My view this week has looked pretty much like this most of the time! I’ve been putting in long hours quilting the Ruby Star quilt. It’s been a really enjoyable shift of pace, after all those months of hand sewing, I can finally get going with some machine stitching.
The quilting is an absolute pleasure to do. I’m working freehand and keeping it simple with no marking, just bouncing from point to point of the stars. The plan is to do all the red quilting onto the stars and then thread up with black and do the same for the black diamonds.
During my pit-stops I’ve been finalising the preparations for the raffle of the quilt and the other amazing prizes, and for my stand at Festival of Quilts. If you’re coming to the show you’ll be able to come and find us, see the quilt and even have a go at English paper piecing yourself if you’d like to. And of course, I’ll do my best to sell you a raffle ticket! More about all that next week. In the meantime, if you’d like to follow along with my quilting progress, do check out my Instagram feed where I’ve been posting as I stitch.
While I’ve been stitching, Linda’s embarked on a new project – a moth diary. You might know that she is a huge fan of observing moths and so has started the diary as a way to document her finds. Here’s a little peek at one of the first pages.
There have been a lot of moths in recent weeks, but we’ve not seen so many butterflies have you? Starting tomorrow is the Big Butterfly Count. You can join in via their website and there’s an identification chart to print out to help id what you spot. It’s a great school holiday activity and you can log your results on the website. I’m guessing that this might be for UK only, but I bet there are other wildlife watch programs in your neck of the woods too.
We always try to bring you art and craft related news in our weekly emails so this might strike you as slightly off topic, but inspiration can be found everywhere, especially in nature, so what better reason to get outdoors and see what you can find. If you’ve seen any of Linda’s recent quilts you’ll know how moths have featured time and again.
New Book from the Quilters’ Guild
I spotted on Instagram that a quit of mine is featured in the new book Forty: The Evolution of a Collection, by the Quilters’ Guild. The book is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Guild’s collection. I’m yet to see a copy so I’ll be looking out for them at Festival of Quilts in a couple of weeks time.
New Video Workshop – Colour mixing Essentials
A while ago, we suggested that you sent in your questions so we could answer them in upcoming videos. Since then we’ve been working on a variety of ideas to cover the most common topics that cropped up. One of those was colour, and one of the most frequently asked questions was ‘what colours to buy?’. In today’s video I’ll talk through the essential things you need to know about colour mixing and which primary colours of paints or dyes you can look out for when shopping and which will be most versatile, giving you the results you need.
DMTV Members can view this video now, if you’re not a Member why not consider joining us? You can check out our free videos to give you a taste of what we offer and sign up for access to over 30 videos for just £12.
Thank you for reading our newsletter this week. We’ll be back again soon with more.
Love Linda and Laura xx