Two quilt shows and my new project

It has been an interesting week with plenty of quilty news.

I have taken all your advice and started a quilt for myself at last. My fabric is Printemps by 3 Sisters Fabrics for Moda. The palette is a mix of duck egg blue, pale yellows and corally pinks and has a slightly more traditional design.

I chose a pattern by Melissa Corry of Happy Quilting called Summer Breeze. I've been following Melissa for a few months and love her style. She offers masses of advice and tutorials on her blog. Check it out here. Summer Breeze was her first published pattern and is one of many available from her Craftsy shop.

I think this design will show off the fabrics I have chosen. The pattern is layer cake friendly with instructions to cut from 10" squares. I decided the queen size quilt was large enough and this size required almost 2 layers cakes plus 5.25yards of background fabric. Again I have gone for Kona Snow. Luckily Moda manufacture one of the designs in the range in an extra wide width(108") so I have ordered this for the backing. Still not sure about the border though so I'll wait until the top is finished before deciding on colour. I spent a couple of hours cutting and preparing this afternoon and ended up with the prettiest pile of scraps!

Earlier this week I visited the Kaffe Fassett exhibition at the American Museum in Bath. In all honesty I was slightly underwhelmed. It could have been because there was so much hype in blogland about it. I much preferred last years exhibition at the Welsh Quilt Museum. However it was a lovely day out with fellow quilters from Busy Bees. There was plenty of needlepoint and knitting and clever arrangements of various artefacts but the quilts lacked impact despite the colours. The gardens were looking pretty and the Museum itself is worth a visit.

Buttoned hats

Needlepoint chair

The quilting highlight of the last week was the exhibition in my local town of Penarth by the Penarth and District Quilters. This group meets regularly in a local church hall and have years of experience in all kinds of quilting. The exhibition was a real delight.

Marvellous trapunto work on Japanese fabric

There were too many photos and too many beautiful quilts to show. What's more, there was tea and home-made cakes. A fab morning.

I'm sorry if the post is a bit photo heavy but it's been that kind of week- lots to see and admire.

I hope you are enjoying the summer wherever you are. It is going to be a warm week so I might enjoy the garden a bit myself.

Catherine