February's free pattern and show news

As we all know, now that the longest month of the year is out of the way, the remaining eleven are going to fly by, and this year looks to be a very full one for Sewmotion. I've got some great shows coming up starting with the Spring Quilt Festival in Harrogate - Friday 21st - Sunday 23rd February, 10am - 4.30pm (4pm on Sunday) 

This show is smaller than the Autumn one and creates a much more intimate atmosphere, visitors are able to walk around a lot easier, see the quilts on display at their leisure, have a lovely lunch and then start shopping in a non-rushed relaxed manner. Harrogate is also my nearest venue to home so it means I get to sleep in my own bed every night, though I'm just hoping the snow stays away...
You can learn more about this event by clicking here.

My second show this month is brand new to me. Formerly known as the Knitting & Stitching Show held at Olympia in London, it has now changed name and venue to The Stitch Festival, to be held at the Business Design Centre in Islington, north London, about 20mins from my mum, so it would have been silly not to really! 

I'm very excited about this one as it's my first in London so it will be interesting to see how it does - I won't bore you with the kit and fabric prep for these shows, but I'll just say I'm needing nightly baths to ease my back and feet at the moment. 

You can find out more about this show by clicking here.

I also have a discount code for tickets - instead of paying £15 for an advance adult ticket and £13.50 for concession, you will pay just £12.50 - to book tickets visit the website or call 0844 854 1349 and quote code STITCH113 when prompted. (Unfortunately there is a £2.20 booking fee and £2.50 for postal, which you would have to pay anyway, but hopefully this discount will help). 

In more exciting news, I am lucky enough to have been asked to be involved in John Scott's very first show on his new venture, John Scott's Sewing World!!!

For those who don't know who on earth I'm talking about, John Scott was one of the presenters on Sewing Quarter where I was a guest designer. He's also had quite a fascinating life himself having worked as a costumier on Hollywood films and a fashion expert on TV, and so many other amazing things over the years which he is sharing in his own regular blog. He is also mad about sewing, and happens to be one of the most genuine people I have ever met. 

So, once Sewing Quarter closed, the wonderful people at Crafter's Companion snatched him up and he's now got his own show under their umbrella of Crafters TV. To begin with, it will be aired every Tuesday 8-12noon, with plans to expand over the year. 

I was very chuffed indeed to be asked to be one of his first guests on his inaugural show on Tuesday 3rd March where I will be selling my own EPP cushion kit in two colourways - as I am launching them on the show, I can't show them yet, but here is a pic of the mammoth kit production underway to give you a clue, yep, that's a bit of Liberty and Alison Glass! :) 

In all this excitement, I nearly forgot to tell you about my latest free pattern for my Newsletter subscribers. For February, I have returned to my favourite curved English paper-piecing to make these cute Coasters - for your own free copy, plus 10% off the two available kits, subscribe to the Newsletter today.

Wishing you all a creative and sunny week, linking up with Monday Making, Midweek Makers and Needle & Thread Thursday

Playing on my Sewing Machine

Well, a week back and our holiday in glorious Kefalonia already seems like months ago! We had a very relaxing time, if a little too hot at times, still the town of Skala was as beautiful as ever, and one day we may even retire there... 

Meanwhile, back to reality - the next few months look crazy! With Harrogate Quilt show next week, then hopefully a house move, Duxford Autumn Quilt show at the end of October, my first Knitting & Stitching show in Harrogate in November, not to mention a few Sewing Quarter shows slotted in, I think I'll be sleeping through Christmas :)

It is good to be back in the swing of things though, I definitely needed a break after Festival of Quilts, and now I'm full of ideas again, the first of which is my monthly free pattern to my Newsletter subscribers, I know it's a little late, but better late than never right? For this month, I have gone back to an old favourite that I used to make as finished gifts back when I used to sell at craft fairs - the Patchwork Glasses Case. 

