Di Ford Weekend at Petra Prins

We signed up for this a long time ago, it was eagerly awaited and it was all we had hoped for and more, the Di Ford weekend at Petra Prins’ in Zutphen.'

Emma drove over from France and once in Zutphen everything and everybody was ready and waiting for us. 

Di and Petra welcoming us, the start of a wonderful weekend!

There were two groups, both were going to work on new Di Ford designs, one group was going to work on this lovely pattern

and the other group – which included Emma and myself - was going to work on this beauty

It was my third workshop by Di Ford and again there was so much to learn from her, she is so talented and such a wonderful teacher and because it was a whole weekend workshop there was so much time to learn from her. This workshop was mostly about designing, and this for 2 whole days! Things like ‘deconstructing’, ‘constructing’, ‘anchoring’ , my head was spinning!

Both quilts are still a work in progress which was great so that Di could explain (some of) her design process to us.

The quilts being wip’s also meant that this quilt (the first one, see above)

did not have a name yet. Petra and Di organised a small competition on Saturday, we could all think of a name and they would announce the winner on Sunday.

Guess who won?

Clever girl! Emma won a box of the newly released Di Ford collection of Aurifil 80wt applique threads, the name she came up with will become known when the quilt/pattern is published.

In the give-away that followed I won a bottle of the applique glue , always welcome, love the stuff and use it a lot

All in all it was a wonderful, warm and inspiring weekend, beautiful quilts, lovely people (great to meet you in person Blanche!) , a surprise visit from Bep who looked great, yummy food (Petra baked some delicious quiches for lunch on the Sunday, mmmmm!) , I learned a lot and made some sweet memories again.

Thanks to Di, Petra, Juud, Gerda and everyone else for everything!

Phyllis