Festival of Quilts

This year the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham is having a modern category for quilts. If you are interested in visiting the festival Kavanaghs have asked me to let you know about the trip they are offering, leaving and returning from Dublin.  
-Ruth

Details as follows:


Bridge Garage, Urlingford, Co. Kilkenny
Tel: +353 (0) 56 8838833/ 086 2765707
www.kavanaghtravel.com


Festival of Quilts
10-14 AUGUST 2016
BIRMINGHAM NEC
ITINERARY
 

Wednesday 10^th August
06.30hrs - we will pick you up from Terminal One Car Park, Dublin Port and proceed to our Irish Ferries 08.05hrs ferry to Holyhead.

After arrival in Holyhead we will make out way to Birmingham stopping off in Abakhan Fabrics in Mostyn, where you will find a vast stock of craft, fabric, knitting, sewing and haberdashery accessories – or an alternative stop if there are any new suggestions. On arrival in Birmingham we will check into the hotel for our 4 nights. (B&B). On this first evening there will be a talk given by Mrs Irene McWilliam who is a very distinguished member of the Northern Ireland Patchwork Guild, Northern Ireland Embroidery Guild and the Irish Patchwork Society amongst other things.


Thursday 11^th August
After breakfast depart the hotel and travel to NEC to spend the day at the Festival of Quilts before returning to the hotel in the evening.

Friday 12^th August
After breakfast we will again depart the hotel and travel to the NEC for another full day at the Festival of Quilts before returning to the hotel.
Saturday 13^th August
Today, after breakfast, the coach will depart for a day trip to Stratford upon Avon for a visit to the birthplace of William Shakespeare – see attached sheet for some interesting things to see and do. We will return to the hotel in Birmingham in time for you to freshen up and spend the evening at leisure.

Sunday 14^th August
After breakfast we will depart the hotel in Birmingham and return to Holyhead for the afternoon ferry departing at 14.10hrs to arrive in Dublin at 17.25hrs to be dropped off at your original pick-up point.


Cost
€399 per person sharing
€92 single supplement


Price Includes:-
Luxury coach throughout.
Return ferry Dublin – Holyhead.
4 nights hotel accommodation (B&B) (Jury’s Inn, Birmingham)
2 days entrance to Festival of Quilts in NEC.
One day excursion to Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare.



DAY TRIP TO STRATFORD-UPON-AVON
 

Welcome to Stratford-upon-Avon. A town synonymous with William Shakespeare.
However, it is much more than that, a market town with more than 800 years of history containing not only many buildings that survive to day and would have been familiar to Shakespeare, but also a thriving community offering a wide variety of leisure and shopping experiences.
Stratford-upon-Avon is a shopper’s paradise, with a diverse array of shops from Department Stores offering a wide range of choice under one roof, or the big name clothing, health and beauty, toys ans stationery and homeware stores that all sit alongside a fabulous selection of small independent shops, unique to Stratford-upon-Avon. The town centre is compact and easily walkable.

High Street
The black and white Tudor style frontages in this street and the old shop signs give visitors a feel of what the town might have looked like in Shakespeare's time. Rohde Shoes is a High Street shop that has ensured their presence remains in keeping with the old High Street landscape. There is an array of major retailers in this street.

Harvard House - Stratford’s Hidden Gem
The beautifully preserved Elizabethan home built by the wealthy Rogers family has been known K for centuries as ‘the Ancient House’. Harvard House was built in 1596 by wealthy townsman, Thomas Rogers, whose grandson was the main benefactor of Harvard University. Explore the Grade I listed home for a real sense of how wealthy townsfolk lived and see the elaborately carved façade, one of the few remaining beautifully preserved townhouses in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Shakespeare’s Birthplace
William Shakespeare was born in this house and lived here until he was old enough to marry and spend the first five years of family life here with his new wife, Anne Hathaway. For millions of Shakespeare enthusiasts worldwide, this house is a shrine. Here you will discover the world that shaped the man and find out what other famous writers thought when they visited here. Follow in the footsteps of not only Shakespeare, but other well-known visitors such as Charles Dickens, John Keats, Walter Scott and Thomas Hardy. Shakespeare's Birthplace is a fascinating house that offers a tantalising glimpse into Shakespeare's early world.

Discover where the young William Shakespeare courted his future bride Anne Hathaway at her picturesque family home. Anne Hathaway's Cottage is a thatched farmhouse containing many original items of family furniture, including the Hathaway Bed. It is nestled within stunning grounds and gardens, overflowing with fragrant blooms and traditional shrubs. The cottage is in the hamlet of Shottery, which is just over one mile from the town centre and can be accessed via a pleasant, well sign-posted footpath. Highlights at Anne Hathaway's Cottage & Gardens are the new Tudor Courtship exhibition where you can explore the realities of trying to find a husband or a wife in Tudor times. Seek out the remarkable giant willow creations around the cottage gardens or you can relax in the Cottage Garden Cafe, offering a range of hot and cold meals and refreshments.

