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A trip to Exeter

30/3/2015

I had a blustery and drizzly drive down the A303 to Exeter on Saturday to visit the Grosvenor Spring Quilt Show where I had been invited to provide a display of quilts from the last 10 years. I met my mum and sister and a friend there, none of whom are quilters, and enjoyed looking at the displays from a different perspective and answering all their questions.

It is a fairly small show and a great showcase for the talents of South West Quilters, an umbrella organisation for all the local groups in the south west. I was really taken by their massed display of banners and also their Flower Power challenge where there was an exquisite long-arm machine quilted yellow wholecloth quilt (but no photos unfortunately due to too much talking !).

Other invited exhibitors included Gillian Travis and Pat Archibald, Kathy Unwin, Alicia Merrett, Christine Restall, Jeanette Orr, Mary and Karen Milne and Eileen Blood (to name a few). The few pictures I did take are below.

Gillian Travis' Indian ladies

Pat Archibald & Gillian Travis

Kathy Unwin - A Sad Tale's Best for Winter

Alicia Merrett (sadly hung too high for a good image)

Sandra Longley - Challenging Shapes

I really love the secondary patterns in this quilt above - one minute I see circles, the next squares on point.

If you missed the Spring Quilt shows, most of these quilts will also be at Malvern in May and at Springfields Quilt Show, Spalding in June. Check Grosvenor's website for dates and times.

Hazel will be showing a retrospective of her quilts starting at the National Quilt Championships at Sandown in June - that's our local show, so if you're in the area be sure to check them out.

bye for now

Terry

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It's been a while...

28/3/2015

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...but here we are! We have been very busy here at InStitches this month and blogging seems to have dropped off our 'to do' list', so what have we been up to?

At the beginning of the month we were delighted to welcome back Anne Moore as a guest tutor, this time we had 'A day by the seaside'. After a cup of coffee and homemade biscuits everyone soon got busy making their very own beach huts, each one as individual as their maker!

Over a lunch of homemade soup and cheese board there was chance to catch up with friends and to make new ones...

...before it was time to get building again.

and here are Joan and Sarah's finished huts. Bring on the sunshine!

and there was cake...

Two delicious recipes this time, and because they use coconut flour they are both gluten free.

Coconut blueberry chia muffins

Ingredients

1 cup Organic Coconut Flour
½ tsp Sea Salt
1 tsp Baking Soda
½ cup + 2 tbsp Raw Honey
1 cup Coconut Milk
6 Eggs
4 tbsp Vanilla Extract
4 tbsp Organic Virgin Coconut Oil
4 tbsp Organic Chia Seeds
1 cup Organic Blueberries

Instructions

Preheat oven to 180°C / gas mark 4.
Sift the coconut flour, baking soda & salt in a bowl.
In a blender or bowl mix the milk, honey, eggs, coconut oil and vanilla.
Add the chia seeds and blend on low. Let sit for 5-10 minutes.
Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl with dry ingredients and mix well.
Spoon the batter into muffin cases or well greased muffin tins.
Bake at 180°C / gas mark 4 for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown and cooked through.
Cool on rack and serve.

I didn't have blueberries to hand, but frozen blackcurrants, picked from my allotment last year, were a perfect susbtitute. I think raspberries would work really well too.

The chocolate dipped coconut macaroon recipe can be found here. I don't fiddle around putting the chocolate in the middle of the macaroons, but squash spoonfuls of the mixture onto the baking sheet, bake and then dip in melted chocolate once they are baked and cooled. Yum!

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YSP (or the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for those not from Yorkshire...)

5/3/2015

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There is one place guaranteed to get ALL my family out and walking and that is a trip to the YSP. We love it. Always have. And being from Yorkshire, we also love the fact it is FREE!

Unfortunately the day we chose to visit was in the middle of an exhibition change over, Emily Sutton's exhibition was being taken down and Henry Moore’s being put up: but that didn’t spoil the day. The sun was out, the day was crisp, the air bracing, and there was masses and masses of snowdrops in flower. Perfect really.

We stopped by the historic and newly-restored St Bartholomew’s Chapel to take in 'Song for Coal', an immersive audio-visual work by Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson, which coincides with the 30-year anniversary of the UK miners’ strike. Once you have adjusted to the dark and tuned your senses in to the music it was just amazing. What initially sounds like Gregorian chant is the song of coal, and the kaleidoscope of images which makes up the rose window is quite hypnotic.

Out side the Chapel is Ai Weiwei's Iron Tree (2013), the first project by the artist in a British public gallery since Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern in 2010.

Whatever the season, there is always something to see at the YSP, with at least 60 works on display across the estate at any one time. Artists featured in the open air include Roger Hiorns, Sol LeWitt, Dennis Oppenheim, Martin Creed, Anthony Caro and Magdalena Abakanowicz. But one of my family favourites is Anthony Gormley: One & Other (2000)