Well, a few years ago now I had the amazing opportunity to go, not only on my maiden cruise, but also on my maiden P & Q Tour. Double whammy! The cruise was a joint endeavour between Judi of P & Q Tours and James of Japan Journeys, also a maiden endeavour that proved so successful the experience was repeated a couple of years later, having ironed out a few of the wrinkles from the first trip.
On the first cruise to Spain and Portugal aboard Fred Olsen’s Braemar, we had four days at sea that enabled us to have workshops on-board led by Judi Mendelssohn and Barbara Chainey. The group was divided into two halves, spending a day with each tutor on the way out and again on the returning two days. We were lucky enough to have been provided with sixteen sewing machines by Brother, which created a bit of added logistical excitement when Judi and I arrived at the hotel in Dover with a car full of sewing machines, whilst our suitcases were stuck on the motorway in Jane Campbell’s car. Thankfully, we were reunited in time to be loaded on-board by exceptionally helpful port staff.
The sewing machines were put to great use in our bargello workshop with Judi, along with our graduated tile piece. Barbara Chainey’s workshop reminded some, and introduced others, to the joy of hand sewing. We created an amazing diversity of the Antique Rose Star block followed by smaller hexagon stars. The advantage of the hand sewing was that we could carry it with us anywhere on the ship and were often seen in small huddles in the lounge area of an evening working away on our pieces.
It caused such interest amongst our fellow travellers that we were persuaded to have an open viewing of all our work on the last day. Even the ship’s crew were enthralled, with many of them keen to buy one of the machines to take home for their families. A request unfortunately we couldn’t assuage. Having been allocated the card room for our workshops, we even managed to win over the displaced card players who’d been moved to the library.
Bu hikaye Patchwork and Quilting dergisinin March 2018 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye Patchwork and Quilting dergisinin March 2018 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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S&B – Excellence And Diversity
As part of the Heritage Open Days held each year by English Heritage, Standfast & Barracks, a fabric printing company in Lancaster, opened its doors which meant visitors could go behind the walls of the severe Victorian building and take a glimpse into the world of printing fabric. Having only ever dyed fabrics with lots of water and messy dyes in my kitchen and printed with wooden blocks on fabric, I was intrigued to see behind the scenes.
Meet A Quilter Joë Bennison
If you’ve visited a quilt show in the last couple of years you can’t have failed to miss the rise in longarm quilting both from the quilts on display to the manufacturers demonstrating the latest machines. I first took notice of longarm quilting when I attended the National Quilt Championships at Sandown in Surrey; here one particular quilter, with her exquisite wholecloth cot quilts, has swept into prominence. The quilter in question is Joë Bennison. I met her at the end of last year to find out more about her and her quilting journey.
First And Last Sally Ablett
This month regular contributor Sally Ablett tells us about two of her quilts.
Six Years Of Journal Quilting
In the last issue, Joanna introduced us to journal quilts. This month she tells us more about her own journey in journal quilt making.
The Sewing Group
Emma Crowe’s new play ‘The Sewing Group’ shows the impact of 21st century technologies and the pressures of high powered work places on our minds and temperaments by conjuring up a simpler life in pre-industrial England.
The Jane Austen Community Quilt – An Update
2017 saw a bustle of activity here at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire. In May, Lucy Worsley came to the museum to place flowers at the front of the house marking 200 years since the death of Jane Austen; followed swiftly by a year of events including writing workshops, village walks, talks (a highlight being Sue Dell’s presentation of her research into the Austen coverlet, now conserved and redisplayed in the museum) and community sewing workshops in preparation for the completion of our community quilt.
Greenhill Quilting
This month Jacob Reading from Greenhill Quilting tells us his story about becoming the Gammill UK representative and his love of longarm quilting.
A Splash Of Colour In A Bleak, Grey World
It is 1943 and Mies Boissevain is imprisoned with seven other women. A member of a prominent banking family, Mies and her family had been sheltering persecuted people and using the cellar of her house as a base for the Resistance group known as CS-6, one of the few groups that performed acts of sabotage. Mies, two of her sons, her niece and nephew were members of the group when they were discovered by the Germans. Many members were immediately executed but Mies and her niece were arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Vught, then Ravensbruck.
First And Last Sandie Lush
My first quilt was completed in early 1990 and was made out of necessity. I'd always had a keen interest in crafts but this had been confined to knitting, counted cross stitch and the occasional stint of dressmaking. Before getting married, I had never even seen a patchwork quilt, let alone thought about making one.
Let's Go Shopping To Backstitch
Sometimes it’s easy to miss things that are completely under our noses, we forget to look close to home for a solution. And that is what happened when I was looking for a quilt shop to visit for Let’s Go Shopping. I suddenly remembered there was a shop I had never visited before that was pretty much on my doorstep. So on a sunny early spring-like day, I headed off to Backstitch in the village of Barton near Cambridge.
