Playing hooky

Here are some of the pictures I took at Catworth Church when I took a short break from teaching. Its clearly an old church site as the list of rectors attests!

1239 is the earliest name!

There are gargoyles and a small spire, and clerestory windows that flooded the interior with light.

A beautiful stained glass window above the altar with a stunning combination of reds with turquoise blue.

Stained glass above the altar

There were framed photographs on the wall of a set of textile treasures: embroidered ecclesiastical cushions, dating from the fourteenth Century, now I suppose to fragile to be on display.

The font was very plain, but the rood screen old and interesting.

Carved rood screen

700 year old embroidered cushions

Away Day

I went off to teach at Catworth Quilters away the other side of Cambridge from my nest on the Eastern edge of the country. I had a lovely day in a light and airy village hall, once the schoolroom. We made envelope blocks all morning.
Here are some of the ladies hard at work:

And some of their blocks...

and these were really tiny, starting with 2 1/2" squares instead of 5".


In the afternoon we looked at my Eccentric Crosses blocks and there were a few experimental ones made.

Stitch and Flip Bag.

I'm working on another bag, using up some of my nice Japanese fabrics. This is being stitched and quilted straight onto a piece of wadding, but not with extra stiffener. Usually I put the wadding on top of a piece of heavy cotton canvas type fabric - a cotton duck works well, but if you ask for that in Dunelm you get some strange looks, although they do sell a fabric I would call cotton Duck!!

I work across one piece of wadding but making two areas. One for the bag front and another for the bag back, and where they meet, where the side seam would be I just tuck under the edge of the strip that joins them up and machine it down. Then add strips for top and bottom. Progress so far: