MILLYPENNY

I spent last weekend up at An Grianan, Termonfeckin, Co. Louth with some contemporary quilters from North and South Ireland, which was great fun. It was lovely to be able to spend a whole weekend on craft-related activities with food served up to us. My sewing machine is currently in for repairs so instead I spent my time dyeing fabric and working on my sketchbooks and altered books. The 5 members of the Genesis group (that I'm in) all managed to get up to An Grianan. We are planning a group project for next year and needed common fabrics, so we all did our dyeing at the weekend. Each of us dyed 5 metres of fabric, this fabric will be then divided equally amongst the Genesis members at our next meeting. So each of us will end up getting 4 metres of fabric from the other members, which should ensure that we have plenty of fabric for our project. Apart from a horrible drive home (in extremely wet conditions) I'm already looking forward to next year's residential weeke...

The 2nd challenge for the International Quilt Challenge  has just been announced - it's "Through the Window". I actually quite this like this theme, and I have a number of photographs of windows so have plenty of inspiration to work from. Photo taken at Noughaval Church in the Burren Kilfenora Church

I'm a member of the International Quilt Challenge group, and for our 1st challenge we had to create a quilt on the theme of "light and shadows". The deadline for the 1st challenge was today. I'm just after posting my challenge piece over in the International Quilt Challenge blog. My piece was based on a photograph I took in Fuengirola, Spain while on holiday there a few years ago. One of the footpaths in the town had a number of coloured concrete balls all the way up the street which caught my eye. I've always meant to make something textile-related using the photograph, so this challenge was the perfect excuse to use the photograph. Here's the original photograph that was my inspiration for the light and shadows challenge

Here a few photo's of quilts which caught my eye this year at Festival of Quilts. 4 Seasons by Ineke Berlyn (Contemporary Quilts Section). This was a really bright and cheery quilt. High Maintenance by Cherry Vernon-Harcout. This quilt was really clever in using the lines of an electricity pylon to create a quilt. I have loads of photographs of electricity pylons and transformers so this quilt really caught my attention. The Miniatures section this year was really interesting - a nice mixture of traditional and contemporary styles. I loved this one called "Untitled" by Linda Brassington - it was really simple and elegant. This quilt was amazing, log cabin style, but it was all knitted! "Double Delight" by Pauline Law, Kloof, South Africa. The piece in the catalogue says that it was hand-knitted and hand-quilted with thick thread and wool.

I did a two day masterclass with Jette Clover at the Festival of Quilts last week. Can't remember the exact name of the workshop now, but I think it was "layering with collage". Was really looking forward to this workshop as I love Jette's quilt and collages but I didn't find the workshop that useful. Jette was a lovely person but there was an awful lot of wasted time in the workshop. And I hate workshop lists that make you bring stuff you don't use! This photo shows 2 ATC-sized collages we had to make. At the start of class we had to pick a piece of paper from a bag. You then had to use the word written on the paper for the 2 days. I got "Heritage", which I wasn't too mad about working with. One of the mini-collages had to be about your word, while the 2nd one had to be the negative of it. This photo shows the 2 collage pieces I made, bit of a rush job as we only had about 2 hours to get these pieces done and sewn at the end of the 2nd da...

Finally got my mystery quilt top stitched together - this was from a mystery quilt project from the Mid-West Branch. It's a large quilt though, so will have lots of fun trying to get it quilted later on. I'm off to Birmingham tomorrow afternoon for 5 days at the Festival of Quilts (yay!). I'm doing a two-masterclass with Jette Clover - been getting the requirements list items ready today...

The only craft related item I got finished over the weekend was this recycled journal. I'm currently doing an online visual journalling book-binding class. This notebook was made from a damaged book (just recycled the cover) and scrap papers (lots of security envelopes, scrap paper etc). The main reason why I didnt get much done this weekend was becuase of this new addition to the family: It's my new puppy (name to be decided)who seems to be very fond of chewing things (even fingers) as my Dad found out... lol....