Embroidery goodies

The format of the day was that there were various demonstrators showing a variety of embroidery and textile based crafts, along with stalls selling goodies (always important), exhibitions of work and a lecture in the afternoon.

I've not had much experience of the EG before, so it was nice to see what they all get up to. I do get the impression that they are much more geared towards people who are professionals within the embroidery and textiles field (or retired members that have so much free time that they may as well be doing it as a job) rather than hobbyists like myself, but still it was a nice day where I learnt quite a bit and came away feeling inspired.

Bearing in mind that we're going to hopefully be furnishing a new house soon I purposefully went out with the aim of not spending too much money. I'm pleased to say that luck seemed to be with me on the tombolla though as after buying five tickets (for the grand total of £2) I managed to come away with three prizes!

The prizes were all "inspiration packs" put together by Lincolnshire branch members. With three of them to use I"m hoping that quite a bit of inspiration will come my way!

For a while now I've been harbouring a yearning to try my hand at making a patchwork quilt. Living in such a small flat it's always been pretty impossible due to lack of space, so now that we are moving I am hopeful that I will no longer have that excuse not to. There was a lovely stall from Cotton Dreams where they had a lovely array of fabric fat quarters in some wonderful rich colours. I was (naturally) drawn towards the discount basket and found the following two.

The blue background (which is actually slightly darker than shown in this photo) was what initially drew me to this fabric. The details then made it a must have. The butterflies and ladybirds are just incredibly cute.

The Liberty-style design on this second fabric attracted me as I've recently felt a real fondness for this sort of thing. I'm also a huge tulip fan so that delicate tulips in the design also had a certain pulling power.

I'm hoping that I can pick up many more bits of fabric in a similar (cheap fashion) so that my first attempt at quilt making doesn't break the bank. I just have to cross my fingers that I manage to get a good colour scheme going as well. Time to go and dig out my charity shop purchased quilting book so that I can start dreaming!