When I was labelling the piles of pieces for the baby quilt, my eye was drawn to the logo in the corner of the notepaper
I used to be a member of the Quilters' Guild - for a while I was even an Area Rep. The badges then were, for me, stylish and elegant
but those in charge decided to modernise the look ....... and this much derided logo was the result
back then, I went through a spell of collecting badges, most of which I have pinned on my sewing bag. You will no doubt recognise the material the bag is made from - it is from Provence. Malcolm had been working on a major project in Provence, leaving home at lunchtime on Sundays, and getting home late on Friday nights. So after this had gone on for several weeks, I went out to Aix-en-Provence to sppend a week with him ...... and while I was there, I not only bought lots of Provencal fabric, I also bought this bag
I was given the little badge at the top left by the owner of quilting shop in San Antonio, Texas. Malcolm was due to go to Houston on (yet another) business trip, and as it was just before Easter, he arranged to have a few days holiday. While he was working, I had a few days pottering round some excellent little local shops, and one day I had a marathon session, in a cocoon of pillows, eating chips and dips, watching back to back episodes of CSI!! When Malcolm had finished his business, we travelled to San Antonio, and consulting the phone book, I found the address for this shop ...... although it was somewhat harder to find the shop, as the road to it ran through an enormous military base - which post 9/11 had been closed, so we had to make a huge detour
these two badges were from my trip to a quilt symposium in New Zealand in 2001 (that was the famous occasion when I said to Malcolm can I go, and he replied "you can go if you want to"!!) The badge on the left is a Scottish Region Quilters' Guild badge. I gave one to a man called Craig Brown (good Scottish nmae - at that time the manager of the Scottish national football team was also called Craig Brown), who was mayor of the town of Whangerei ...... he could trace his ancestors back to the "Nova Scotians" - Scots who had emigrated to Canada, didn't like it, and had travelled on to, and settled in, New Zealand. He said he would wear the badge with pride at council meetings - I wonder if he did?
more Quilters' Guild badges, and my Stirling Castle Quilters badge - I was one of the founder members of the group, and was their second chairman ....... and then some years later when we came back from Indonesia, I rejoined the group, and ended up being chairman for a second time!
and yet another crop of badges, pinned to my various identity badges for the Houston quilt show, and the (now defunct) European Expo
and now for the mother's ruin (or do I have the apostrophe in the wrong place, is it mothers'?) I found several recipes for redcurrant gin online, all of which said to put the redcurrants and sugar in a bowl and mash them together, then transfer them to a jar. But I thought why dirty a bowl, and just weighed out the redcurrants in the jars
the great thing about my digital scales is that I can push a button to return the setting to zero, then weigh the next ingredient, in this case the sugar
I tried mashing them with a fork, but it was hard going - so I simply added some of the gin and used my stick blender
there were so many redcurrants, I also prepped some vodka! Now it just has to mature for two or three months!!