This is a great little project with some simple machine sewing, but the best thing is I get to play with some of the bazillion stitches on my sewing machine that I just never get the time to explore. As you can see, I needed to add an embroidered accent down both sides of the case, so I had a little play to find the appropriate stitch, noting down the stitch number and size as I went, so when I came to make a decision I knew what to program into the machine. I also found that unplugging my foot and using the start/stop button when sewing the embroidery stitches made it so much happier tension-wise.

As well as the free pattern - you can get yours by subscribing to the Newsletter here - I have put together three kits that contain fabric, wadding, elastic and button, plus full instructions. These are priced at £8.50, and if you're a subscriber you can get 10% off before next Wednesday.

I will be at Harrogate Autumn Quilt Show next week - Friday 30th Aug - Sunday 1st September, at the Great Yorkshire Showground, Hall 1, Harrogate, HG2 8NZ - 10am - 4.30pm. I hope to see you there!

Wishing you all a happy and creative week, linking up with Midweek Makers 

Harrogate Spring Quilt Show

The Harrogate quilt festivals are my local shows and it's always nice to see so many familiar faces. I had a lovely time last weekend at this 3-day event, though I think it was warmer outside than in the hall - always the way!

My curved EPP kits proved pretty popular, especially the Hoop Art kits which I had hanging on the end of the stand - a couple of years into doing these shows and I'm still learning how best to display my items :) 

Within the first hour, I had some very enthusiastic ladies come to the stand asking about my curved EPP cushion that was being demoed on the Quilter's Guild stand - this was news to me! Eventually I discovered it was the lovely Hilary from Region 14 who has fallen for this technique in a BIG way! Thank you Hilary for sharing the love ;)

On the Sunday, I had a chance to walk around the show and see some of the quilts - I was very happy to see Abigail of Cut & Alter had an exhibit of her work. I was especially blown away by her On The Plus Side quilt - just look at that amazing ruler work and free motion quilting! And who doesn't love a little Alison Glass, just stunning!

Back to curved EPP for a minute, my Hoop Art project is featured in the current issue (71) of Love Patchwork & Quilting magazine. This hand-pieced flower ring in Alison Glass's Road Trip fabrics is mounted onto a 16" hoop - I do love this way of displaying mini quilts, and must make more!

Wishing you all a happy and creative week, linking up with Midweek Makers and Needle & Thread Thursday

New Printed Patterns Now Available

In the run up to the Festival fo Quilts earlier this month, I decided it was about time I had some more of my patterns printed up and available for sale in paper form. I'm glad I did, they went down very well at the show, especially the EPP patterns which include all the pre-cut papers you need for the project. You can see some of the collection below, and click here to visit the shop.

A lovely friend from my quilt group posted a pic of her latest creation on Instagram this week, and I was over the moon to see that she had used this month's free Pre-Cut Party pattern - the Rail Fence Quilt - isn't it beautiful! If you would like your own copy, plus a free pattern every month, sign up here to the Newsletter.

Meanwhile, when not preparing for the Great Northern Quilt Show next week in Harrogate, I've been playing round with my Christmas Wreath idea, I posted the photo on the left on IG and Facebook (forgive the lap shot, I was sewing in the car :)) intending it to be a new hoop art kit in the style of a wreath, only for suggestions to come flying in for other uses, such as table mats to go with the table runner, a table centre or even a tree skirt! I do love a good group brainstorm and love all these ideas! 

I am veering towards the placemat idea, so I went back to the wreath and tilted the shapes to resemble the branches of holly and fir... my next challenge is to see if I can sew the inner ring on top of the outer one, another idea that has been rolling around my head for a while - anyway, watch this space, whether I get these kits ready for next week's show is another matter :)

As I mentioned above, I will be at the Harrogate Quilt Show next week, you can find out more about this fantastic 3-day event here. So I will be back in a fortnight, until then, happy sewing everyone.

Linking up with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers and Needle & Thread Thursday.

