Inspirations

 I am inspired by muted colours in the countryside. At Duxford in March I bought a Vendulka Batais pattern of alliums and have used Lecien taupe fabrics as the background. These seem like gold dust now and I cannot find them on the internet at all. 

I have also finished a quilt from Purrfect Patchwork which includes lovely cats. Not sure who of my cat-loving friends to give it to! Here it is,

Good news

General view 

 Good news. My old Rosemary Rabbit Quilts website is being remade by my niece’s partner, well versed in website design. All very exciting, but I now have the job of trawling through all my quilts and putting them into proper folders for him. Watch this space for that. I hope it will be up and running in a few weeks’ time. 

Meantime and very overdue is this blog. Last May Icknield Quilters held their Pearl Anniversary exhibition in Letchworth. Very well attended and lovely to be back in a local show again after all these months. We made some profit for two local charities, Feed Up Warm Up, for local homeless people, and the charity for bereaved children. Both splendid charities.

Here are some lovely quilts from our show!

Still here!

Az

My temperature quilt for 2021. I made 2 x 1 inch pieces indicating type of weather and max temperature for each day of each month. Great fun to do!

 I realise I haven’t posted anything since 2020. Covid brain set in many months ago obviously but so far no one in our family has actually had it. We are quadruple jabbed and thankful for it. 

What has happened over the two years is a lot of sewing, wonderful Zoom talks from people hundreds or thousands miles away, whom we could never have listened to face to face because of expense. The Quilters Guild were great in promoting this, and our local groups got together to pay for these more prominent and wonderful teachers. We listened to Paula Nadelstern, Alicia Merritt and others in awe of their delightful works of art.

Meantime, back on the ranch, I did a temperature quilt for 2021, and finished off some big and small UFOs. I also managed to go on some retreats after the initial lockdown, just fitted in neatly between following ones! I am due to go to Suffolk later in July to work for four days on more UFOs and new designs, and meet up with my favourite teacher, Lynne Edwards, for lunch too. I have been watching her videos regularly, which she started up during Covid as she couldn’t use her village hall. They have been inspirational as usual. Contact her if you want to join in!

Also in May this year our local group, Icknield quilters, held their pearl anniversary exhibition for our 30th year of meeting. It was a great day and much admired for the work in show. We managed to get Three Counties Radio to come and interview our Chair, Sue Rainbow, while on their Saturday Treasure Hunt. We were their first port of call so managed a big puff of advertising! Sadly no Anneka Rice appeared!

Here are some items finished:

Happy Sewing!

Nightmare continues

The Quilters Guild is still recommending that large meetings do not go ahead yet, so that means my two local groups are not gathering for some time yet. It is all very sad, but zooming has proved a real lifeline for many of us. All the QG Region 7 meetings have been cancelled but what happens to their retreat is unknown at the moment.

The UFOs are getting fewer, but more projects are coming down the line all the time!  I started with 6 UFOs this year, which went up to over 20 during lockdown, but is now down to a respectable 13 and many of those are small. Two groups of us have worked towards raffle quilts for later this or early next year. The Dresden Plate shown earlier is for Macmillan and the latest one, quilted by 12 of Mimram Quilters members, is for a charity nominated by the group at their exhibition, now going ahead we hope next year. Some of the quilters were novice at the hand quilting and I was really pleased with their results and hope to have converted some to doing more.

The grey Ohio Star quilt is a bed runner for a friend.

Carry on quilting

My groups are still whatsapping and quilting.

Many are making small UFOs which are delightful. Mine tend to be bigger like this Dresden Plate for a raffle for Macmillan coffee morning in September (will it be virtual coffee I wonder?) so I spend hours hand quilting them at the end. My niece obviously spent hours during lockdown, apart from home schooling, studying, cooking and cleaning and goodness knows what else, colouring in this wonderful heart which was printed in the papers for the NHS. I love it.

Well, what a nightmare except for quilters of course. A sad but timely excuse to get our heads down and quilt! We have started up quite a few different WhatsApp, Zoom, and email groups to keep ourselves sane by having chats, and we are lucky being in a village where we can still chat to neighbours over a garden hedge, lots of feet away from each other.
Our monthly patchwork groups are having virtual show and tells and we are setting challenges as we all have enough fabric anyway to last us years if necessary!
Something I have been working on.

 The middle of a lovely whole cloth quilt already marked up bought from a friend’s sale of a deceased patch worker. She raised over £1000 for children’s air ambulance. Well done Sue.

Don’t miss this exhibition

We have just visited the lovely exhibition at Milton Keynes Museum (in the silver building at the back, and free on Tuesdays). Lots of such interesting exhibits, beautifully mounted, particularly the associated exhibits on weaving with willow, silk, cotton, spinning wheels including Gandhi’s little home spinning wheel (where did they get that from, they are really difficult to find!). The textiles were wonderful. Both modern by local contemporary quilters and ancient from places such as India, Vietnam etc. Lovely ladies at hand to chat too.

newsletter for region 7

Come October I shall be taking over as Editor of Bits and Pieces the newsletter for region 7 of the Quilters Guild. If anyone has something they would like to tell the world about, please let me know!

