Japanese Circles and Squares with Solway Quilters

I spent Friday evening and Saturday with Solway Quilters in Dunfries, where they were the first group to hear my newly revamped "Travels with a Bag Lady" talk - revamped because the bags from the forthcoming "Fabulous Fat Quarter Bags" are now included. Friday evening's talk was in a hall right next to the house where poet Robert Burns lived and died. I felt we were in a very historic place.


On Saturday, we were in another venue for the "Japanese Circles and Squares" workshop. This is one of my favourite workshops, as I get to play with everyone's fabrics. The ultra economical patchwork pattern seems to work in almost any fabric combination. Three of my workshop samples are shown below.

This time I remembered to take some photos while work was in progress - first cutting out -

Machine piecing -


Arranging the finished blocks -

Some of the fabric choices included several batik selections, funky retro prints, Moda vintage prints, seaside blues and sands, Japanese taupes and Japanese gold prints.

Thistle Be were there with a tempting selection of fabrics and - pssst! - told me their sale is starting on April 1st.

I had a very enjoyable time with this hospitable group (they had delicious chocolate cake too...) and hope I'll have a chance to revisit them sometime.

It is a long time since I stitched together a panorama photo, but the view as I drove back along the A75 was worth stopping to photograph (and there was a convenient parking layby). I didn't tweak the contrast or brighten any of the photos before I started cutting and pasting, so the joins are reasonably obvious! The road wasn't really as quiet as it looks - I waited until groups of traffic had passed before taking the next shot. You will need to click on the photo and use the scroll bar at the bottom of your browser to view it properly, as it is going to look tiny on this page.