Quilt Show preparation, a new kit and North Star Quilting

For the past few weeks I've been cutting, folding, glueing, and pricing like a mad woman, in preparation for my first show of the year, the Spring Quilt Festival at the Great Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate. This 3-day event is held in a smaller hall than the one in Autumn, which I must say does make for a more much relaxed show. Talking to visitors last year, many commented on how nice it was to wander around the stalls at a leisurely pace, have time for some lunch before having a second look around and actually remembering where they saw that something that caught their eye!

As you can see, I've added some lovely individual fat quarters to my show stock, these boxes look so inviting don't they! And I've a few new kits not taken to shows before, including this gorgeous new Mosaic Garden Quilt Kit in Michael Miller's Wildflower fabrics.

You may recognise this quilt from a pervious Pre-Cut Party pattern, I've increased the number of blocks to thirty to make this double-sized quilt finish at approx. 67" x 80". The kit includes 120 pre-cut 5" squares, 3.10m of Makower's Ivory and eight binding strips, plus thread and full instructions. This new kit will be available in the Sewmotion shop early next week, priced at £68.00.

Did you notice the beautiful quilting on my new quilt above? Most of the time I love to quilt my own tops, but this quilt begged for something special, so I decided to give it to my friend Bryony Liddle to longarm. Bryony and her husband Luke run North Star Quilting, a longarm quilting service up here in the North East of England. I let her have free reign on my quilt, and she didn't disappoint! Keeping with the grid-like pattern of the patchwork, Bryony went to town with some truly stunning quilt designs in block formation. Fine Art trained, Bryony is a joy to work with, incredibly enthusiastic about her work and is very talented indeed! For more details on North Star Quilting's services, including prices, click here. 

Linking up with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers & Needle & Thread Thursday.

Fun at Harrogate and a new All Squared Up Quilt Kit

We had a great time at the Great Northern Quilt Show last weekend, it was so nice to meet many of my newsletter subscribers who had lovely things to say about their free monthly patterns. It's always nice to put faces to names of regular customers. Thank you for your kind words!
Below is a little video of my stand, if the quality is a little suspect, click on the settings symbol (the washer-type circle) at the bottom of video and you should be able to click on HD which should improve it. You can also turn up the sound though my little commentary seems a bit drowned out.



As you can see above, I have a new All Squared Up Quilt Kit, this one is in Riley Blake's gorgeous Happy Day fabrics, together with some Makower Spots. 

This popular quilt kit is great for beginners, and comes with all the fabric strips, borders, binding and thread you need to complete the top, plus of course full instructions. It is priced at £45.00 and there is also a fabric pack available for my pieced backing included in the instructions.

Don't forget this month's free Pre-Cut Party pattern is out, just subscribe to my Newsletter to get this strippy table runner PDF straight to your inbox, plus access to previous free patterns! There's also a code for 20% of the kit below.

I'm currently taking part in a great tag on Instagram, the #GreatBritishQuilter which runs all month. There are so many amazing quilters in the UK, why not pop along and say Hi!

Linking up with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers and Needle & Thread Thursday

September's Free Pre-Cut Party Pattern and the Harrogate Quilt Show

Yep, the first of the month has come round yet again, which means it's time for another free pattern in my Pre-Cut Party! For those new to my party, every month I design and write a free pattern based on my love of the quilting pre-cut, including fat quarters, jelly rolls and charm squares. This pattern is then emailed out to my Newsletter subscribers absolutely free. Quite often I will also have a kit to accompany the pattern, with a subscriber-only discount. So let me introduce you to this month's pattern, the Strippy Star Table Runner.

I wanted to show another nifty trick with the 2.5in fabric strip, as well as how to make stars without having to tackle those 'Y' seams. I love these Dashwood Studio Twist fabrics, and I think these colours ever so gently nod to Christmas.

So, if you would like the free pattern, subscribe to the free Newsletter today!