Rainbow Rose QAL Week 2: Cutting & Piecing

Welcome back to week 2 of our Rainbow Rose QAL

First up congratulations to Olena who linked up a blog post and won our first prize of the QAL by linking up to last weeks post, a fat quarter bundle from LoveFabric.ie!

You can link up any progress on the QAL every week to enter the draw for our brilliant prizes.  For our schedule, see the QAL tab at the top of this page and last weeks post on choosing fabric for your block here.  Over the coming weeks we are going to be exploring the colour wheel and making this block, the Rainbow Rose, in your choice of 2 sizes to make either a 40” x 40” baby quilt or a larger lap or bed quilt 80” x 80”.

Prizes!

This weeks post is sponsored by Giddygoats Craft who have sponsored a prize of 5 fat quarters of Tilda fabric to the value of €20 to a lucky winner who links up to this weeks post.  We are onto cutting your background fabric and piecing the middle sections of our Rainbow Rose!

To win this bundle beautifully modelled by The Tilda dolls, link up a photo, instagram or flickr image, or a blog post of your progress on the Rainbow Rose block by clicking the blue linky button at the end of this post.  Random number generator will choose a winner to be announced next week!  The linky will be open until midnight next Tuesday and the winner announced next Wednesday when we move onto piecing the corners of our block!

Ready to start cutting up some fabric?
 
Let's start with the 40" x 40" baby quilt!
Background Fabric - 1 yard
I've prepared this cutting chart to help make the most efficient use of the fabric.

 

We will need to cut our yard of fabric into strips along the width of fabric (WOF).

1. Cut 2 strips 5" wide
2. Sub-cut strip 1 into 8 squares 5" x 5"
3. Sub-cut strip 2 into 6 squares 5" x 5" and 2 squares 4 1/2" x 4 1/2"
4. Cut 5 strips 4 1/2" wide
5. Sub-cut 1 of the strips into 4 rectangles 4 1/2" x 8 1/2"

The remaining strips will be used to make the borders. We will measure our finished block before trimming the borders to their final size but for now:
   6.  Take 2 of the strips and cut 1 square 4 1/2"x 4 1/2" from each of the strips and put the remaining aside.

If you are not working from yardage you will need the following:

   *minimum length given - we will trim borders to final size once block is complete and the average width and height is measured.

80" x 80" Larger Lap/Bed Quilt
I've rounded up 1/4 yard to allow a little room for straightening up the fabric at the beginning and during cutting to give yourself a clean line. The most efficient way to cut your background fabric for the larger quilt is given in the cutting chart.
 

1. From one end of your yardage cut two strips 9 1/2" x Width of fabric.
2. Sub-cut into 4 rectangles 9 1/2" x 18 1/2"
3. To avoid piecing our borders we are going to use a traditional quilting technique of cutting along the selvedge edge!
4. Cut 2 strips 10" wide by length of fabric.
5. Sub-cut each strip into 7 squares 10" x 10" and 2 squares 9 1/2" x 9 1/2.  Total of 14 squares 10" x 10" and 4 squares 9 1/2" x 9 1/2".
6. From the remaining fabric cut 4 strips 4 1/2" x length of fabric. Again we will measure our finished block before trimming the borders to their final size so put aside for now

If you are not working from yardage you will need the following:

*minimum length given - we will trim borders to final size once block is complete and the average width and height is measured.

Dealing with bias
So far all of the cuts we have made have been on the straight grain of fabric. We have cut vertically along the width and for the larger quilt horizontally along the selvedge.

To make the Half Square Triangles for the Rainbow Rose block we will need to cut our 5" and 10" background fabric squares in half along the diagonal and expose the bias edge.


As every HST is different it would be quite tricky to try and make them using the drawn line method and containing the bias edge. Instead, cutting along the diagonal gives us pieces we can mix and match for our outer ring and inner 8 pointed star.
The bias edge is stretchy and should be handled as little as possible so as not to pull it out of shape before it is sewn to a matching HST. One thing that can help with this is starch!
 

Two years ago when we were cutting triangles for the Triangle-A-Long @ the Sassy Quilter we starched the fabric twice! Yes it was a little stiff but it worked! If you don't have starch or a starch alternative like Best Press just be careful in the handling and you will be fine! If you have starch on hand (bought mine at the local Centra for 2 Euro) spray your 5" and 10" squares and press with a hot iron.

To minimise handling we are going to cut the HST's as we go along!

To start with, let's have a look at the middle pieces which are each made up of 2 squares and 2 HST with background fabric!

