Silk

I spent a lot of the weekend having a clear out of cupboards and drawers trying to make space! In my turn out I found lots of pieces of plain white or cream silk which I am going to dye. I love dyed silk as it has such a gleam to it. When it's dyed I am in two minds as to what to do with it. Should I sell it as it is in 1/2 metre lengths or cut it into fat 1/8ths and sell mixed packs. If I do the latter should I sell mixed colours/fabrics or mixed fabrics in a range of one colour because each silk will take the dye differently. Choices, choices! What do I do? Which would be the most useful? Any thoughts on this please let me know. It would be very helpful. 

It was a beautiful evening yesterday with the most amazing sunset. All golds and pinks. Gorgeous! So we went fishing! Not that we caught anything but it was really lovely. Warm and tranquil. I actually had a couple of bites but nothing that I could haul in! They were too wily for that! Graeme caught a wee brownie at the last minute and let it go. One would have had to be starving to eat something so small! So he or she can grow on to become more of a mouthful!  

This evening there is more tidying and sorting to be done. What treasures will I find tonight! I am pleased to say that I found the corded elastic that I had been searching for for weeks and lots of gold cord and ribbon that I had also 'lost'! Everything comes to he who waits...or in my case tidies up!

Home Again!

Sandown was great! Well that is apart from the London traffic. I felt that I was taking my life in my hands everytime I had to drive to or from the hotel! But it was a fantastic three days and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. We made some new friends, met loads of lovely people and saw some superb quilts. So all in all a good experience. So much so that we have booked again for next year!

A couple of pictures of our stand which was tiny! However we managed to cram an awful lot into it! Now we have to replenish stocks and think of some new ideas for patterns and kits. Our next show will be Malvern in October so we will have plenty of time to get organised!

Sandown here we come!

Well we made it! Everything that had to be done has been done and now all we have to do is pack up the car. Easier said than done as we have more stuff than we took to Exeter. It's a bit like doing a jig-saw fitting it all in. I expect we will manage even if I can't take much in the way of clothing! More important is to make sure we have the coffee and biscuits!

The stand is smaller than the one we had at Exeter being only 3 x 2 metres instead of 3 x 3 metres so it will be a bit of a tight squeeze to get everything on display! This was the stand at Exeter!

This time I have made curtains with loops for rods to hang things from plus a banner with our name on it! It should make life a bit easier if we arn't having to pin everything up on the backdrops.

I have been thinking of ways of using heart shapes and also thinking of doing some embroidery with my Bernina embroidery attachment. Thinking is as far as I've got but I want to produce more of these butterflies which I digitised a few years ago. Where does the time go? 

June already!

At last I've got something finished. This is the sample wall hanging for the cut-out adhesive hearts packets. I had great fun doing this and was pleased with the way the two background fabrics meshed together. In fact I was so pleased that I am going to put it onto the website as a pattern for sale.

It is all being a great rush again as we are off to Sandown Quilt show next week. We've lost a week by having to go up to Scotland for the funeral of Graeme's mum. She had been in a home with alzeimher's for several years so it wasn't unexpected. The downside was that the funeral was on my birthday! However we went out for a superb meal at La Mouton Noir in the evening so all was not lost! And we were able to go fishing one day and I caught a good sized rainbow trout! Graeme caught four! We stayed with my son and his partner so we had grateful recipients for the fish!

When we arrived back it was to find that the relatively tidy garden had turned into a veritable jungle! Roses everywhere and the herb garden had gone mad. It looked a mess though as the forget-me-nots had all died and shrivelled up and now need pulling up. However they will have seeded everywhere so lots more next year. Once the lawn was mown though it appeared to be much neater.

I have written a day by day list of all that needs to be done as I find by doing this it concentrates the mind beautifully. I have curtains to make for the stand and a banner with Farne Designs appliqued onto it. Trago Mills which is a wonderful store in Falmouth selling cheapy stuff had some great fabric. A slubbed cream cotton which is quite heavy and very wide (108") but only cost just over £5 a metre! Brilliant! I'm now going to trawl the web looking for a rep for Kona Bay fabrics. Will I be lucky?