Had a wonderful time at Festival of Quilts.....
Met lots of lovely people....
...and ran around like a headless chicken!
Here's a piccy of my little stand...
...and a close up of my little street of stuffed houses. :-)
These attracted quite a bit of attention, and the basket of patterns was well depleted by the end of the show.
Let's hope they are as well received in Alsace!
It was lovely to meet up with blog friends again too.
Anne, who called around on Thursday morning...
and Viviane and Liliane who were my lunch companions on Sunday (although we saw each other every day for a little chat).
I'll be meeting up with Viviane again in Alsace, and lunch will be on the cards again I'm sure! :-)
Have a look at her blog
here.....
...she's doing a little series of posts on the Festival of Quilts (that is MUCH better than my effort!)
It was great to spend some time with Jamie Malden of
Coloricious too.
We're working on some workshops down there in Amersham next May...
...involving lots of printing with
her lovely print blocks...
...and then loads of stitching fun afterwards!
We'll keep you posted on that as time goes on.
The FOQ workshops were great fun, if a tad manic....
...and it didn't really help when, on the first one, I had been expecting 12 people to turn up, and 16 actually arrived!!
The organisers had sold 16 tickets by mistake, and couldn't tell me if I would have 12 or 16 on the following two days either!
Faces were pulled, and I was sheepishly asked "Can you cope?"
What's the answer girls?
"I'm a WOMAN! Of COURSE I can COPE!!"
It was decided that when the person responsible was tracked down...
...their garments would be removed...
...any openings would be stitched shut....
...then, they would be put in a very public place and ordered to dress again!
(One of the stewards immediately applied for the job of ticket seller. He thought he could make quite a bit of money on that one!)
As it turned out, there were 12 on Saturday and Sunday, so enough goody-packs were there in the end.
What a runaround though!
My stand was, of course, "miles" away from the Q&E workshop areas, and there were no water/wash-up facilities available....
So....
..I had to wheel a trolley through the crowds...
...get the tables and floor covered and equipment out in 10 minutes flat...
...get 16 or 12 people to print a fabric background into which to stitch....
....clean the area and remove all the plastic coverings in about 5 minutes flat...
...wheel the trolley back to the stand...
...and then spend 40 minutes in the cleaners' cupboard having a free sauna over a hot tap (no cold tap working) scrubbing all my wooden blocks with a toothbrush and the foam ones with a tatty sponge!
Bloke remarked that I looked like I'd hit the bottle a bit too hard by the time I flopped back into my chair with a well-earned cup of tea afterwards. :-o
NO WAY will I do those Q&E 1 hour jobbies next year...
...and, as most of my students asked for more workshops AND longer ones at that....
...I'll be offering half days in 2013.
The show was very positive in other ways too...
.....but my "Stitched in Stone" work will certainly have to go on the back burner for quite a while!
Let's say that I'm going to be spending a lot of time writing and producing samples over the next 12 - 18 months....
...with a few deadlines to meet!!
I won't be around here for a while now....
...twazzling skeins like mad to stock up again for Ste Marie aux Mines...
...but I'll try to sneak in a tea posting on Tuesday :-)))
See you next week....
x C
