed to put up all of the insulation boards in the smaller workshop this week. This meant that I had to reattach all of the ceiling drapery to hide all of the utility rafters and the new silver boards.

I decided that I am not nearly as confident up a ladder as I once may have been. I did the job single-handed and had to shin up and down with my staple gun. I ended up with a spare length of fabric so I obviously didn’t gather it as much as I had originally. I kept looking at it critically but then reminded myself that people don’t usually walk into a room and start examining the ceiling. I had to go and buy another piece of carpet as the cheap foam-backed one had melded itself to the floor in the other workshop and would only disintegrate if moved. Mo and I were amused at the young lad who shoved the carpet into the car. He had those stupid baggy jeans that hang down so when he deposited the carpet his whole backside fell out - not an attractive look!

I moved the yurt and some of the furniture through and realised that the room is not as big as I had thought. I had hoped it would be roomy enough for a second, smaller Longarm machine and an office area but it will be a bit of a squeeze.

I had to go and pay a Customs ransom twice this week on parcels from USA. I can just about put up with the VAT charge but I really do object to the Post Office’s £8.00 “handling fee” on top. I have received two sets of R&S Design boards and they look great. All I need now is the stylus and the patience to try them out. I am ready to move Milli so it seems like a good time to fit the Edgerider wheels at last. I am optimistic that I might be able to tip the 14ft table and move it in one piece but I suspect that I may actually have to take it all apart. It will be a good opportunity to give the whole thing a really thorough clean and check the levels.

I received a new external hard-drive for my computer because I am convinced that Freya’s friends will inadvertently send some deadly virus via MSN. My husband is always complaining that all of my messages and downloads slow the computer down. Hmm – whose computer is it exactly? I’m beginning to think that the time has come for me to consider getting another computer just for me to check blogs, Facebook, forums and take on trips so I daresay I can waste a bit more time looking at mini laptops…

Tidying Up for Autumn

Linzi Upton — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:32:00 +0100

Fergus was off school on Monday with a sore throat so instead of minding the shop at Milton Studio I gained a day to do admin and waste quite a lot of time on the internet. I even considered upgrading my laptop or looking at specifications to get another one for the children to use instead of using mine. In the end I have ordered an external hard drive to back up all of my photos and documents. Freya has started using MSN to chat to her school friends and they send each other attachments with cartoons and sounds – it can only be a matter of time before some virus tries to creep in. A box arrived from Italy containing some lovely samples of Aurifil thread all wrapped in the pink sports pages of an Italian newspaper. The variegated 50wt cotton looks lovely so it will be interesting to see how it behaves. I have also received my magnetic core bobbin samples from Glide USA but have not had the opportunity to use them yet either. I had a brainwave after idly browsing the web and looking up Whaleys of Bradford. I could buy plain white cotton fabric and dye the backing for the yurt panels using the Hungarian powder dye that I saw at a stall at FOQ and the OEQC. All I had to do was remember what it was called… There was only one Hungarian trader listed in the FOQ catalogue so I gave them a call. By the magic of PayPal I have bought 15 different colours, typing their Hungarian names out carefully, and expressed an interest in being a UK reseller of the dye. It can be done on the cooker, in the microwave and in the washing machine with only the addition of 1 tablespoon of salt. It sounds wonderfully low-tech. I have been put off dyeing my own fabric before, thinking that there were too many stages and things to remember to add. I can’t wait until I can have a “Dyeing Day”!

I dashed in to Aberdeen to test out the cheap sewing machines in John Lewis. The assistant tried to tell me that they don’t do demonstrations anymore but I produced my scrap fabric and reel of thread, insisting that I did not want a demonstration, just wanted to plug it in and try it out. After seeing that I would not take “No,” for an answer, she was actually pretty helpful. She advised me that the John Lewis red machine is actually made by Janome and is a later model than the 2 cheapest Janomes also available and that no-one has yet returned one as faulty. It only has one large foot and about 5 stitches but the tension was great and I decided that Fenella would be very pleased with it. The only difficulty I had was seeing to thread the needle so later on I bought a pair of bright green off the shelf reading glasses just for threading needles. The sales assistant was a bit bemused when I made her pack the display model up in the box to take home but I explained that I knew that it worked and was not now going to pick an untested one off the shelf. Since then 2 of my friends have decided that they are going to go and get one just to carry to classes but they will also annoy the sales staff by asking to plug them in and check them out. I got back in time to finish piecing the wonky circles yurt panel. Now I have several that are almost ready to quilt. I need to decide how long to make them all. I could have sworn that I measured the height of the new yurt’s trellis but will have to check with Yurt Man.

