29 March 2015

At last. I've finally found the password and the way into this blog. I blame the new computer. We had a very busy day yesterday. In the morning Sally gave a whistle stop tour of the needles, threads, thimbles, fabrics, wadding recommended for quilting. She then demonstrated the rocking method used for the quilting stitch. So there we were thinking it was simple running stitch. How wrong we were and I, for one, will do some practising.

Apologies for the lack of pictures.

The afternoon talk was given by Helen Farrar, Curator of Textiles at Bradford College Textile Archive. She shared with us a snapshot in time, 1900, and brought with her some of the students workbooks from this period. Again no photographs but there is a website for the archive. Helen welcomes all visitors to the archive by appointment. A few of us, well, two to be precise were intrigued by her mention of the lappet machine. Internet searches since the talk have not revealed whether these machines were first made to produce a machine lace to make lappets or whether the word 'lappet' was once in common usage as 'a dangling thing'. Any thoughts on the subject readers?

Yesterday saw the end of round one of the Travelling Book trial challenge. Again no photographs but I can at least add photographs of mine returned.

 Barbara

 Beverley

Hilary, double page spread

Sheila

Sally

All participants took the theme of the first piece. Using pieces of 'intesting' purchases at venues such as the Knitting and Stitching show which have lurked in bags ever since. 

...and finally. This month was the Womersley Cup award for the subject 'Seasons'.  Won this year by Jan and her delightful French knots.