The little Victoria plum tree at the bottom of the garden has given me a bumper crop of fruit this year.  

  But as you can see, Mother Nature came out trumps this year!

When you grow your own fruit and vegetables it's lovely to be able to share; although I think my neighbours still haven't recovered from the glut-to-end-all-gluts of courgettes a couple of years back...  So I've given lots of the plums away and frozen, poached, baked and crumbled many more, but there are still some left.  

This weekend we are taking part in the Wokingham Arts Trail.  

In the InStitches Studio we are hosting artists David Cotton and Nina O'Connell and jeweller Machi De Waard as well as showcasing our own work and the InStitches courses and workshops. 

 We will also be offering tea, coffee and (of course!) homemade cakes, with donations going to Macmillan:  an excellent opportunity to convert the excess plums into baked goods!  ​

 In the end I made 4 huge sticky plum Bakewell tarts using a 2013 recipe from Waitrose, with the addition of a generous layer of homemade plum jam on the bottom of the pastry case before I topped it with the almond sponge and dropped in the stoned plum halves.  To save you Googling to find it, here's my adapted recipe:

Sticky plum Bakewell tart
Serves: 12
Ingredients
250g shortcrust pastry
150g butter, at room temperature
150g golden caster sugar
3  Eggs
75g ground almonds
75g  Self-Raising Flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp (homemade) plum jam (optional)
400g  Ripe plums, stoned and quartered
2 tbsp flaked almonds
 
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC, gas mark 4. Roll out the pastry thinly on a floured surface and use to line a 23cm deep, loose-bottomed tart tin. Chill for 5 minutes. If using, spread the base with the plum jam. 
2. Meanwhile, place the butter, sugar, eggs, ground almonds, flour, baking powder and vanilla extract in a large bowl and whisk until well blended.
3.Spoon the filling into the tart case then press the plums evenly into the mixture (they will sink into the centre as the tart bakes). Scatter over the flaked almonds and bake for 40 –45 minutes until risen and golden brown.
4. Leave to cool. Cut into slices and serve.

I think I was a bit generous with filling the pastry cases so a couple of mine overflowed slightly, but that just provided a cook's treat for me to nibble with a cup of coffee - happy days!

The weather forecast doesn't look too brilliant for this weekend, but if you are free and fancy a day out why not pop in and see us at Venue 10?  All the venues on the trail are open 10.30 - 5.30 each day, and if you do manage to visit all 11 over the weekend be sure to have your trail card stamped each time to be in with a chance of winning one of 5 bundles of prizes donated by WAT artists.

Hope to see some of you this weekend,

Hazel & Terry

With quilts selected and rolled, everything made, packed and priced,  it's time to load up the car

which seems to include everything but the kitchen sink.  And before you ask, no we didn't take the vacuum cleaner!

Loading the car ready is like a game of Jenga in reverse and Terry has become quite the expert.  I just carry and hold, I know better than to make 'helpful' suggestions...

Over the years our essential kit has become quite impressive and this year we splashed out on our own cordless drill.  We're women who clearly know how to have fun!

See the festival trolley?  It comes into its own at times such as these and I did notice that a lot more smaller stand holders have realised the benefit too.  We tend to dump everything down in a heap and then get started.  We do have a plan, even thought to the uninitiated it probably doesn't look as though we do.  

Build up is a long day with little time for tea and cakes, but I'd like to think over the years we've developed a good system.  Being the taller one Terry gets to wield the power tools, spirit level and hang the quilts. I'm a dab hand at dressing the tables, sorting stock and handing up the correct length screw when  required.  I also take the photographs - well, one of us has to step up to the plate!

It all takes time, but we do like everything to be 'just so' and judging by the comments I over hear visitors making I think we get it right most of the time.

Our stand is colourful, bright and definitely well stocked.  As our signs say 'Everything on the stand was white until we dyed it'!

Once we've straightened and tweaked, fiddled and poked the stock into order it's time to cover it all up and go to check into our hotel

and , of course, we definitely deserve one of these at the end of build up day!