My resolve to only work on yurt panels this week wavered by midweek. I did some more piecing on the Christmas mystery project which seems to be never-ending. George, the Builder came to do some more measuring and checking before ordering insulation boards and replacement windows for my workshop. He pointed out a major snag. We will have to switch off the water supply and shut off the tap which is right in the way of the new door BUT the stopcock is hidden somewhere under the ground outside. I believe that every problem has some sort of solution so I ordered a set of dowsing rods from e-bay. When I have a quiet moment I will need to train them to find what I am looking for. If that fails I know an old countryman who may be able to find it with a couple of cherry sticks. By the middle of the week I had received quite a lot of invitations to become “friends” with all sorts of people on Facebook. I have not really got to grips with Facebook yet. I can see that it could be the start of a new internet addiction checking what all your “friends” are up to. I have approved some but felt awful when I “ignored” others because I don’t actually know them –maybe they know me? It felt like shunning someone in the school playground and I’m not really sure what I am supposed to do. I daresay it won’t be long until I find out and then I will spend even less time sewing!

I was meant to catch up with a George owner this week but had to cancel as I ended up minding the shop for Barbara who was waiting at home for British Telecom. This meant that I had not now gained a day as I had thought on Monday. Thursday was very cold and the shop was not particularly busy so it gave me plenty of time to think about a couple of simple yurt panels. It would be great to make them all hopelessly elaborate but I don’t think I will have enough time. Perhaps I should make more than I need and then choose. I fiddled around cutting some sashing strips for the Flying Geese blocks and decided that I should cut up some small pieces to have as portable projects such as yoyos or covered buttons. Next I decided that maybe I should get a Dremel tool and make my own carved buttons out of antlers and thin slices of wood so I have been reading reviews about them on the internet to help me make up my mind.

On Friday I decided to bite the bullet and clear my inner studio out for George to start on the insulation so I can move the Longarm. Although I am dreading taking it apart and reassembling, it will be good practice if I need to take a frame to a show or set a system up from scratch. I also got started on the Bear quilt. I had planned to quilt some watery lines in the outer border but the patched and mitred corners would have made it look awkward. The client provided very fat poly wadding so I decided that allover medium swirls would be the best option in this case.

I drove down to Stirling with the family on Saturday. I attended a Regional QGBI meeting to discuss Regional quilting events up to 2014 and they went to the castle for the day. I have to compile a list of possible tutors for the Stirling Residential weekend in 2011. We met some gale force winds on the way down. By the time we got home all sorts of things had been blown all over the place.

Sunday morning was spent clearing up all the debris in the garden. A few branches broke off the trees and the flowerpots had all tipped over. I had to make adjustments to the yurt which had shifted considerably. A table had been knocked over and a jug got smashed. The cover had lifted and there were leaves and twigs to sweep up inside. The cat had opened the summerhouse door by jumping on the door handle so chairs and papers were strewn about in there too. It was a beautiful autumn day and it was really satisfying to spend some time outside tidying up. I had to fetch the livestock trailer from the butcher. Our local farmer has opened up all of the gates in the inter-connecting fields so that the cows can wander freely. I had to undo the main gates, drive through, shut the gates, negotiate the very curious cows, back the trailer up, and try to prevent Ginger from escaping while we cleared the fence away so that we could get the trailer into the pig run to avoid any chasing on the day that she is due to go for bacon. She was very interested in all that was going on and would not be distracted by food. I got Tania over to help and for a few moments she had to hang onto Ginger’s tail to stop her from getting out while we did our manoeuvres. Unbelievably, she then wandered into the trailer and decided that it looked like a comfy place to lie down. Let’s hope it is that easy on the morning of departure…

Buying and Selling Commodities – Pigfood to Bobbins

Linzi Upton — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:38:00 +0100

At the shop on Monday, Barbara and I had to advise 2 keen beginners who announced that they were hopeless at choosing colours and didn’t know how to do patchwork but wanted to make Christmas tablemats of an unspecified quantity and size. We tried to explain that a simple block or panel would be good but they argued that they didn’t want square ones. I explained that they would need to add side borders or strips to make them rectangular. We then had to decide how much fabric, backing and wadding to cut for the as yet undecided project. We did our best to steer them towards a book or magazine project, drew out some basic diagrams and encouraged them to come back for more help if necessary.

