Retreat run down part 2 - the classes

Here's the second installment of my trip to Fat Quarterly Retreat. In fairness it seems a bit daft to call it retreat as it was anything but relaxing! Don't get me wrong, it was fabulous, but totally exhausting. I could happily sleep for a week or two. Anyway, back to the run down.
Day one - First up - Hand quilting with Jen Kingwell. I was so excited about the prospect of meeting Jen as she is one of my biggest quilting idols! Unfortunately I missed over an hour of this class due to transport delays and was so hot and bothered by the time arrived that I didn't actually get to do much hand quilting. Fortunately for me I was lucky enough to have another class with Jen on the Saturday so a major tantrum was unnecessary ;) No photos to show for this class.
Second class - Embroidery with Jo Avery  - it was fantastic to finally meet Jo! We have known each other online for many years thanks to Flickr in the good old days when it was actually a thriving community. Jo was very patient and encouraging which was particularly helpful as our class was fairly high maintenance ;) This is as much as I managed to sew in class...

I predict this being finished some time in the next decade :)
Day 2 First class - Screen Printing with Karen Lewis - I was ridiculously excited about meeting Karen as we have been in constant email contact since a Flickr swap in 2010. Karen is even more fabulous in real life! Despite Karen's best efforts I am not a natural screen-printer, I'm blaming it on the early morning and vertigo. While the rest of my class mates churned out numerous perfect pieces I managed 2 semi-decent prints and gave it up as a bad job. Check out this post on Karen's blog to see what the other members of the group created :)

I do have Karen's awesome new book so I'm not saying never again...

Second class - Green Tea and Sweet Beans with Jen Kingwell - Jen is an amazing teacher! Her down-to-earth style is right up my street. It was an absolute privilege to witness a master at work. Jen was very generous with her expertise and we were all rapt.

I didn't get a great deal accomplished in class as I was too busy ogling Jen's quilts! Here's my sad effort...

...I do love it. I've promised myself I'll finish this quilt before I turn 60 ;) Here's Jen's original!

It's impossible to convey just how beautiful this is in real life but I did take a few close-ups to try and give you a better idea :)

Check out the tiny hand quilting stitches!

I was even lucky enough to see the Gypsy Wife quilt! Let me just tell you that it is so much more awesome in real life. The colours are far softer than they appear on the pattern cover. Kerry and I had a good fabric-porn session ogling all those yummy fabrics!

After all that excitement I was pretty much done in so I gave the Sunday classes a miss. The weekend was truly inspirational and I can't wait to have the energy to get creative again! I'm sure there are plenty of other things I should be telling you here but frankly I've run out steam. I am going to leave you with a giveaway! I've decided to share these lovely freebies with someone who didn't attend retreat.

For a chance to win these lovely goodies just leave the comment NOT AT RETREAT. I will draw a winner by random number generator if there are lots of you (or out of a hat if there a handful of you) on Saturday 26th July around 12 midday (BST). Catch you soon x

Winner

Thanks to all who put their name in for a free copy of Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine. Mr Random Number Generator chose:

The winner is:

Anita, I'm off to email you for your address now. Sorry you couldn't all win one. Catch you soon x

Freebie

Hello again. I hope you're not sick of me yet...I can't remember the last time I blogged this frequently! Sewing has been in short supply this week as I've been resting a trapped nerve in my back following my trip to Quilt and Stitch Village. I do, however, have something worth blogging about!
The lovely folks at Love Patchwork and Quilting Magazine returned my Ice Cream Dreams quilt today and in the package was a free copy of Issue 8!

I'm already a subscriber so I thought it would be nice to give it away to one of our lovely readers :) So if you're interested in receiving this free copy from me just leave a comment here. If there's more than one of you I'll use Mr Random Number Generator to choose a winner. I'll close comments on Monday 5th May at around 10pm (BST). Catch you soon x  

Spring Giveaway

As I promised last week I'm back today with a rather lovely giveaway.  At least, I think so and I hope you do too. In celebration of  Spring and it's promise of regrowth and beauty. Regular readers may have guessed ... ok ... I've told you lots of times .... that one of my most favourite designers is Atsuko Matsuyama.  A designer for Lecien.  I've been collecting her fabrics whenever I've seen them and have got quite a pretty selection of them.

Pretty eh?

So, I thought, and Reene agreed, that it would be nice to share a little of it with one of our readers.  I pulled my pile of fabrics, grabbed my cutter and ruler and set to work.  They are mostly half a charm square in size, 5" x 21/2" and there's a nice selection, one of almost every one I have. 

Aren't they lovely? Quite retro and all my favourite colours, lots of dots and flowers too.

Of course, once I had them all out and the cutter in my hands I had to have a play didn't I?  :-)

The front

So just for you, or at least for one of you, I made a cushion/pillow.

I used Reene's Hexiestar pattern templates (you can find the free PDF for them in the side bar on the right), a small selection from the Lecien fabrics and Kona white for the background. To finish it off I machine embroidered it using a couple of fancy stitches on my Pfaff machine and a pastel pink Aurifil thread.

You can just about read the Nellie's Niceties label I think 

The back

Well, there you are, I hope you like this little offering just for you.  To make it easier and cheaper to post I will take the cushion/pillow form out.

If you'd like to be in with a chance to win our giveaway just leave a comment.  And if you are a follower, leave another comment telling us that you are a follower. We'll do the draw for it the weekend after the holiday weekend. I say we but I mean Reene, I've no idea how the random generator thingy works!  No surprise there is there? :-)

It's Reene here. I'll close the draw on Friday 25th April at around 10pm (BST). The draw will take place as soon as I get a free minute on Saturday 26th April and I'll announce the winner then too.  