The next morning all is revealed: thread...a festival of stitch! at Farnham Maltings

or in the Quilting in action area of The Festival of Quilts at the NEC Birmingham

At shows we love catching up with old friends and students and making new ones too. Helping customers select just the right colour fabric or thread,

demonstrating and sharing our passion for fabric printing with all manner of junk, as well as

teaching a variety of workshops and sharing the delight of learning a new skill. In fact 14 year old Millie even ran a poll on her Instagram feed afterwards so her friends could vote on who had made the best brooch - her or her mum.  Millie won!

This year I was thrilled at the Festival of Quilts when one of last year's workshop attendees brought back her sample to show me - and buy more of our thread so she could finish it.  We had such a lovely chat and catch up - she said that the workshop had awakened a love of hand stitching and now she was hooked.  A teacher can't ask for a better endorsement than that!

Of course, we need help manning our stand at shows so we can go and teach workshops and have a sneaky look at the show ourselves! So here's a big thank you to Neel and Gill for helping out at this year's Festival of Quilts and of course the fantastic Christine who also came down and helped in Bristol as well- she also keeps us fed and watered with sandwiches and the occasional gin-in-a-tin(after the show, of course !) We couldn't  manage without you. And of course not forgetting my Mum, who for the last 10 years or so, has come along every Saturday of the Festival of Quilts and brought us lunch - thanks mum x

But  we can't please everyone all of the time,  Morgan-the-Pirate has clearly had more than enough of accompanying his mum and gran around the quilt show and now has other things on his mind.  Still at least InStitches could provide him with a chair!

We have just one more show to go before we resume our teaching schedule and that is when we open the doors of our studio and invite you all to come and visit us as part of the Wokingham Arts Trail on the weekend of 23rd/24th September.  Pencil it in your diary so you don't forget - we'd love to see you and...sssh! there may be a HUGE surprise, no clues....you'll just have to come and find out for yourself!

Hazel & Terry

Both children in this blog appear with the permission of their parents.

Have you enjoyed visiting a quilt/ textile show or Open Studio this summer? I’m sure many of you have, but have you every given a thought to what goes on BEFORE  to get everything ready?

This year we started early with thread...a festival of textiles at Farnham Maltings, then in August, which is far from being a holiday month for InStitches, saw us start with the The Festival of Quilts at the NEC, Birmingham and close with The West Country Quilt and Textile Show at UWE in Bristol and at the end of September we shall be taking part in the Wokingham Arts Trail.

So, what exactly do we have to do to get ready for a show?

Through out the winter and spring we can be found winding thread skeins when we watch tv, that’s nearly 1000 (so far) this year, which is equivalent to 31 miles of thread! They are then scoured (to remove the winding oils from the mill), washed and soda soaked before being dyed. After that they are rinsed, washed and rinsed again - all by hand, before being hung out to dry. Then it’s back to the tv and box sets to re-twist the skeins, label and price.

All the while we are trying to avoid...

...threads of despair!

Sari silk ribbon and vintage wool blankets also receive the InStitches touch of colour before being cut and packed ready for sale.

Metres and metres of fabric are also dye and print, washed and lovingly ironed (!) before being cut up and folded to go into our themed rolls and stacks.  Hazel puts the colour/pattern combinations together and then Terry comes and re-arranges them...team work!

More teamwork is involved in making up the workshop kits for all the teaching we do at the shows.  InStitches' friend Ruth comes into her own at times like these - she colour co-ordinates all the fabrics and threads which she then matches to the handmade labels - no mean feat when you consider how many kits we require!

Last year's printed fabric stash was turned into cushion kits: more ironing, cutting and folding, a coordinated hand-dyed thread selected and an instruction leaflet written, printed and folded...

And if that wasn't enough Hazel had the bright idea that some of the indigo fabric would be great made up into tops ready to wear at the shows...

All this and we haven't even got to set the gallery/ booth up yet; so don't forget to come back and join us next week to see how that went!

Hazel & Terry

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