Fobbles

What a lovely name! I discovered this lovely shop near Ravenglass in Cumbria while on holiday. Beverley also does workshops in her barn and the selection of fabrics etc is great. Do visit!

Spalding

we went to  the Spalding exhibition and enjoyed it very much. Some of the quilts we had seen before but some are worth that second look anyway. Like Sandown, it is small enough to enjoy in the day, even with the added attraction of an outlet village just down the road in walking distance plus a lovely watery park to walk in. Purses were rather empty on the way home. But I have discovered a lovely shop called Weird Fish which actually sold dresses that fitted me and I hope didn’t make me too much of a mutton lady dressed as a lamb!

Website

My website is down at the moment as I am going to have a new one made for me, one that I can update myself, but I shall still be known as rosemaryrabbitquilts.
Our groups is looking forward to going up to Spalding to see the exhibition there at the end of May, as we haven’t been before.
One of my teaching groups has made a star quilt for the Macmillan  coffee morning in September.

We are selling tickets and hope to make a nice amount for them.

Traditional Quilters group retreat

36 of us met up at Grantham for a weekend retreat, with three wonderful tutors: Lynne Edwards teaching perspective, Shirley Bloomfield on needleturned Appliqué, and Carolyn Gibbs in working with stripes. They were all well attended and we were very happy with their results. Join the Guild and for an extra £10 you can join us as well!

Success at Sandown

What a thrill. Three of us have won first prize for a group quilt at this exhibition. It is our Boxing Hares quilt which I shall photo when I visit next Sunday. We are so chuffed.

In Gran Canaria

On our holidays here, but sadly I have spent two days in hospital having my appendix out! The good thing is the lovely sun, which beats the cold and snow in UK, although I believe most of it round our way in Herts has disappeared.
Before the shock, we were in the capital and just by sheer chance I found a lovely patchwork shop, called Ell@‘s. Weird name but a delightful place. Had to buy some fabric didn’t I! There was a workshop going in and some nice quilts around the place.

Chelsworth

Every year in July, three of us go to Suffolk originally for workshops run by Lynne Edwards, now on our own in a hall to die for quilting-wise, for four UFO days of bliss. Lynne came in to see us and brought some beautiful quilts to show us. One by Gisela Thwaites who died some years ago is being looked after by Lynne for posterity. It will be on show at the FoQ this year on the traditional group of the Quilters Guild stands. It is a priceless crazy quilt with lots of embroidery and decoration, wonderful. I am showing it at the moment when I give my talk in the History of Appllique.

Sandown

A bit late in posting this but we had a great trip to Sandown this year, going by mini bus from Baldock, which is a new service offered to locals. Driven by husband, who enjoyed himself at Kingston u Thames, and bought me some fat quarters at a local shop while he was about it!
The nine quilts looked great hanging up, still except andy's which turned out to be a problem with the sleeve. I asked a lady to take a photo of me standing by my quilt but sadly as I was passing my camera over to her I dropped the camera and broke it! Still managed to get the other quilts pictures off the camera when I got home. So I have a full set, and eight more now being made in my next class. I really find it interesting how the girls think about the imagery and come up with fabulous blocks.
I am very grateful to Grosvenor who let us have the space at Sandown, a great exhibition. FoQ this month!

Warner Textile Archives

Last Friday a group of us visited this lovely rather unknown ex-mill in Braintree. I have wanted to see this place for many years but never managed a day when there is a guided tour available. More of a talk than a tour, but after a good talk from one of the curators we are allowed to look round the exhibition. The talk takes you through the Middle Ages to the present day, from a rich wool town through the fabulous silk era, to the demise of the mill in the late twentieth century from Chinese competition. The talk is all the more interesting if you have read Liz Trenow's book The Silk Weavers. Her silk family connections still exist.
The exhibition includes beautiful samples of old and new silk items. Drawers full of more, and apparently thousands of samples in the archive. They change the exhibition every so often. Sadly no photos as these are not allowed in the place. They have been hurt before by plagiarism. The shop had some lovely
 things in it, and not expensive either. Some designs have been made into greetings cards, on hand made paper, a snip at ten for five pounds!

Spot on Radio Verulam

Well, what a lovely lunch time, being interviewed by Diana of Radio Verulam about our Mimram Quilters exhibition going on this weekend at Welwyn Civic Centre (AL6 9ER). We had such a giggle and she said she hadn't realised how exciting quilting could be!

http://www.radioverulam.com

The Out & About show Friday 12-2pm

Poem quilts

have just come back from Duxford Where the first six poem quilts are being shown. They look lovely and am very pleased. One is not hung brilliantly and will try to get this sorted before Sandown. Brilliant!

Welsh Quilt Museum

My pink whole cloth wall hanging is now in Lampeter in Jen Jones museum. I think the exhibition is going on until November. So I hope to visit the museum to see all of the quilts some time this summer. It will make a nice holiday.
This picture shows the quilt nearly finished some weeks ago. I have called it Gellyg y Mel Cymreig meaning Welsh pears and honey. The Welsh pears is a design very similar to paisley, but the pears have rounded edges. The honey is for the beehive patterns around the border.
I'm off to Duxford at the beginning of March to see the six poem quilts hanging up finally. There will be nine in Sandown in June. Do come and see!