Since signing up to British Telecom’s “International Friends & Family” rate I have become blasé about making international calls. I have now ordered spare bobbins from APQS, a couple of R&S boards for DIY quilters and a Quiltazoid – by phone to the USA. Most of this was done via PayPal. Virtual buying and selling is quite surreal. You can even move the virtual money around and never touch any of it. I also chatted to a thread manufacturer who has promised to send me samples of their newest thread and magnetic core bobbins. While doing admin, I upgraded my blog to the professional level but still can’t exceed 5000 mb. I have received several Facebook invitations from quilters and suppliers this week. I have only had a quick look at it so far – I can imagine that will open a whole new can of internet addiction worms - I can only just keep up with my emails, blogs, forums and idle browsing as it is! Unfortunately I did not get all my important admin finished. I still don’t have a firm quote for the septic tank, workshop alterations or confirmation that the butcher can deal with Ginger soon. I’m going to have to buy more pig food if he doesn’t return my calls soon.

After successfully finding a buyer for my little used Hartley Fence, I had to package it up and post it to the USA. I did not have a suitable box so padded it out with bubble wrap and wadding then made a tartan bag for it to travel in. The Post Office quoted me £69.00 in postage but luckily the buyer was still satisfied with the HF’s price so off it went.

I spent some time working on the enormous Area Day mystery Christmas project. The project itself is not enormous – I just decided to make it bed sized. I started to piece the very long strips together but noticed that one of them was slightly out of sync. I took it to school football practice to unpick. It would be great if I could rig a Featherweight up in the Landy to get on with piecing at such times – but then I might need an iron and some other gear too…

I attended a 2-day workshop with renowned Australian quilter, Gloria Loughman. She was a terrific tutor. The class was relaxed, inspiring and I understood every single explanation. The class project was an A2 sized project using batiks. Gloria looked a little concerned when I stuck 6 sheets of large paper together and started to pull out plain shot cottons and gold lame so I had to explain the yurt project. I tried to work fast so that I could finish as much as possible of the basic piecing. I was asked what colour my next big section would be so I replied, “Whatever colour I have in another long piece!” It made me think how much yardage is used up in long, curvy pieces. I will have to consider this when ordering more fabric. I am wondering whether to have a go at dyeing some basic plain cotton with the soft, Hungarian powder dyes for backing and maybe if some of it works well, I could also include some of it. There were a couple of tiny pieces of Cherrywood fabric in the chequered section which looked good. I tidied up the box of yurt UFO’s so far and discovered that I have 6 panels in progress. I have decided to have a bit of a blitz on these to make some proper progress. The patchwork can be relatively simple in places as long as the quilting is interesting.

I had a great time on Friday night at a “Race Evening”. Mo has been planning this event for months to help raise funds for the local Ghillie’s sponsored bicycle ride in Jordan to raise funds for the Nazareth Hospital. Tania and Mo had spent several days collecting raffle prizes, preparing food, hanging bunting and setting up the hall for crowds of friends, farmers and local businesses. On the night I helped by serving the curry & stovies and rolling a giant dice for the hobby-horse races. The atmosphere was fantastic. There was lots of “gambling”, plenty of booze and an auction. Mo was thrilled that my husband bought her Swirling Salmon embroidery picture and relieved that we all helped to clear up at the end.

(Ghillie = a type of gamekeeper who looks after salmon fishing on the River Dee)

LSD was at the Scottish Quilt Championships. I heard from a friend that the judging was “…as idiosyncratic as usual and that my quilt was in Illustrious company for not winning a prize!” All I can comment is, “Hmm…” It will be interesting to see what photos the magazines publish as being interesting from the show.

Saturday was a glorious autumn day that I spent tidying up and ironing but really not wanting to do anything at all. I had a cup of coffee with Mo and we were stunned as we watched a sparrow-hawk pick off a good sized chicken before our very eyes! In the afternoon between chores, I spent some time browsing the Internet for a cheap starter sewing machine for Fenella. I know I have plenty of machines but she so desperately wants one for her 6^th birthday. I would love to get her the “Hello Kitty” machine from Target USA but if it doesn’t work I’m buggered and I’d need a step-down transformer. I could get her one for £49 from John Lewis and put stickers all over it but I suspect it will be awful. I could get her a more expensive one but she IS only almost 6… Now I wish I’d kept the Janome Jem that I sold because I thought I had an excessive quantity of machines! It would have been perfect – compact, needle down, speed limiter. She is always cutting up scraps and trying to draw on them or rearrange them. I have high hopes that she will be my apprentice quilter. After spending some fruitless time looking, I decided it was time we had a BBQ and a campfire with marshmallows. The fire was wonderfully hot but the air was decidedly chilly. Quilting weather is definitely on its way!

