Father's Day and All That

Dave is pleased that J & R have clubbed together to get him a session of clay pigeon shooting, for Father's Day when he's had a bit of practice he could try it out on the real pigeons that like to land in our garden and keep eyeing up my vegetables! (only joking). we had the Father in Law here for lunch and he seemed to enjoy the barbecue and also the t shirt that we bought for him, especially as he thinks it wont need to be ironed, he's not into ironing! (join the club).

I've had a nice couple of days, I started on my pieces for the ERTF exhibition that's in Cambridge in September, and I've also started making a quilt for our bed. I purchased the fabric in Charlottesville VA, a couple of years ago, on the last day of our holiday, we had travelled all around Virginia, we started in Washington DC, on route I had managed to pick up lots of fabrics from the lovely patchwork shops in the US and as usual had to buy another case to bring it all back. This shop Cottonwood quilt shop was lovely and the batiks, well I just had to have it! Until now the block of wonderful stuff has been sitting on the side in my workroom and I've just been drooling over the colours. A few weeks ago I took the fabric block with me to my C&G class so they could all look at it too, my friend Sheila gave me a pattern and encouraged me to let go of my obsession and make the quilt that I had actually bought the fabric for. Last week I took the plunge got out my rotary cutter out and now I'm stitching it into a lovely quilt. I'll keep you posted on that one, promise! see my lovely fabric before I cut it!

This week is going to be a full one, I think I've only got one day at home, even then I've got someone coming for coffee at some point. I did invite her for Friday, then when checked my calender discovered that I wouldn't be here, that could have proved embarrassing and lost me a friend at the same time, oops!

Catching Up

This is a photograph of the garden before it was beaten down by the torrential rain on Monday!

The warm up before the Race for Life on Sunday, my son's girlfriend and her Mum are in this photograph but they are shy so I thought I'd better not put up a photograph that would identify them, other than to say they are wearing white t-shirts! SGF ran and did 5km in 20 minutes. After this I've decided that I'm definitely not doing the Moonwalk!

This is the Gin and Tonic that I enjoyed on Saturday! Thanks for the idea Gina

Tea and Textiles

Since my last post the Tea and Textiles has been and gone, it was a really good day it was nice to meet up with new and old friends, there were lots of cakes, also lots left over! Chrissythreads had worked very hard on getting her house ready to throw open and it was very much appreciated but a lot of hard work for her! It's a lovely photograph of Julie helping visitors to the cakes, I've got to say that The Material Girls do always lay on a good spread, our shared lunches are always a feast!

Sadly my Mums eldest sister died at the age of 90, so I went to her funeral last week. My Mum is the youngest of 7, she's taken it very hard. Her and my Aunt were very close since they were both widowed and had become companions, until my Aunt first became ill a few years ago my Mum would pick her up in her car and go off for the day on shopping trips or out for lunch . My Aunt lost her confidence so Mum would visit her and they would reminisce about old times over tea and cake,(must be a family trait)  although she couldn't get around very well she still had all her (how shall I put it) marbles! which is rare these days, so many people seem to end up with some degree of dementure which is very sad! Anyway the wake was very nice just how my Aunt would have wanted it we got together and talked about old times and the Christmas's and family get togethers that we had when all of us cousins were children, as we all said goodbye we said that we must get together for another reason other than a funeral. We all have our own lives and families now, but I must make an effort to keep in touch with them all, there's 8 of us, funny there always seems more when we're all together, must be all the noise we make.

I didn't get to City &Guilds class this week as I felt a bit under the weather I thought I had a cold coming on a sore throat, but it didn't develop into anything serious, but I didn't want to pass anything on!

Today I went to a Quilting Exhibition  30 years of the Marsh Quilters , I wandered around looking at some really lovely work and came away feeling quite inspired (hope it lasts). I had a cup of coffee and bought a pair of earrings which I'll probably only wear once and some lovely fabric from the African Fabric Shop. From there it was a drive to the Romford and West Essex Embroiderers Guild, it was Founders Day I think they have been going for 15 years. A really fun meeting, unlike last month but best not to go there! The speaker could have bored for England..... I'm organising a weekend workshop for the branch in 2010 and the places are filling up nicely one of the workshops is already full and has a waiting list, so that's good.

I've decided to give a sneak preview of one of my pieces of work for the Material Girls exhibition, I'm such a tease! But it's only a small section. Why can I never get the images where I want them to go, they just seem to pop up in odd places despite the fact that I tick the box, do others find this? I wanted the image to be in this section not at the top of the posting.

Tomorrow we are off to watch our sons partner running in the Race for Life she's been training for weeks and is now thinking that next years she may do the moonwalk. I did the moonwalk a couple of years ago and it was an experience, which at the time I said would never be repeated but occasionally I do think that maybe............

Next week a few of the Material girls are getting together to make up inspiration packs for the ERTF exhibition in September more about that another time.