As always, having been a good girl and vacuumed and dusted this morning, it was off to Jedburgh for chat and patch at Borderland Fabrics. As I mentioned yesterday, I took my quilt top of farewell blocks, to start marking it ready to quilt. There are lots of ways to mark quilts, but if it's a light coloured fabric, I just use an ordinary pencil (I have a stock of pencils from various hotels in Jakarta!).
As there is so much detail in the blocks, I am going to quilt the sashings with a simple cable. You can see my template, which I drew out on a piece of paper then glued to a piece of cardboard. On the back of the template, I glued two little pieces of sandpaper, so that the template grips the fabric.
However, there was an interruption to the marking, when we were each given a piece of floral fabric and a piece of a mystery fabric. We were told to stitch the two together, using any kind of pattern we wanted. I didn't think to take a photo of mine at that stage, so Pam let me take a photo of hers (she deserves a medal, as last week she read my entire blog!)
Once we had stitched the two pieces together, all was revealed - the mystery fabric is called 'shrink' and when you blast it with steam from the iron it .... shrinks!!
This is the wrong side of mine - it's only a bit shrunk, but I think you can see that it has come in somewhat.
This photo doesn't clearly show how it has shrunk, but can you see the left-hand flower has some texture?
Of course, as usual, we had to stop mid-afternoon for a cuppa, and this time I remembered to take a photo before all the cake was all eaten ...
Doesn't that sponge look delicious ... would you like a closer look ...
It had apricot jam in the centre and was so light!! Although I love cooking, I'm not much of a baker, so I am in awe of anyone who can produce a lovely light sponge like this - well done Annette!!
ps, I haven't heard from the owner of Fantoosh, so I still can't show you the photos, but no doubt we'll be there again sometime soon, so I'll ask again!!
Hope you all have a good weekend!