I started another New Project

Linzi Upton — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:47:00 +0100

I have finished 3 little Golden Double Wedding Ring mini quilts in different mini fills this week and almost finished shells and plumes on a Christmassy pineapple log-cabin. I also started to put together some flying geese blocks that I made ages ago for a yurt panel. So on balance, you would think that I had made good progress. However, in the odd quiet moment in the shop on Monday, I started planning a completely new project. I have organised an Aberdeenshire Area QGBI day in November and had decided to do a mystery strippy Christmas project. It occurred to me that I should complete an example to show the participants. That would have been fine but then I decided to make the project MUCH bigger as my husband recently commented that we never seemed to get a new quilt for our bed. This new, big Christmas project involved a lot of cutting that seemed to take over completely from the time that I had allocated to yurt panel making. This is another project also in addition to the Thursday evening relaxation jelly roll quilt and the growing collection of miscellaneous vintage quilt tops also belonging to me. I must take myself in hand and have a crackdown on yurt panel piecing!

I have continued to battle with Aurilux thread. It seems to quilt along beautifully but then just shreds or comes undone. I now have a horizontal thread holder but could not say it has improved matters much. My Stitch Regulator is playing up again so I will make some adjustments but I think it needs new rubber washers – it has probably had more than average wear. This has meant that I have been stitching in non SR mode which is faster so tricky thread becomes even more demanding. I want to try a large cone to see if it is simply the shape of the spool that is at fault but so far the UK distributor for Aurifil has been like one of my invisible builders. Although, a builder did appear in order to measure up for insulation and new windows in my workshop. I wonder what ridiculous cost that will be?

I was feeling pleased with myself that I had found a UK supplier of bobbin cases and aluminium bobbin cases that match my APQS machine. However, supporting the UK economy will be difficult as it costs less than half price to import the same parts from the USA.

I offered to pick up a big jubilee clip for Mo’s yurt stove pipe when I was in town this week. I’m sure the ironmonger thinks I deliberately try to think of unusual things that he does not stock because I always seem to ask for oddities like obscure fuses or zinc mesh. All the same, it’s a good place to go for mouse traps, fireworks and Jeyes fluid.

Even though I did not manage to find a 6” jubilee clip, Mo, Tania and I had a yurt night on Friday with curry and champagne. We rigged up a small TV and watched a DVD. “Mongol” was in Mongolian with subtitles and told the brutal story of the young Genghis Khan. There were plenty of battles, yurts and quilted coats. We had to move the small telly closer so we could read the tiny subtitles but it was a great film!

I gave my first ever talk and PowerPoint presentation at the Aberdeen P&Q group. I had not realised that the notes that I carefully added to the bottom of my slides would not appear on the screen once it was all connected to the projector. There probably was a way but no-one there knew how. Anyway, I ad-libbed my way through the 60 slides. The talk lasted approximately 30 minutes which was slightly brief but at least people didn’t have time to get bored. I was told that everyone could hear at the back and that it was amusing and interesting – phew! I have made myself some notes to add if I get asked to do it again and will add some more anecdotes about how I think I got started with gold lame in the first place. I should probably give them more about my background and offer a Q&A session afterwards. I was even asked where you can buy “Popular Patchwork” magazine locally as part 2 of “Silent Movie Star” is in the October edition.

Over the weekend I tried not to spend so much time quilting so I fixed new perches up in the hen-house, added cider vinegar to the water, helped to tidy out the yurt which had got a bit cobwebby, and checked that bad pig’s fence. BUT, I did waste time trying to figure out why the Quilt Quine email has mysteriously stopped working. I also phoned my web provider to complain that I am still being billed for extra bandwidth or having my blog taken offline despite supposedly having unlimited bandwidth!

I even went on a family day out on Sunday to a vintage working horse transport demonstration day. It was overpriced and decidedly tame. A fake cowboy trotted after someone in a cow suit. I don’t suppose you would see that at a rodeo in Montana…

We went out for tea and I overindulged in a huge venison stew followed by a rich cinnamon rice pudding. It was absolutely delicious!

I don’t seem to have taken many quilty pictures this week but I photographed the bales in the field beside the house.

The weather has been lovely – crisp in the morning and evening but still warm in the sun. The leaves are just starting to change colour and it’s getting dark earlier. There are still plenty of blackberries so I may have to spend some time picking and freezing them this week. I should think that bramble syrup would also go very nicely in vodka to be drunk in the yurt on a cold winter evening.

Lost and Found

Linzi Upton — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:08:00 +0100

I wonder how many divorce cases would cite pig keeping or quilting as reasons to dissolve a marriage? My husband and I had a row the other night as we chased the pig around in the dark. Ginger had dug her way out of the garden. My husband was annoyed that I had been so busy quilting that I had not spent any time checking the perimeter of the pig fence. Freya had noticed the hole and reported that Ginger had taken a while to appear for her afternoon snack. The pig had not really run away – just gone on a temporary wander. I think she would have come back when she felt like it but I admit she should not actually have been on the loose. I set off with my bucket in the failing light and she came trotting over but then decided to lie down and not budge. There ensued quite a bit of chasing, choice words and sense of humour failure…

I had a bed-runner to do that was a bit odd since it didn’t have a back. I had to pin thin and stretchy black poly wadding to my canvas leaders and quilt wiggly lines along the central area of some black silk. This was Mo’s idea – she seemed to think it would be easier to finish off by folding in the unquilted top and bottom third than quilting 3 layers and binding the edges and since she is an experienced interior designer I didn’t argue. I will argue the next time.

We had a good look at some log-cabins that would be suitable for guest accommodation. There was a particularly nice German one with a few rooms and a sleeping loft. We need to upgrade the septic tank, reapply for planning permission then add up all of the costs. I asked 2 builders to come and look at the alterations that I have planned for the existing studio and neither one turned up to look at the job in order to give me a quote. I find this sort of thing is SO infuriating.

I managed to do a couple of sections on the paper foundation pieced spear that goes with the shield/seed pod. It is a very slow process and I just haven’t got the patience for it. I haven’t decided quite how to quilt it. It could be a bit tribal. I think I’d quite like to use a DSM to use the walking foot around the outside of the shield but I know the inner part is “full” due to the dress-making method of putting it together that I didn’t like so I expect that I’ll just wing it as usual.

I continued with the easy-peasy jelly roll on Thursday evening. It is nice to have a stress-free evening project although I do need to get on with some more yurt panels since the weeks are slipping away.

After school on Friday I drove down to Fife with Freya and Fenella in the Landy so that we could get to the Quilters’ Guild Regional Day on time the next morning. We sang along to “Mamma Mia” on the iPod, scoffed sweets and Freya did a great job of navigating as we did not get lost at all over the weekend. After staying overnight with my Uncle Peter we arrived at the venue before 9.00am but I was told that most of my duties had already been done as I had not arrived early enough. The traders had already been issued with their coffee vouchers and had their raffle prizes extracted so all I did was get in their way. I did try to be useful in other ways by minding people’s stalls so they could go to the loo and I also helped to clear up at the end despite having a 3 hour trip home still to do! It was great to meet up with quilting friends, Ellen, Angela and many others.

The speakers were good. Annette Morgan did a PowerPoint presentation on her work and inspirations. There was lots of photo manipulation, painting, burning and similar abstract stuff. It was very interesting but not something that I feel desperate to do myself. Gloria Loughman managed to bring more quilts with her due to her husband’s luggage allowance and her talk was more anecdotal. Her work is gorgeous in real life. I was taking note of both presentation techniques as I’m doing my first ever talk this week.

After being paid for the maple leaf quilt, I went straight to the Bring & Buy table and bought a quilt top. It is in lovely simple, bright colours, measuring 81” square. It had been pieced by a Guild member who died and it just spoke to me. I hope to place an order for a Quiltazoid gadget soon (once I get paid for the tapestry monster) and this would be a great quilt to experiment on. I also bought a super journal quilt by Jan Watson but it got lost. I think that it somehow did not go in the bag with the quilt top and perhaps was resold by mistake.

Freya and Fenella did a full day Young Quilters’ workshop on crazy patchwork. They both produced tea-cosies and all of the YQ’s wore them on their heads when they paraded onto the stage for “Show & Tell”. Both girls really enjoyed their day and Freya now feels that she knows the other YQ’s from around Scotland pretty well. Fenella just fitted straight in, as usual!

Just don’t ask a busy person to do something

Linzi Upton — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:44:00 +0100

That saying, “if you want something done, ask a busy person…” really should be banned. It is true that busy people do seem to get things done but that is only so they can get things out of the way to move onto the next thing that they have to do! I seem to done quite a lot this week as well as spending more time than is probably healthy on the computer. I think it was because it rained heavily. I stayed at home and just got on with things.