Until the next time hope you all have a good holiday, however you celebrate it.  Take good care of yourselves. If you have the chance to sew, happy sewing.

 Yvonne Xxx

Mega Giveaway!

I'm a day late in posting this but I think you're going to agree that it's worth the wait :) To celebrate our 3rd blogiversary we are offering our most extravagant prizes ever and you all know we've been pretty generous in the past.
First up is this fabulous stash of Liberty Lawn and Liberty Rossmore cord along with some beautiful handmade cards. Feast your eyes on this!

Here are a couple of close-ups so you can get a better idea of what's on offer. The fabrics all come from Yvonne's personal stash...

 and the cards and lined envelopes lovingly handmade by Yvonne. I will just point out that Yvonne's card making is legendary amongst our family and friends and it is virtually impossible to part with the cards once they are no longer on display. I have drawers full of cards which I can't bear to throw away!

Secondly we are giving away a Lap-size quilt kit for the soon to be released Sneaky Stars Quilt! This prize is 3 and a half metres of Kona solids of your choice along with the pattern to make the quilt top. The winner of this prize will be given a code to redeem on Simply Solids site. Just so you know, this is not a sponsored prize, we're paying for the kit and the postage :)

So, what do you think of that then?! As we are being super generous we're going to offer you up to 2 chances to win.
First chance - leave a comment here letting us know you are a follower, new followers are more than welcome, the button's up there on the right-hand side ;)
Second chance - share the love and let others know about the giveaway on your Twitter/Facebook/Blog etc. then come back and let us know that you have. (I'm going to try to post this on Nellie's Niceties Facebook page so you can share it from there if you're on there)

There will be 2 winners chosen by Mr Random Number Generator. The first number generated will choose which prize they want and the second will have to make do with the remaining prize ;) What a hardship!
The giveaway will run until Saturday 10th August 2013. Comments will be closed at 2pm BST and the draw will take place soon after that. I'll post the winners on the Sunday barring disaster.
What are you waiting for, get entering ;) Catch you soon x

Edited to add: Please make sure I have a way to contact you if you are a winner. There are lots of no-reply blogger comments and I'd hate to have to re-draw if I can't contact you :) 
Edited on 10/8/13: Draw now closed. Thanks for taking part. Winners will be announced tomorrow.

August and a giveaway

Well I can't believe August is over half way gone! In the post-Olympic period I've got very little done but here are a few things that I've been meaning to share for a while. I was lucky enough to take part in a Fat Quarterly design challenge this month using fabrics from the British Designer, Nel Whatmore. My project is on the Fat Quarterly blog today! Feel free to pop over and leave a comment over there so the Fat Quarterly guys and gals know you've been, make sure to come back though to find out about the giveaway ;)

Fireworks pillow

August is the first month that the HipBees have been sewing blocks and luckily they're for me!! I sent out packages of Summersville with co-ordinating solids and asked for house blocks in return.

HipBee packages

 I've already received quite few of house the blocks. You'll have to check out the HipBee group on flickr to see them as I won't be showing them here until I've got them all :) I also received this super cute Summersville ring pincushion from Tanya which was such a lovely surprise!!

Ring pincushion from Tanya 

Talking of surprises, I received this gorgeous package from Sarah as a 'hello' to the HipBees. A Zakka pencil case and check out the cute bee charm made by the very talented Shannon, Jude's daughter. What a great bee to be in!

Zakka Pencil case from Sarah with Bee charm by Shannon

 So now to get to the nitty gritty of the giveaway that I mentioned a while ago. This little old blog has been in existence for 2 years now! Wow, where does time go? As a thank you for all your support we're giving away this awesome mini quilt that was hand-pieced by Yvonne using Vintage Modern by Bonnie and Camille. Check out the photos in Yvonne's flickrstream for more close-up detail. It is beautiful!!

Vintage Modern hexies hand-pieced by Yvonne

I'm also going to dig into my stash for some fabric goodies too! I'm thinking a little bit of Tula Pink and Amy Butler might be up for grabs....
So there will be one lucky winner.
You get up to three chances to enter:
1.  Leave a comment letting us know your favourite craft blog of the moment. We're always on the lookout for new sources of inspiration :)
2.  If you're a follower old or new just say so in a comment.
3. Blog, tweet or shout from the rooftop about the giveaway then leave a comment to tell us you did for another shot.
That's it. The winner will be chosen by Mr Random Number Generator after the draw closes at midday(BST) on Saturday 25th August.
Catch you soon x

Mama said...

share. That's right folks, I said share! Today I cut into my precious bundle of Mama Said Sew and in a fit of madness generosity I decided I'd share some of it with a lucky reader!

First, I'll give you a peek of my latest project for me ;) It reminds me of Mary Quant flowers. It's such fabulous fabric I don't think it would be possible to make a duff project with it. This will take some time to sew together, what with all those curves!!

 So, after I used my new Go! drunkard's path die to cut my latest project I was left with some rather tasty scraps. Well come on, you didn't think I was going to be more generous than scraps did you?! There are 24 prints in this pile, or at least I think it's 24 I can't be bothered to count now, sorry. 

I'm going to be mean and say that the scrap giveaway is only open to Brit readers, sorry international peeps. To be in with a chance to win these scraps leave me a comment telling me which new fabric line you can't wait to get your hands on! I'll use Mr Random Number Generator to choose a winner on Monday afternoon. Catch you soon x