The Quilt Room

NEC and Home Again

Here is Nicky still looking remarkably cheerful at the NEC. She was probably dreaming about her holiday. I've just taken her to the airport as she is jetting off to Los Vegas for a week. I'm back in Cornwall with yet more rain - it really has been a dreadful summer.

The NEC was a great show - it really gets better each year. We took most of the quilts from Jelly Roll Quilts - you can just see Daisy Chain hanging on the left - plus the quilts on the back wall are for the new book - all very exciting.

Everyone was so complimentary about the book - thank you all so much - and we heard that we have now gone into a third print run! Amazing as this means that nearly 50,000 copies have been printed since May.

We managed to get our Catalogue out before the show so if you haven't received yours yet maybe you have slipped off the mailing list. Just phone up and the girls will send you one out. Nicky has put everything on to the web site now so everything can also be ordered on line. So as Nicky is probably arriving in Los Vegas about this time - I'm off to the pub for a Cornish night out!

Sandown... and my feet are still hurting!

We have just finished the National Quilt Championships at Sandown which was a really good show this year. It is however incredibly tiring and to make matters worse I had to get back to Cornwall for this morning so I had to have a really early start and I left Dorking at just after 4.30 am.

On the left is Nicky last Thursday on set up day putting the finishing touches on our stand and below is Nicky on the first day not looking quite so relaxed!

If you receive our email updates you will have read that if you came and said hello it would entitle you to a free Quilt Bag for Life. I know we hope that people read our emails but even so we were amazed and delighted at how many people came to say hello - it was such a good way of meeting our regular customers.

Now the most exciting part of the show for me was that I bought a quilt - not just any old quilt but one I had been hankering after ever since Nicky quilted it a month or so back. It is a reproduction of a quilt made during the American Civil War in 1863 by a Jane Stickle of Vermont, USA. and made famous by the Dear Jane book which contains all of the 169 4½in blocks designs and intricate border.

Here is a picture of me with Joyce Dawe who you will know from The Contented Cat standing next to her amazing quilt. Joyce has been working on the quilt for the past 10 years or so and it is made entirely by hand. I know what you are thinking - how could she possibly part with it - and I just feel so lucky that she is entrusting it to me.

Eventually I want to hang the quilt at home and I have just the perfect place for it. It is however such an exquisite piece of work that I feel others should be given the chance to see it first and we've come up with the idea of a series of free workshops - yes I said free - where you can come along and sew a block and admire the quilt. Check for details in our Workshop Programme which is due out 1st July. It can be viewed on line or pop into the shop and collect your copy. This is one you don't want to miss.