Exploring the Colour Wheel
The colours I have chosen for my middles are Red, Yellow, Blue-Green and Purple.

For some reason quite a few people dislike purple and to be fair, it is one of those colours that can be hard to find for stash fabrics. It is considered the colour of European Royalty as the pigments used to make purple were very expensive and not everyone could afford them! In our Rainbow Rose block you need 2 -4 colours of purple. We are using it to bridge moving from blue to pink so a blue toned and a red toned purple would work perfectly!

Red and yellow are warm colours in the colour wheel. The other warm colour is orange. By contrast green, blue, indigo and violet are considered cool colours. However, you can get some warmth within a colour family. Green and purple being the closest to the warm colours can have lots of variation in terms of warmth & coolness.  There are some greens that look warm when next to a cooler version of green, but when compared with an orange, that same green will look cool again.  Colours interact with each other.  Warm colours advance towards you and cool colours tend to sit back. Some of my favourite quilts are those that  mix warm and cool colours in a quilt top (half square triangles and chevron quilts can be very effective using this type of colour palette). 

When talking about colour temperature, I’m always reminded of Trinny and Susannah  from What Not To Wear who said, if you are going to wear red, instead of pairing it with black – keep it hot! I’m not sure I’m up for a red/orange outfit but when it comes to red, a little can go a long way! It commands attention and is the reason it is used in safety signs the world over - think of the big stop sign at the end of the road!  Red is also one of those colours that can be hard to work with tonally. If you look at the colour card there are oodles and oodles of blue colours but not too many reds. We are not using red or yellow to bridge a gap so, as close to true red and yellow as you can get will be perfect.

Yellow is another colour that can be hard to find both in traditional quilts and for stash fabric. The rich warm buttercup yellow is one I am particularly drawn to. The colder lime yellow is actually more eye catching than deep sunflower yellow and is used more on ambulances and emergency vehicles that want to catch our attention when we are driving, so we can get out of the way when needed!  Think of this the next time you want to add a pop of colour to your quilt or draw attention to a particular place in your design!

Finally, for Blue-Green you can use used a mixture of aqua/turquoise/cyan/teal depending on the green and blue colours you are using on either side. This is a bridge colour like the purples and we want to blend with the fabrics before and after.

Cutting & Piecing the Middle Section
1.  Take 4 background fabric squares, 5" for the baby quilt and 10" for the larger bed quilt.
2.  Cut in half along the diagonal to make 2 background triangles per square, 8 in total. 
3.  From the red, yellow, purple and blue-green fabrics you have chosen for the centre sections cut the following from each colour:

• 2 squares 5" x 5" for the baby quilt and 10" x 10" squares for the bed quilt
• 2 squares 4 1/2" x 4 1/2" for the baby quilt and 9 1/2" x 9 1/2" squares for the larger quilt

4.  Cut each of the 5" or 10" squares in half along the diagonal to make 2 identical triangles and put one triangle aside for the 8 pointed star we are going to make later.

5.  Pair each of your coloured triangles with a background fabric triangle by placing right sides together and sew 1/4" seam along the diagonal edge.

6.  Press open or to the side as you prefer and trim to 4 1/2" square for the baby quilt and 9 1/2" square for the larger lap/bed quilt.
 
7.  Make 2 purple, 2 red, 2 yellow and 2 blue-green.

8.  Layout in rows as follows and sew 2 triangles to make row 1 and 2 squares to make row 2.

9.  Finally sew the rows together to complete middle pieces measuring 8 1/2" square for the baby quilt and 18 1/2" square for the larger quilt.

Put aside until we assemble the quilt block!

Remember to win the fat quarter bundle from Giddygoats Craft, link up a photo, Instagram/ Flickr image or blog post by clicking on the blue button below:
 


Thank you to all our very generous sponsors.  Please share the love and visit our sponsors by clicking on each of the photos below! 

Click on images below to visit our sponsors shops:
        

Rainbow Rose QAL Week 1: Fabric Selection

Happy National Quilting week and Welcome to our Rainbow Rose QAL! 

For our schedule see the Quilt-A-Long tab at the top of this page.  Over the next 6 weeks we are going to be exploring the colour wheel and making this block, the Rainbow Rose, in your choice of 2 sizes to make either a 40” x 40” baby quilt or a larger lap or bed quilt 80” x 80”.

Prizes!
Joining us on our QAL journey are our very generous sponsors (see below).   We are kicking off the QAL with a fat quarter bundle to the value of €20 from LoveFabric.ie.

To win a bundle of fabrics from the Cotton Candy range by Dashwood Studios, link up a photo, instagram or flickr image, or a blog post of your fabric pull for the Rainbow Rose block by clicking the blue linky button at the end of this post.