If you would like the whole kit, which includes the pre-cut strips, borders, binding and thread, it's priced at £25, though if you subscribe to the Newsletter, you'll get 20% off till the end of the month.

I can't believe it's been a year since my first ever quilt show, this was last year's stand at Harrogate, and I'll be there again this week with new quilt kit and cushion kits, fabulous fabric pre-cuts and more inspiring patterns. If you're in the area, why not pop along, the show runs from Friday 1st to Sunday 3rd Sept, 10am-4.30pm (4pm on Sunday) at the Great Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate. Click here to find out more.

Linking up with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers and Needle & Thread Thursday

Copenhagen Part II - Designing our future

Our second day in the beautiful city of Copenhagen started with a hearty Danish breakfast at our Tivoli Hotel, offering anything you could want, including smoked salmon, cheese and meats, hot eggs and bacon, and gorgeous yoghurt and fruits - this would hopefully keep us going for a while. Today was my actual birthday and we decided to walk across the river and onto Christianshavn, one of the city’s prettiest quarters, and also home to the world renowned restaurant Noma. Ooh, birthday lunch I thought… alas, they seem to have lost our reservation… Haha! At over £300 per head, I think this one will have to wait awhile… though, following in Justin’s hero, chef Rick Stein’s footsteps, he had his photo taken in front of the building, that will have to do for now!

Walking along the river we came across the Danish Architecture Centre (DAC), a very interesting museum asking “how does architecture address challenges such as climate change, urbanisation and social segregation?” Using the city as their main exhibition, guided tours illustrate why Copenhagen and other Danish cities are praised around the world for their visionary way of combining liveability, growth and sustainability – surely topics that every country should have high on their agendas for the future. Even though we didn’t go on a tour… one of the many reasons to go back in the summer… we did see a fantastic exhibition called Wasteland – from Waste to Architecture in which architectural practice, the Lendager Group takes a look at how waste can create new architecture and even become a new resource in its own right. 

Courtesy of Kristina Neel at DAC

This upcycling process doesn’t just re-use materials as you would in recycling, but forms the basis for new, improved materials, often lengthening the life span of both products. For instance, by mixing new concrete with old, recycled concrete, you can make the material stronger than ever. Or, rather than trying to recycle house bricks one by one where often the mortar is stronger than the actual brick, they suggest cutting out a whole piece of wall as one unit and re-using it as a panel.

Throughout the exhibition there were some pretty frightening facts about world growth - did you know that the world's population is growing by five school classes per minute, or that it took only three years (2011-2013) for China to use more concrete that the USA used in the entire 20^th century? It should be pretty obvious that our planet can not sustain this growth, and something has to change! Look at the housing crisis we have in the UK alone! Sorry, I’m getting a little passionate now, but this exhibition really did open our eyes, though maybe this is also because we’ve always been excited by modern, or different design, and some of the ideas that were featured made from upcycled materials were just genius!

Courtesy of Kristina Neel at DAC

The exhibition is themed around six different materials, including glass, wood, concrete and plastic. First we see the materials as by-products, then we follow their transformation into new materials, new buildings, and even new urban spaces.

One of my favourite ideas was this textured wall made from  different sized strips of wood attached to a frame. It is then treated to create this beautiful panel that I would love to have in my home! This is another factor that the Lendager Group focuses on, not only how to use waste as a potential resource, but also how to make these resources architecturally and aesthetically attractive. After all, waste is certainly a resource we will never run out of, and if smart and daring designers can come up with beautiful, practical and comfortable homes that we would happily live in, then this must be the way forward...

I have had a quick look to see if there are many UK initiatives following this idea, I found a couple of blogs about reupholstering chairs and repainting household items, but much of this is seen as more of an artform, with many pieces costing more than the original item, I don’t think this is the answer. This interesting post on Sustainable Build highlights the problems in the UK’s construction industry, such as the lack of information on sourcing and how to use these products in design, and also the cost of deconstructing a building rather than the cheaper option to demolish and destroy. I see so many boarded-up old houses where I live, and it makes me sick to see them just sitting there empty when we’re in such need for housing, both social and private. Yet the current answer seems to build inefficient box houses that all look the same, have no character or design, and call themselves four-bed detached dream homes.

