August 2018

August still had some great summer weather, but later in the month things cooled down a bit, which made it a lot better for some quilty activities.

But before that there were still some summer outings with Whopper, he loves those evenings on the beach.

On one of those very warm summer days I drove down to Marcha’s shop (click) for her Open House. I was not the only one to drive that way, unfortunately I arrived rather late because of the traffic jams, which meant that I had to miss lunch as I was expected at Karen Styles’ (click & click) workshop shortly after my arrival.

Luckily, Yvonne (click), who was there to promote her book, came to my aid with some sweets, enough to give me that sugar rush to enjoy Karen’s workshop. 

Karen’s workshop was about tips and tricks to make clamshells , which she used in her beautiful Okehampton quilt.

As I had never made clamshells before I found the workshop really helpful, when I ever want to use these in a project, I know exactly what to do.

It was fun seeing Karen again, after our days at Emma’s (click) and in Paris in the spring (click).

Because of my late arrival I had less time than planned to look around at Marcha’s Open House, but there was lots to see (here are a few pictures from the quilt exhibition), to do, to eat and drink and of course I did want to do some shopping.

Karen’s Circle of Sisters quilt is always a star attraction!

It’s fun to see Marcha’s shop-quilt grow, quite a few additions during the Open Days I am sure, I am somewhere in the middle:

Two days later I traveled in another direction to Juud (click), we spent the day (another hot one) sitting outside in the morning working on our Judy Newman projects, so we called it our ‘Judy Day’. 

After lunch it became a too hot to be outdoors so we moved inside, imagine that. Practically the whole year we want to be outside and then when we can it can get so hot you prefer to be indoors….

Multi-talented Juud in ‘domestic goddess’ – mode in her kitchen, making us a yummy and healthy dinner which we enjoyed in the garden 😊 

The end of a lovely day, with lots of chatting and sewing and looking ahead to all sorts of fun quilty things in the future.

So this month I started a Judy Newman quilt, for me it just had to be the Sugar Plum quilt. During the days when Judy was at Emma’s (click) and I was helping out, I saw this quilt the whole time and of all the quilts Judy brought with her, this is the one that represents those wonderful days in France most, the happy, airy, light colors, the cheerfulness of it all.

So far this is what I have done and using Judy’s templates and book, the curved seems are really not difficult at all.

Thank you for visiting my blog,

Phyllis