After completing my application for the QGBI’s first travel bursary I joined IMQA so that I can apply for a scholarship to classes at MQS. I have to submit a 1500 word essay for that but I’m sure I can manage to fit that in. I remembered to book the village hall in Echt for an Aberdeenshire Area Day on November 21^st so now I need to remember to tell Guild members about it. I’m going to do a Christmas swap and mystery project. The Headteacher of the children’s school reminded me that I had offered to run a quilting project so I will be going in to work with groups of children at the end of October. I’m going to get them to do something for the FOQ School Competition in 2010 on “Cityscapes”. Of course, speaking to the Head reminded me that I had to write a Parent Council Chairperson’s report for the School AGM on Monday. Freya came home from Girl Guide with an old wooden ammunitions box covered in about 20 years’ worth of paint. Apparently, my task is to strip off all the old paint so the Guides can start again with some new paint. I have spent 3 hours so far with a scraper and a heat gun and will have to use paint stripper and coarse sand paper to get the rest off. It would have been far more cost effective to get a new box. They’d better do a good job of repainting it.

I have received several different requests to run classes this week so I really need to sort something out. Mo and I are going to run a block of 4 cushion making classes to start with but I have also been asked to run weekly project classes, Saturday projects with soup and Longarming weekends. This forced me to discuss What Happens Next with the Studio plans with my husband. Everything had fizzled out when we realised that the project was going to cost twice what we imagined. I have asked him to consider a simpler plan to improve the workshop that I already have and think about a log cabin for guests to stay in overnight. He has agreed that I can get a builder in to quote for moving a wall and a few other jobs and get a quote for a new septic tank; he is even going to take a look at the log cabin shop with me - so finally I can start to plan again. I even mentioned that I would like to invest in an overseas trip and possibly a second Longarm machine for teaching. He really wants to get a Lotus sports car but said he’d consider it. All I need to do is generate an income to show that all this investment is worthwhile!

However, I have done a lot of spending this week. There was nothing very expensive – just lots of small things that all add up. I sourced fuses and needles for the longarm machine in the UK so bought some. I ordered Superior thread from Barnyarns, a small amount of Oakshott for my forthcoming class with Gloria Loughman, ordered a thread guide and spool holder for the longarm AND some knitting needles and wool. I decided that I should have a project that was easy to pick up if there are quiet moments at the shop on Mondays after I have rearranged the bolts of fabric. Now, my knitting is only marginally better than my crochet. I have chosen a yarn with big fluffy lumps in order to make a scarf. I hope short scarves are fashionable.

I had two small customer quilts to do this week. The first was a Maple Leaf quilt which cooperated nicely. I just did some simple swirls on it.

After I had finished I experimented with some Aurifil cotton and poly samples down the spare bit at the edge and was impressed that it worked well after creating a looser thread path. The Storm at Sea quilt was more challenging. I don’t know precisely what it was but I had so much trouble with the tension being variable and the stitch regulator also started forgetting to do its job. There were a few things that could have caused difficulties: many loose threads and overlarge seams, incredibly fluffy cotton wadding that gave off puffs of lint while I was quilting and the backing was a white on cream which felt slightly plasticky.

The colours were very dark and cream so the choice of thread colour was tricky. I chose King Tut variegated cotton in greens and purple - it would quilt along nicely then throw out a little loop on the back so I would have to stop and make adjustments. Then I ran out of thread on the last border, having wasted a fair amount when fiddling about but luckily I had some Rainbows thread that was similar enough to finish the job.

I read all the advice and pages on tension about speed, tautness of the quilt sandwich, needle size but still couldn’t decide exactly what the problem was. If I loosened the tension the top thread was too loose…urgh! I think that it would have helped to have different thread underneath but on this project it just didn’t want to work. I’m not convinced that I actually like working with King Tut so I need to get some bigger reels to really decide if I like Aurifil. The 50wt variegated cotton looks really promising.

This week I decided to make sure that I did some sewing for the yurt project.

It wasn’t much but I pieced together the flying geese that went awry so now I can join them somehow and I plucked up the courage to do the paper foundation piecing on the last part of the Stirling project. After about 3 hours I’m still only halfway along the strip and yet again, reminded why I don’t do much of this type of piecing. I know the results are accurate but I find it so slow and wasteful!

On Thursday evening when the quilting ladies come round I thought I would do something uncomplicated for a change so I took a jelly roll that I got nearly 2 years ago and a simple purchased pattern for jelly rolls and was reminded how patchwork is supposed to be relaxing and not necessarily challenging – I really enjoyed it. I might even stick to the pattern and not make it bigger or trickier at all!

