Digitised designs...

Here are a variety of quilts with edge to edge or digitised designs that recently went home....

Firstly Nan's quilt which is a twisted log cabin design, quilted with 'A Tisket, A Tasket' in pink thread, looks lovely, doesn't it?

This quilt from Annie is pieced in a zipper type design, the backing fabric was supplied by me, sad to say that is the last of this bolt. Quilted with Crystal Maze, (that's a really unisex design) in a blue/grey thread.

Pats half hexie quilt was pieced in a class was pieced in a class with Kevin at Fabric Focus in Edinburgh. The fabrics all have bee associations, so the cute Bumble bee quilting is fabulous in a honey coloured thread....

Jeans pineapple quilt in Oriental fabrics is quilted with 'Bedazzled' in a gold thread, the quilted shows up wonderfully on the self type backing fabric
....

Kathleen's two quilts were already quilted and bound when I received them, so I added leader strips to enable me to attach them to my frame. I quilted Animal Crackers in the channels that were made by the previous quilting, it out worked really well...

I'll be back in a while with a couple of super custom quilted quilts....

The French Connection....

I recently had the opportunity to travel to France to take part in a training course for technicians offered by APQS (American Professional Quilting Systems). I had to weigh up the pros and cons of whether to miss the local Common Riding and all of it's festivities against a week very nearly on The French Riviera, as you can imagine it was a difficult decision.  I flew from Manchester through Schipol, Amsterdam, into Montpellier, my bum hardly touched the sun lounger on the island infront of the airport when our host Suzan came around the corner in her sports car to pick me up and give me a small tour of the area, before dropping me off at my hotel, Les Coquilles in Palavas Les Flot. My hotel was right there on the beach, it was a hard week!
I spent a couple of days as a tourist, visiting the harbour, local markets and having a day trip into Montpellier with Janne and Trond before our training proper started.

Once our training days were underway we were welcomed into Suzan and Renee's home where the longarm machines were waiting. Mark and Amy from APQS had travelled from Des Moines, Iowa, USA to give us their expert help and instruction to get through the certified training course.

At lunch time we were treated to wonderfully fresh foods, all locally grown with the intense flavours associated with fruits and salads grown in the sun.

 We were from Norway, Geneva Switzerland,  Russia, France, England and Scotland

This was a real hands on course adjusting repairing and replacing parts as needed and we all have 100 questions to answer to make sure we have read and understood our training manuals....

I flew back from Montpellier through Paris Charles De Gaule airport into Manchester before heading south into North Wales for a family visit with Ann and Allan, with a visit to Chester and surrounding area. Ann and Allan have lived here for near on 40 years, shame on me for not visiting sooner.

I'll be back soon with some quilting photos.....