Wow, this is supposed to be a quilting blog!! Apologies for going off-topic this week, I just felt our adventure in design and our discoveries had to be shared! This week I'm at my first quilt show of the year, the Spring Quilt Festival at Harrogate - I hope to see you there!

Duxford Autumn Quilt Festival

I'm currently away working for Doughty's at an annual quilt show in Dublin. However, next week Sewmotion will be at the Duxford Autumn Quilt Festival held at the amazing Imperial War Museum in Cambridgeshire. I remember visiting this show last year and was amused to see a group of quilters having a well needed sit down with a huge plane towering over them (can I find the pic now!?!) 

Having had so much fun at the Harrogate show, we thought we'd venture further afield while also getting in a visit with a dear friend who lives nearby. We'll have our fabulous pre-cut quilt and cushion kits, quilt patterns, and of course our gorgeous pre-cuts and bundles.

So if you're in the Cambridge area, why not pop along to see the gorgeous collection of quilts on display, and have a good browse among the many stands - this is also an ideal opportunity to get some Christmas inspiration for those festive makes! The show runs from Friday 28th to Sunday 30th October, 10am-4.30pm (4pm on Sunday). We hope to see you there!

Our First Quilt Show

The beautiful North Yorkshire town of Harrogate was the venue for last weekend's Great Northern Quilt Show. Even though I have done a few of these shows now, I’ve always worked for Doughty’s, so could rely on someone else to think about the stand structure, layout and how to catch buyers' eye. This time, it was all me, and boy was I nervous, but also really excited. 

Starting with an empty shell, I moved quilts and tables around and around until I was happy, then started playing with the FQ bundles and strip sets. I’m so pleased I made the to effort to fold the bundles like this, they were certainly a talking point over the weekend. 

I met some lovely people over the three days, many from up in the North East, begging me to open a bricks and mortar shop in Middlesbrough, Haha! One step at a time….

Thankfully, I had Justin on hand to help over the weekend, and he soon learnt the ropes, sounding like he’d been quilting for years by the time Sunday came! Having his help and support meant I could also have a quick zip around the quilt display, some of which are below – note, these ARE NOT my quilt - apologies for not catching the makers’ details, I was rushing.

I would like to say thank you to everyone who came along and said hello, it really is wonderful to meet quilters who share my passion for modern fabrics and quilt kits, and to just have a good old chat. I would also like to say a big thank you to everyone who subscribed to my Newsletter, which will include a free pattern every month based on pre-cuts, the first one of which will be out this week! If you haven’t signed up yet, click below.

If you would like to browse through some more quilty goodness, with not pop along to these linky parties and say Hi.

Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts

Handmade Monday at Lucy Blossom Crafts

Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts

Needle & Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation 

 

Are you coming to Harrogate??

As I may have mentioned recently, Sewmotion will be at this year's Great Northern Quilt Show in Harrogate, 2nd-4th September! This is a wonderful 3-day event incorporates the Great Northern Needlecraft Show, so there is sure to be something for every crafter. As well as workshops and demonstrations, there will be a display of beautiful quilts to admire and inspire, and of course lots of supplier's stands to meet your creative retail therapy needs.

I will be selling my collection of pre-cut quilt and cushion kits as well as the gorgeous pre-cut packs I make up from my curated collection of designer fabrics, including Riley Blake, Karen Lewis Textiles' Blueberry Park, Kona Solids and Dashwood.

There will also be the chance to learn more about my Pre-Cut Party to which you can subscribe and receive a free pattern every month straight to your inbox.

You can click here to learn more about the show and ticket prices, and I look forward to seeing you there!