Some of the tasks for the coming week are to post LSD for the Scottish Quilt Championships after remembering to photograph the back for the Road 2 California entry form, putting up a new chicken run, write notes to go with the PowerPoint presentation, print off directions to get to Fife for an overnight stop and Livingston for the Autumn Regional Day without getting too lost, and adding more bandwidth to the blog as it is running low already. I hope that actual quilters read it and not just Spammers!

My Head might Burst…

Linzi Upton — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:07:00 +0100

This was what I began to think as I kept waking up in the middle of the night thinking of something else that I need to do. Last week I got the tapestry monster all bound and a colourful double-sided batik but then just as I think I’m catching up, more quilts come in! I now have 3 small Golden DWR’s, a Storm at Sea and 2 others in my workshop. That does not include anything of mine or quilts that I know are on their way. I MUST crack down and get some yurt piecing done so that I feel it is under control. I may even need to buy my roll of canvas and start on the mammoth task of quilting the tartan roof soon.

I have spent a lot of time on the phone and computer this week corresponding with APQS owners in the UK. I’m trying to get a good dialogue going between everyone so that there is more collaboration on technical help and we can arrange classes. I have been on the phone to APQS in the USA and a rep in Australia to get advice on servicing and the sort of events that Longarmers will find useful. There was a great debate on the Forum sparked by Ferret about how past customer service in the UK had been disappointing; everyone is keen to move on now and APQS in the USA has promised to send over a top technician to train us over here.

The quilts and judges’ comments came back from FOQ promptly. The comments are interesting and can vary tremendously. Freya had one judge that said she had excellent machine quilting yet another thought it could have been more imaginative. Bewitched had positive comments and many ticks in the Excellent column. I can look back on my original entry to FOQ in 2006 and see a great improvement so eventually I hope to see most of the ticks in the Excellent boxes!

I was delighted to receive an email from Ingrid Press who had a gallery at FOQ. I explained to her that I had left my new camera in the car and she very kindly sent me some pictures of her quilts.

I have applied for a travel bursary to go abroad for advanced longarming lessons that will in turn benefit quilters in the UK when I pass on my expertise. I had to explain why I thought I need to go abroad to do this and give details on shows or classes for 2010. There are many to choose from ranging from Claudia Pfeil’s Open House in Germany to various big shows in the USA including MQS, Innovations, and Houston… All I need is time and money!

The other issue keeping me awake has been my workshop/studio conversion. The building quotes were double what we expected. I would like to have accommodation in order to hold retreats and to make a trip to Aberdeenshire more appealing. It is perceived to be a long way from England but Aberdeen has a major airport, good rail links and driving here is quiet and scenic. My parents have been staying here for a week in their caravan and have been very comfortable. I saw some fantastic log cabins that are far less expensive that the workshop conversion. I will still need planning permission in order to connect up plumbing but it is an option that we need to consider.

I organised a Young Quilters’ Day here on Saturday. There was only one visiting YQ with her Mother plus my own children and a neighbour. Freya was not in a good frame of mind in the morning as she told me that, “Quilting is boring and for old ladies!” That did not put me in a very good mood. However, they all had a great day and achieved a lot. They used fabric paints with stamps and stencils then sewed log cabin strips of African fabrics to their centre-piece and even quilted it by machine. The finished article is ready to turn into a cushion or wall-hanging. Fergus was particularly keen but tended to rush a bit, especially since the Featherweight only seems to sew fast. By the end of the day they all even told me that they had enjoyed themselves. It was hard work – a lot of paint got used up rather extravagantly but the fact that the YQ’s enjoyed the day made it worthwhile.

Finally - apologies if you have looked for my Blog and found that it has been disabled beacuse it has run out of Bandwidth. I bought an extra 3GB this month but it still wasn't enough... it will be back on Sept 1st and I will look into upgrading it so that it doesn't run out all the time!

Festival of Quilts, Birmingham UK, 2009

Linzi Upton — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:19:00 +0100

I decided to drive down to meet Ellen in Falkirk in the Landy and used a Google map for my route. I found Falkirk easily but then got lost. I rummaged in my bag to get the mobile phone out to call Ellen for help and somehow took out the new camera then covered it up with my road atlas…

We flew from Edinburgh Airport with a pilot who seemed to think he should be a stand-up comedian over the intercom and had a pretty scary landing at Birmingham. It was windy and fast. I swear that the tyres were bald by the time we eventually stopped on the runway in a stunned silence. This gave us a good excuse to open a bottle of wine as soon as we got into our room.

