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.....

Edge to edge designs....

I did find that elusive SD card from my camera, guess where it turned up, there were a few quilt photos on there too....

This is Margaret's Chimney quilt, that's the name of the block, pieced from the scrap bag and quilted with Gypsy a digitised design and cream thread

Mary's read and blue stars quilt is huge and was quilted with Chocolate Leaves a digitised design and silver thread

A colourful quilt from Frieda, it's a Tula Pink pattern, quilted with Bejewelled a digitised design and using a blue/green batik backing fabric supplied by me @ Borderline Quilter.

This is Mary's star quilt, unfortunately this seems to be the only photo I have, lots of colourful stars and quilted with Midsummer a digitised design using a white thread....

Sheena's quilt is a block of the month type design with piecing and faux applique, quilted with Chocolate leaves a digitised design using cream thread

Jane's Shoofly quilt was pieced from her scrap bag, it looks lovely and was quilted with Midsummer a digitised design and white thread.

And there we are all caught up with photos, I'll be back soon with some quilts from May.....

Digitised quilting....

OK, I'm frantically trying to find an SD card that has photos of recently quilted quilts on it, the card is being a little evasive just now, but I have come across a few quilts on my laptop that haven't had a showing yet.
So some photos of quilts that were here around late March, early April might have been lost in the confusion of loosing my phone although I did take photos on my camera too, so sorry if your quilt different make the blog.

 Claire pieced this quilt top for her good friend Lorna who owns a camper van, isn't it fabulous and what a unique gift, I quilted it using a digitised design named Seafoam.

Another quilt from Claire randomly pieced with a lovely bright jelly roll and quilted with a digitised design named Midsummer

Isn't this a lovely child's quilt pieced by Grace and quilted with a digitised design named Seafoam