Random number generator will choose a winner to be announced next week!  The linky will be open until midnight next Tuesday and the winner announced next Wednesday when we move onto cutting and piecing some of our block!

The Rainbow Rose Quilt Block

The Rainbow Rose quilt block is based on the colour wheel rather than the rainbow itself. A traditional rainbow has 7 colours, though in reality your eye can see way more colours than that. You don't always see all of the rainbow spectrum in real life, depending on your position to the sun, but when you get a good rainbow view, it's pretty spectacular isn't it!

In school we learned that the rainbow is made up of Red, Orange, Yellow , Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet, by remembering :

Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain under a rainbow sky.

There are other mnemonics to remember the rainbow colours and I'll leave you to look them up. I have no idea who poor Richard was but his defeat is certainly famous and has been stuck in my head since 5th year Physics!

The colour wheel usually contains 12 colours and many books have been written on colour theory especially for quilters! Not to go into too much detail but to give an overview, the colour wheel is typically made up of:

3 primary colours which are used to make up all other colours.

3 secondary colours - Mixing 2 primary colours gives you the secondary colours

6 Tertiary colours - mixing secondary +primary colours

Light is different from paints and pigments in that the primary colours of light are Red, Green and Blue or RGB. You will often see an RGB value in photo editing software. Red Green & Blue combined make white and the absence of Red, Green and Blue gives you black. Varying the values of each can give you many colours which can be displayed on your monitor or TV. All the various colours that can be displayed may not necessarily be able to be printed. Paints and Pigments are a little different!

For paints and pigments, the primary colours of the traditional colour wheel, are taken as Red, Yellow & Blue. (Versions of these colours commonly used are Magenta, Yellow and Cyan! This is what you will find in your printer with the addition of black - CMYK.)


Mixing 2 primary colours gives you the secondary colours:

Red + Yellow = Orange

Yellow + Blue = Green

Red + Blue = Purple

Mixing secondary colours gives you tertiary colours which are very descriptive e.g.

green-yellow, yellow–orange, orange-red, red–purple, purple-blue and blue–green


Putting all of these into the colour wheel gives you:

Red

Red-Orange (Coral)

Orange

Orange-Yellow (Amber)

Yellow

Yellow-Green (Lime or Chartreuse)

Green

Green-Blue (Cyan or Turquoise)

Blue

Blue- Purple (Violet)

Purple

Purple-Red (Red berry colours or Cerise)

Quilts can still read as a rainbow palette even when one colour is missing. Instead of purple I included greys in my triangle quilt and started with green at the centre instead of red!   

For the purpose of our Rainbow Rose try and find various prints from 12 to 16 colours to get you all the way around the colour wheel. I included pink, turquoise and sky blue as extra steps to make the transitions blend. While technically lighter versions of red, blue- green and blue it can make the colour changes in the wheel look more smooth and I think more pleasing in the quilt block.

I broke open charm packs and layer cakes as well as pulling fat quarters to make it all the way around the wheel! It helped a lot to say the colour names in my head like orange-red to pick a blender, telling myself coral or amber, I found I was restricting myself somewhat! Trust your instincts. Everyone sees colour differently. I see blue-greens more as green than blue so go with your gut and what feels right for you!

In the end I went with a scrappy look and tried to find 4 different prints for each of the corners, Orange, Pink, Blue & Green and at least 2 different prints for the middles which for me were Purple, Red, Yellow and Turquoise. Avoid prints that have too much white in them, a little is ok, as long as the overall colour reads as the dominant colour you want, it will work!

What you will need!

For the baby quilt we will be using 5" colour squares + background fabric.

For the bed quilt we will be using 10" colour squares + background fabric. This could be a good opportunity to use some large print fabric you may have in your stash.


Colour is relative and can be perceived differently by the brain when placed next to another colour. As there are so many colours in the wheel itself I would suggest keeping the background fabric to a neutral colour such as white,black, grey or beige. I choose Kona Snow as my background colour - it's one of my favourite off white fabrics to use. You could play with high value/low volume fabrics too for less contrast in your quilt  or a light tone on tone fabric would work beautifully too!


You will need a yard of background fabric for the baby quilt (40" x 40") approx.
 
The lap/bed quilt block finishes at 72" x 72" and using a background colour border it will finish at 80" x 80" and require 3 1/4 yards of background fabric. If you want to make just the block on its own you will need 2 yards of background fabric.

So get gathering and next week we'll start cutting up all that lovely fabric!

Remember to link up to win this brilliant prize from LoveFabric.ie.

Thank you to all our very generous sponsors.  Please share the love and visit our sponsors by clicking on each of the photos below! 

Click on images below to visit our sponsors shops:
        

Spread the word - the more the merrier!