...last Thursday was fantastic and with the bookhound butler in attendance all food and beverages miraculously appeared as appropriate. You have to know that he can produce fresh coffee in a cafetiere from the back of a Land Rover, that's clever.Most days four dogs jump out or it's full of fishing paraphernalia.
Festival of Quilts was a complete wallow in acres and acres of superb craftmanship that took your breath away.The scale and the intricacy and sheer artistry of some of the quilts was awesome and plenty that just had you standing, staring and wondering "how on earth.."
I'm feeling dreadful about featuring this quilt without the maker's permission but it is so clever I'm afraid I just had to (forgive me craftyperson).Here's someone who has completely understood colour values and must have worked that Ruby Beholder to a frazzle. For those who missed it first time around, look at colours through a red lens and they are reduced to values of light, medium and dark.The RB is the standard tool, the rest of us use the cellophane wrappers off strawberry Quality Street chocolates.
Bumped (literally) into Kaffe Fassat too who was signing his new book (didn't buy) and I eavesdropped as he did a tour of his quilts, quite the charming man and a knitter too of course.We didn't talk socks.
Discovered The British Quilt Study Group who are constantly busy doing research into the UK's quilting heritage, much of it buried unknown and forgotten in museums across the country and no finance to unearth it properly, but one interesting snippet.
A good deal of research is being done using one woman's diary and if ever we doubt the value of what we write now for the use of future generations, whether it be about books,sewing, gardening or whatever here's a fine example of why we should and must.
Barbara Johnson, born in 1738, kept a diary of all the clothes made for her from when she was a young girl almost to her death in 1825.The dresses were described with dates and costs and swatches of the actual fabric all pinned into an album with engravings of the fashions of the time.
This diary is yielding unlimited treasures today with information about design trends, fabric quality, suppliers, dyes that were used and much more.I came away with copies of all the B.Q.S.G.Journals to date and some fascinating reading to hand.
Finally these miniature Swedish quilts were magical.
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