Flower Power

On Monday I took a road trip with my friend, Belinda, to the quaint little town of Berry on the New South Wales coast.

Berry is about 2 hours north of my home, sort of half-way between Batemans Bay and Sydney.  It’s a pretty good drive on the Princes Highway.  We set off around 7.00am and stopped for fuel and coffee along the way, passing through Ulladulla and Milton. 

Arriving in Berry at about 9.30am Belinda went on to Kiama to spend some time with one of her childhood friends.  I find this fascinating as I don’t know anyone (other than family) from my childhood! I guess that’s part of growing up in the military. I went to eight different schools from primary through to high school.  All, apart from one, were British Forces schools and I think that all students were so transient that we didn’t keep in touch. The same goes for my brother and sisters.  My brother has one friend from high school that he keeps in touch with.  Of course, things would be very different these days with social media linking people up.

I stayed in Berry to attend the Wendy Williams workshop at BerryQuilt & Co. Wendy is a very talented designer and quilter and is well-known in Europe and the United States.  She travels extensively demonstrating her techniques and showing her quilts.  I heard about the workshop via Berry Quilt Co’s newsletter, and I’m very glad that I decided to go. Wendy is a great teacher. Patient and willing to share her knowledge with us all.

Flowers from the workshop - mine are in there somewhere!

I opted for a one-day workshop, rather than two days, and I don’t feel I missed out on anything from day 1.  This is mostly because I am a very accomplished embroiderer, so I didn’t really need instruction in stitchery. I was able to enjoy the creative side of cutting the flowers from wool felt (not felted wool which my online friend Janet is currently using for her wool penny sampler).

Some of the ladies hard at work!

Felted wool, as I discovered from Wendy, is a woven fabric which has a very different look and feel to wool felt.  Felted wool tends to have much more muted colours as well. It can fray and, for this reason, if Wendy uses felted wool she tends to applique over the edges to ensure that the fabric stays as intact as possible. Wendy has used both fabrics, interactively, in some of her quilts. 

Acrylic felt is not recommended because the quality can vary, and it is not always colourfast. This is the kind of felt that you can buy in craft shops and it is used a lot in schools for crafting.  

Wendy also advised that the quilts can be washed, and recommended using several colour catchers, cold water, and a mild detergent.  She also recommended wool batting rather than cotton batting, but this was mostly because of personal preference.

I managed to make three flowers - unfinished as yet - and I invented a new stitch! Anything goes!

For the workshop we used wool felt.  The shop sold small bundles with different colours that we could try out.  This was good as I didn’t have any and was unable to pre-purchase the fabric at any of the three local patchwork shops near me. In future I will have to buy them online.

We also used a variety of threads. I had taken along my old DMC thread box and used some of them. But I also had Perle 8 cotton (only four colours) that I used. Wendy advised that any thread could be used, so I will fossick around here at home and find the Brazilian embroidery threads I have from 30 years ago.   How time flies!  They are beautiful glossy threads with varying textures – they should work well.

Wendy tends to cut her flowers mostly free-style, but used templates called ‘Perfect Circles’ too.  I think I will just stick to free-styling myself.

I enjoyed the workshop so much that I have decided to subscribe to the Block of the Week! 

Another lady at the workshop also wanted to subscribe. We joined forces and bought some beautiful linen fabrics together (which we split) as the minimum cut is 20cm – far too much to sew one quilt with.

We agreed on colours, and I came away with these.

Gorgeous linens. I deliberately chose muted colours and different textures with a little red, green and blue.

I’m excited to get started.

One tip that Wendy gave is to ensure that we quilt the backgrounds to the pots in thread that blends with the background fabric to help the flower pots to stand out. That’s a long way off yet, but it’s a tip I will remember.

I also bought some new Perle 8 variegated threads to add to the plain colours I already have. This quilt is ‘thread heavy’ and I confess to feeling very extravagant. But I suppose buying one or two reels every week won’t break the bank. These are from the Sue Spargo range.

My final purchase at the workshop was a pattern for Wendy’s ‘Feather Pillows’.  I need more cushions like I need a hole in the head, but I really liked the idea of using the techniques I learned for something other than flowers.  I plan to applique these onto blue linen for my lounge room.

At lunch I had a quick look around the town and came across a lovely interior design shop called Haven and Space. They had a discount sale so I also bought myself a new lamp for the lounge. It’s blue and white (of course) and I love it.

Money (and time) exhausted, Belinda arrived back from Kiama at about 3.00pm.  We headed home a half hour later and enjoyed a glass of wine on her deck with the sun going down before I drove on to my house.

It was a lovely day. Belinda and I plan on going again just to shop! We have to save up first. We are normally Op Shop girls.

So, a winter girls road trip to Milton and Berry in the next couple of months.  We might even make it to Kangaroo Valley too.

Hexie mania

 

Meanwhile, back to the hexies, with breaks to sew lovely pots of flowers.  

Here are two recent finishes. I'm glad I decided to stop being a scaredy cat and fussy cut some of the gorgeous Japanese fabrics I bought in Braidwood a few months ago.  I don't actually like too much fussy cutting in a quilt, but I felt that this project really needed something to break up a lot of Indigenous dot art. 

I love the yellow Banksia surrounded by Kangaroo Paws on a grey background in this block.  This is one of the few light value blocks that I have.

Here are orange Banksia surrounded by what I think is a star constellation, but I'm not sure.

I'm still having a lot of difficulty in finding light value fabrics, but I keep on looking.  I've got an idea in my head for creating a border on all sides using bright solids.

I've been having a lot of fun!

Hubblebird