Ellen and I attended the Gala Dinner at the Hilton on Thursday evening so we could see the prizes being awarded. There were some oddly inappropriate jokes. I think alcohol must have been freely consumed by some! It was noisy and quite difficult to chat across the large tables. We sat near an opinionated couple of “pros”. They started off interestingly enough but after a while it was all “Blah, blah…!” Anyway, it is always interesting to see what Quilters wear. I was NOT wearing the tweed waistcoat that I had commissioned as it turned out not to be quite what I had in mind. My new boots received many admiring looks (or maybe they were disbelieving looks).

After an early start, we joined the crowds waiting to rush in the doors at 10am on Friday morning. Some people were of the opinion that there were fewer quilts this year due to the new structure of the categories. There were many contemporary quilts and art quilts. There seemed to be a trend towards dark coloured quilts but the NEC is poorly lit so they do not show up so brightly. The Best in Show Award went to Sue Nickels and Pat Holly – it was a beautiful and delicate old-fashioned Baltimore. The winning art quilt was quilted very skilfully. The interesting thing was that I thought there were many wonderfully pieced OR quilted quilts but not many that had achieved both. There were also a lot of painted quilts. Sheena Norquay won 2 prizes for her marvellous quilts with circles in the competitions. Her gallery of work was gorgeous and she made an admiring comment about Buddha in return! The other galleries that I particularly loved were Jenny Bowker’s Eygptian tradesmen and the works of Ingrid Press. Without my camera, I could not take any photos!!

Work by Jenny Bowker

I always enjoy lurking near my own quilts. It gives me more of an idea about whether people actually like or admire them. I hate it when no-one seems to stop and look but quite a few passed good comments so occasionally I introduced myself so that I could tell them all about the quilt. People really love to know how the quilts come about. I heard a lady say that she didn’t see how you could put “Bewitched” on a bed because you could never wash it. I took great delight in telling her that I would just bung it in the machine. She looked horrified at this heresy until I told her that it was my quilt. Lots of people asked how long the quilts took. I always try to keep a tally of time but after a while I get so engrossed in the project that I forget to keep track.

Buddha at FOQ

I decided that I would make an effort to speak to anyone whom I recognised and a lot more besides. We saw lots of the people who we had met on the trip to Paducah last April. I also did a lot of “schmoozing”! I am trying to make people aware of the Yurt project so that it will get bookings after it has been to LLQS in May 2010. I spoke to Aurifil but typically, the handsome Italian men had gone for coffee when I arrived at their stand. I introduced myself to the Oakshotts as I will need quite a lot of their fabric for the yurt. Feeling conscious about the restrictions of the weight of hand luggage, I didn’t buy that much. I did buy some paints, stamps and stencils for the children (well – me actually). I still managed to spend more than I had hoped so I’ll just have to quilt faster to get some quilts for people finished.

“Silent Movie Star” was admired on PP’s stand and they checked the border instructions over with me. I admire their thoroughness. There was an error in my measurements for the border that was obvious once it was hanging so that will be correct for the next issue in October. Judi Mendelssohn bumped into me and said she might interview me for P&Q’s “Meet a Quilter” when she visits The Seattle Quilt Company in Aberdeen.

I managed to meet some of the UK Longarmers at Ferret’s fabulous gallery.

Ferret and Linzi

There is never enough time to really get to know people other than a quick “hello” but at least you can then put a face to who is on the Forum. I hope that this will give the APQS gals the opportunity to join a UK specific Longarm Group, along with Gammill quilters. This would enable us to share expertise and be more likely to bring over longarmers from the USA. I shared out my cakes. I had teased that these were very low fat. They were actually knitted. I found them on Etsy. They were made in the UK by Lynne who is the talented lady who makes them and also designs patterns. Look up cakesknitsandcosies on Etsy – they are very cute!

low fat cakes

After a while at any large quilt show everything blurs a bit. I can never find the stall that I thought I would go back to and start to wonder if I can look at any more quilts. I think there should be more seating among the quilts so you can simply sit and admire in comfort like at an art gallery. I also think FOQ should set up a temporary Post Office like Paducah. It is also amazing that some stall-holders don’t take cards or ship. Ellen and I decided that FOQ and QGBI should introduce purchase prizes for the winning quilts for a National Quilt Collection. We are full of bright ideas…

I really enjoyed the show but now have to get back to the binding on that huge tapestry quilt. I really need to get stuck into the Yurt project soon too!