wedding preparations...

An empty hall .... just waiting to be decorated...

lots of hire chairs and tables arriving...

A happy bride to be unloading the car boot...

Boxes of jars, ready to be filled, some with sand for the candles and some with flowers

a car full of flowers, roses from the local rose farm, babies breath and more...

Lots of paper lanterns... I wonder where they going?

These birdcages have been filled with flowers by Emma's mum Lyn, just gorgeous.

The family pulled together and started working on decorating the room. The sheer curtains are to create a false celing. Emma and Lyn had this brilliant idea...it involved alot of climbing up  and down step ladders but just wait until you see the finished effect.....

Meanwhile lots of willing helpers in the kitchen created hundreds of flower filled jars. 

I love the doiley decorations on these everyday jars, simple and very pretty.

The room decorations are starting to look the way they were dreamed and planned....now I see how the lanterns are going to be used and fairy lights...100's of them.

gasp....what a transformation...

Later much later friday night everyone went home....the venue was ready...

I've been quiet but I'm busy stitching...

Its all systems go here, I am frantically working to get some samples ready to take to Houston firstly for quilt market which is where we show all the new fabrics, patterns, buttons and books to store owners and then I am staying and having a booth at Quilt Festival which is the retail show and where I get to meet you all :) 

I have had fun cutting hexagons, not sure if I will use them for anything but its a great way to get a feel for how the fabrics are going to work together with not much effort. Look I even had fun fussy cutting Hugo out so he fitted onto the hexagon, pretty cute dont you think.

I have done a tutorial for hexagons here.

I have made a lovely new pillow which has a 'sewing' theme which I am thrilled to bits with and know that you are going to love it too x x

I am making a pile of yoyo's, 65 of them to be precise. I like making yoyo's they are mindless and perfect for making while listening to the TV. I am almost at the end of Downton Abbey :( do you have any suggestions for something else I can get as a series of to watch?

I have done a tutorial for yoyo's here.

Fatcat loves sitting on my quilts and from reading your blogs I can see that your cats love to help you too! So to celebrate all the cat help that we get there is a cat 'helping' on my new stitchery pillow.

Log cabin fun, another quick way to see how fabric colours are working together, the blues and the soft fawns looks great together.

Its Sunday morning here and the sun is out (summer is around the corner), the birds are singing and Vince has promised to take me out for breakfast this morning when he gets home from cycling (he left at 5am this morning to miss the heat of the day). Then its back to drawing/sewing for the day for me as I have so many ideas and not enough time....think thats a problem for most quilters!

If your coming to Houston for either market or festival my booth number is #633. Hope to see some of you there.

Love Letters....

I really like it when you send me pictures of your work in progress. Fiore sent me this picture of her first block from Love Letters my newest 9 part quilt.

I love the extra embroidery she has done on the roof of he house to make it look like tiles....

and her clever use of the feature print from Follow My Heart fabrics for the little quilt on the washing line.

Here is my finished quilt, I love it and wish I had more time for stitching as I would love to make it up in my new fabrics (any interested stitchers out there wanting some work??).

This quilt combines yummy hand dyed wools, interesting cream textured yard dyes for backgrounds....

 

Love letters patterns and fabric bundles

The applique and piecing in my original quilt combines fabrics from these two fabric collections to give a controlled scrappy look.

 

 Hollyhock Cottage and Follow My Heart bundles

 

What are you stitching of mine and would you allow me to share it with other readers here?? Please send pictures to me here and tell me a bit aboout yourself.

 

Mending Fences

Mending Fences....the fabric collection is only a few weeks away from arriving in a store near you :) 

The talented Wendy Sheppard has done a lovely quilt design called 'Country Stars' which is the 'free to use' pattern and can be downloaded here (you need to scroll to the bottom of the page).

Wendy has a lovely blog where she showcases the projects that she designs and makes for several magazines and where she also shares her machine quilting tips. I dont know how she fits in doing so much quilt designing, quilt making, she does all her own quilting and has a beautiful young daughter!

I havent seen the quilt  'Country Stars' finished as my friend Kay Harmon made it for me and Darlene of Sew Graceful quilted it for me just in time for it to go to a show in Japan. So, the first time I will see the finished quilt will be at Quilt Market and I cant wait. The fabrics have worked together s nicely and Darlene's quilting is always lovely.

Here is a picture of the whole quilt, isnt it gorgeous. I am already looking forward to sleeping under it!

Download the free to use pattern here

The fabrics will be arriving in store early November....or so I am told! If your interested in getting a kit for this quilt be sure to ask your local quilt store to make you one :)

Look..... Emma has made me some sweet little wooden tags to tie onto the little bundles of fabrics that I will be taking to display on my booth #633 at Quilt Market in Houston, TX, USA next month.

I am staying and having a booth at Festival too, are you coming?? I will have fat quarter bundles of Mending Fences on my booth so please come and say hello and take a look at all my other goodies.

Dreaming Journal

Can you imagine how excited I was when one of my students, Greta from the UK sent me this picture. Just imagine if you will Greta at Buckingham Palace taking afternoon tea with her friend whilst stitching her 1/4" hexagons out of my Wildflower Wood tin...very posh hexagons dont you think!

I love the little crowns on the tops of the cakes...very royal!

Here is a close up of the above mentioned tin....pretty cute and if you havent got one yet then your in luck as we just had a delivery of them this week. 

Greta has now finished her journal cover from the workshop that was hosted by Kylie from Antique Angel, Gerrards Cross, UK . Greta's 'royal' hexagons look very nice indeed and in case your wondering the journal pattern is in my book 'Stitch It For Spring'.

thanks Greta for sending the pictures to me. 

A big thank you for all the well wishes for my dad, we brought him home from hospital yesterday...hooray...

Sand between my toes.....

I needed to feel the sand between my toes....its a relaxing feeling and although I dont love having sand in the house I do like the feel of it between my toes. Do you?

Its early evening and this is the view as we walk to the dog 'off leash' beach which is about 10 mins from home

as you can see the beach is crowded! Just one other person with their dog way off in the distance.

 no one in the other direction...

  We all felt much better for the fresh air and the sand between our toes was washed off before we went home!

Pre-order and sneek peek....

Ta-da..my next new book in the 'Stitch It' series. It will be called Autumn for some parts of the world and Fall for other parts but the contents will be the same!

Here we all are watching the star of the day, GingerMegs the hen. Her handler is the anxious farmer crouched at the front of the picture! Emma is in control on the computer, Sandra Faye my photographer is hard at work and I think at this point I was exhaustedly sitting on the stairs watching!

Little sneek peeks of the stitching that I have been giving you over the last few months.....

GingerMegs (the hen) was at this point about to make her bid for freedom! As you can see the picture for the front cover was coming together nicely.

Here is the complete fabric collection for you to see, sorry you cant smell it or touch it from there but I can vouch for its yumminess!

Please, keep your eye out later in the year for The Quilter magazine (a US publication) as there will be a great pieced quilt pattern called 'Farmyard Crossing' designed by Wendy Sheppard. Wendy has a great blog which is more than worth reading, visit her here to see what she is up to.

Here is a sneek peek of the quilt Wendy has made using my fabrics, dont the fabrics look great. I cant wait to get the green light to show you the whole quilt.

 

We are taking pre-orders for signed copies of my book here, we hope to have stock delivered to us by the middle of October 2013.

 

 

Show and Tell...

Just a quick post today as I havent got much time to spare. I am busy packing my house ready to move at the end of the month and my dear Dad is in hospital with pneumonia which at his age is not a good thing to have. So, today I will share with you a picture of a beautifully quilted Fernhill that has been sent to me from a quilter in Germany.

Here is a link to Christianes lovely blog where you can see more pictures of the quilting in detail.

 I also got sent this gorgeous picture of A Kittens Tale, which has been made by Dia Borst from The Netherlands. 

Hope you enjoy looking at these quilts as much as I do. 

Exciting news..

Its time to let you know my exciting news... I am going to be working with RJR fabrics from the end of this year. My first fabric collection with RJR fabrics....

The feature print has sweet houses, blossom filled tress, little birds and my favourite friends Hugo and Felix. There are lots of lovely 'itty bitty nothing' prints...checks, dots, words in fact all the prints that I love to use.

There are sweet quilts on a line....

 It will be early 2014 before Quilters Garden will be on the shelves in stores, look for yardage, pre-cuts ys, pre-cuts whoo hoo......  I have already started to have some stitching fun....

Meanwhile I am counting the days off until 'Mending Fences' arrives along with my next book 'Stitch It For Autumn'.