Facebook Live 13th March 2021 - Floating Quilts, Quilting Tips and Techniques and Design Inspiration

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Quilting Quilting Quilting!

We are getting a sense of how much piecing and quilting has been taking place during lockdown in the UK and around the world. We are all so fortunate to have an outlet for our creativity at a time when our normal lives have been set aside. Judging by how busy the sewing machine companies have been in the past year we know lots of people have been stitching away piecing lots of tops. 

But then you have to quilt it!

Quilting by Ann Eckley on a Sweet Sixteen Sitdown / Stationary Machine

Quilting by Ann Eckley on a Sweet Sixteen Sitdown / Stationary Machine

We love to see our customers' finished quilts and one of our customers, Ann, sent us this one last week. She's had her Sweet Sixteen machine about a year. She used the Arc Set B Ruler and Handi Versa Tool. Her echo of the Dresden Plate is really effective and we think she has done a beautiful job on this quilt. The concept of echoing applique designs is quite a traditional way of quilting by hand or machine.

So in this week's Facebook Live on our Facebook Page we cover floating your quilt on a frame, using the clamps to secure your quilt for floating, how to fit an extra hand wheel and why you might want to have an extra hand wheel...plus lots of tips, techniques and inspiration!




Join us wherever in the world you are. Please do say hi and where you are from when you join.

Or catch up when convenient on You Tube or Facebook. 

Special Offers until Friday 19th March 2021 12 noon While stocks last

If you liked the tip on getting your backing nice and flat you can see the original tip by Jamie Wallen on You Tube...


Pete has done a video on how to fit the Hand Wheel which you can view on You Tube. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to our You Tube Channel so that you are notified when new videos are uploaded.





Talking of inspiration keep reading as we'll be covering some quilt inspo in this blog post at the end of this post...

Pinhole Quilting Update This Week

Last week Pete and I had our busiest ever week since we began Pinhole Quilting in 2017. We know that there are lots of quilt tops out there. Lots of people want to get into longarming. We've been busy getting all our orders out to customers, testing the new machines to make sure everything is working as we would like after flying over from Salt Lake City and getting in new Glide threads..and............this week we did lots of Zoom demos and drove over to Cambridgeshire for this Amara with Pro-Stitcher installation. 



First design on this new Amara with Pro-Stitcher - Karlee Porter's design

A perfect fit into this space installed this week


So whether you want to finish your own quilts on your domestic machine (perhaps longarming is in your future but not right now), have it longarm quilted by a professional longarmer, finish it on your longarm or are in the market for a longarm we hope that you find our Blog Posts have something for you with tips and techniques that help you on your quilting journey.

BBC's Antiques Roadshow

Every now and then I see something that makes me just want to go and design something. Unfortunately we're so busy that I don't have space in my head to do that right now but it will be filed for doing later. 

But, I can share it with you and maybe you have time!

I was watching a 2021 Antiques Roadshow today and someone brought in a painting by Anwar Jelal Shemza. They had been taught by him when he lived in Stafford. What an amazing teacher to have had. You can read more about his background on this link.

The City Walls was the name of the painting. It was the use of colour that struck me. Always for me it's the colour, use, repetition, density, contrast. 

As Sonja Delaunay said "One who knows how to appreciate colour relationships, the influence of one colour on another, their contrasts and dissonances, is promised an infinitely diverse imagery."



I started googling - I could see this was quickly going to be a rabbit hole. 

If you're in the UK you can watch the 3 minute excerpt from the programme here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0977h7q

Or follow this link to where there was an exhibition of his work (he passed away in 1985) - LINK to Tate

Here are a few images of his paintings. They could be very inspiring for Modern Quilting. He used printing as well as painting in his work.  






Design Inspiration

A few years ago I spoke with Mary Palmer from Cork who won the Handi Quilter award for Best in Show at Festival of Quilts 2019 and our Handi Quilter Ambassador Hilde van Schaardenberg about design in preparation for a design workshop I was running. Mary recommended this book and I recommend it to you. You can get a secondhand copy. I don't think it's in print any more. It gives a wider perspective on design. The author is Steven Aimone.



Location: Unit 22, Highgrove Farm, Seaford Ln, Pinvin, Pershore WR10 2LF, UK

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