Bumble Bee Quilting Blog
Corris Uchaf, Wales
Children’s Day
Aug 22nd
Monday 23-Aug-2010 is Children’s Day at Bumble Bee Quilting.
The shop will be buzzing to the happy sound of young ‘uns beavering away, being creative and learning something about needlework and quilting whilst they are about it.
We hope to demonstrate basic design techniques, colour matching and the processes involved in putting it all together so that they can take something away with them that they have made.
It will not be a “heavy” day, but bright and fun although hopefully something will have been learnt come the end of it.
It’s an opportunity for the kids to get together, enjoy each other’s company and have fun with colour and cotton.
If you are in the Corris area and you want to join in the rampage — then just turn up. All are welcome.
A round to it
Aug 19th
I sometimes look for and read through other quilting blogs. I say only sometimes as there is a time constraint, and it’s not because I am either arrogant or ignorant …. (I hope)
But, the thing that most strikes me about many of these blogs is the length and number of blogposts, and number of words and links and the quantity of usually excellent photographs or videos.
Makes me feel quite useless in this respect ( sob 
)
So the questions I ask myself about these fine wordsmiths – do they write all day maybe even professionally, or are they quilters or quilting teachers who can also construct excellent articles, or are they better at time management than !? Or perhaps its a combination of at least two of these suggestions.
I run my own craft shop full-time, so blogging is just an incidental when I have a spare couple of minutes. But I’ve said before that I’ll try and take more relevant photos. As you’ve guessed, I’ve mainly failed in this respect.
But, I will try harder and I will get around to it
A couple of days
Aug 18th
And a couple of busy ones at that. Its been hell for leather in the shop. Lots of visitors, some new and some long-standing. But I enjoyed speaking and working with all, thanks ….
I’ve not done much yet to mend the quilt top I mentioned before here, but I have taken some time to look over all the completed squares and maybe it’s not quite as drastic as I thought earlier. Won’t really know till I start unpicking in earnest.
But I haven’t been entirely idle, nor spent all the time in frivolity with my visitors.
We have seen quite a few people of all ages having a go with needlefelting, either by machine or by hand, and crafting their own designs with felt and nothing more except some exceptional imagination and creativity.
I have also been busy making fabric items for a charity fair, to be held sometime before Christmas. I have made several Welsh themed cushion covers, some fabric Christmas decorations, and quite a few cake or pastry covers with different but seasonal motifs. Hopefully the fair will raise a bundle for their charity. When I have more details, I’ll share them. But for the two days I have been joined again by Hazel – and some fun but creative time we’ve had as well..
Tea Time now ……
Patience
Aug 17th
Perhaps that should read Patience and Trigonometry. And this is not a new card game with triangular cards.
I am creating patchwork squares for a new quilt top. These squares are made up in part of triangles. These I overcut. This is far better than undercutting, but a pain in the proverbial I’d rather do without. It will mean unpicking, re-cutting and re-stitching all the affected fabrics.
This only came to light when I had completed the squares and was about to join them them all up.
I am also aware of the old adage – Measure Twice & Cut Once.
So, either I was too impatient when drawing out the designs and calculating the angles to give me all my measurements or else I need to revise Pythagoras and his cunning plans. But I know it’ll work out fine in the end ….
Which leads me to my new favourite comic strip of the day which seems to sum up this quilt.
Patience - from Mimi & Eunice
Patience – from Mimi & Eunice – by Nina Paley (with grateful Thanks)
Gardening today
Aug 15th
Or at least for most of the day so far. I did manage to spend an hour in the shop pressing some of the squares I am making for the new quilt top.
Since then though the day has been too nice and sunny in Snowdonia, so I have spent the time outside in the garden. Makes a pleasant change.
We have an old bath, so have sunk that in the ground to create a bog garden to be filled with water lilies and other boggy plants. As we live on a steep hillside we need to face the font of it with a small slate wall to hide it, and that’s the next job.
There are plenty of natural boggy areas in all the streams running of the foothills of Cadair Idris, but this one will be different and a bit of a feature. Hopefully.
We can then level the rest of the area and grass it (lawn would be too posh a word in this rural and damp environment) so that we have somewhere to sit and maybe even build a BarBQ as well.
Back quilting tomorrow and preparing for some joint work later in the week, just needed to take advantage of the weather and get some exercise whilst still being creative albeit in a different environment.
Cutting Fabric
Aug 14th
As we all know, the design process for a new quilt not only involves the creation of shapes in coloured fabrics with stitching patterns, but also includes the templates for the cut fabric.
This process is perhaps the most enjoyable for me, followed closed by the creation process where you sew the top together and then fill, back and quilt it all together
But, age seems to be catching up with me. The middle process (the actual cutting of the fabrics into shapes and sizes including seam allowance) now leaves me cold and sore.
Not just cold, but weary and with back problems due to leaning over my worktop and slicing or scissoring the bits of fabrics I want from my stash. Is “scissoring a word?.
I need a cutting fairy (rather like a tooth fairy in a way) who will take my sketches and colour charts and will just, as if by magic, cut the fabrics for me so that I can enter the shop one morning having left the designs overnight, and hey-presto everything is ready for sewing. Is this just too much to ask?
End of my back problems – but start of old age illusions I guess … Oh well, back to my roller blade …
The Quilt Index
Aug 13th
Found this when looking for something else, just as you do.
It seems such a good idea as well, catalogue properly all quilts that it can, together with details of the quilter and where it is currently housed.
Not sure I can say much more as a whole waft of the website is about copyright – I’m not even sure if I should be mentioning at all.
Shame as I was really sold on the whole concept.
Ode to Van Gogh
Aug 11th
Just in case you missed it earlier … I went through a stage not so long ago of creating wallhangings based on the works of recent great artists.
In this wallhanging, I created my impression of Vincent Van Gogh’s “sunflowers” in fabric.
The sunflower petals were more loosely attached as they got closer to the surface to give greater visual depth to the wallhanging. This in turn mutes the background into more of a still life.
As with many of the works and indeed perhaps the life of the original artist, everything is offset from the centre, drawing the eye away from the obvious centre to the peripherals. Much as the more observant of our species views the world anyway…
It was “framed” by a wood effect fabric border to resemble a real painting.
Although its been a while since I made one, I’m always after new ideas of art you might like to see replicated in fabric. Drop me a line either just to give me an idea or even if you’d like a commission…..
ode to van gogh
Making this wallhanging gave me great joy, and brought back many many happy recollections of my time both as a painter and one who appreciated great art. Surprisingly I was really quite upset when it sold, for a very large price. But I’d put so much into it, so much of the inner me, that the price didn’t matter at all. It was the creation, the inspiration of Van Gogh and the energy expended in the design and the actual sewing….
