Nordic Wind Shawl

Hard to believe but it's almost ten months since my trip to Vancouver, BC, and what a busy trip it was - you can read all my posts here.   While there I visited the yarn store, Three Bags Full, and one of my purchases was five balls of  Istex Lettlopi from Iceland - it's an Aran/10 ply 100% wool.  

And The Winner Is ... Oh My, It's Me!!!!!

My battered Bernina Day flyer

In my last post I did mention to you all that yesterday I'd be popping along to the Bernina Day at The City Quilter and then making my first ever visit to Purl Soho. Well I headed along to CQ and had so much fun there that I never left so my visit to Purl Soho has, yet again, been postponed!

Well, if you headed over to CQ yourself yesterday, you'll know exactly why I didn't move any further than having a bite of lunch with my friend, A, at my favourite Manhattan cafe, The Blue Dog on 25th, there was just too much going on and it would have been a shame to miss any of it. Every half hour a raffle prize was drawn - I didn't win one myself but A won a pack of 3 quilt patterns and my other friend, M, won a charm pack. Then every hour there was a Bernina foot demonstration by Gayle Schliemann, Bernina's Regional Manager, and a raffle drawn amongst those who attended the session for the Bernina foot that was just demo'd. Again, I didn't win a foot but A also won a cording foot - wasn't it her lucky day?!

Photo taken by CQ in the Bernina Demo Room

I did buy lots of goodies though:

My collection of goodies

• Add a Quarter ruler as recommended to me by Kati in her comment on my New York Beauty post;
• lime green thread to free motion quilt part of my Sparkle Plenty quilt;
• Clover fork pins - going to give these a go to see what they're like for holding down multiple seam joins;
• Batiks - yes I was so taken with my June Bee Block I want to have another go at making New York Beauty blocks for myself;
• walking foot sole with central guide - I already have the walking foot that came with my Bernina 440QE but my model is before they made included this central guide sole and it's going to be fab for quilting in the ditch;
• and a straight stitch needle plate - I'm reliably informed that this will change my sewing and stop my fabric ever getting dragged down under the sewing plate.

Here's CQ's facebook photo album from the day.

But the best bit of the day - and what I've been holding back from telling you about, is that I did win something -  

I took 1st prize in the Creative Challenge!!!!!

The brief was:

Anyone can submit any finished product they've created on a Bernina to be judged for a first, second and third prize of City Quilter gift certificates.  We'll be looking for the best examples of these machines' exceptional capabilities.

I entered 2 book covers that I've made using a variety of techniques, hand and machine sewing and I won - I'm very, very thrilled.  A big thank you has to go to my friend, I, who mentioned the competition to me last week and without whom I would never have thought to enter - thank you!  By the way, she has her own fab knitting blog that you might want to check out - Chiagu and she's also launching an internet version of Ravelry for us quilters called Quiltfolio which I think will be amazing.

So here's a photo of my prize and also some of my book covers.

 

For details of other fabric, yarn, trim and notion stores that I've visited around the world along with the NYC stores I love, exhibitions and events I've attended and wonderful people I've been lucky to meet click the links below or in my side bar :D

Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only, no payment or commission is received on click-throughs and opinions are my own.

So Much To Do And Not Enough Hours In A Day!

I've spent the last two days learning how to do all this stuff, setting up my facebook page and this blog and linking my accounts on facebook, Pinterest and Ravelry. It's quite a task and really all I want to do is crack on with my latest quilt project - I'm very, very excited about this one, it's top secret for now but over the next few weeks I'll be able to tell you all about it. Bear with me for a while, I need to get my act together but I promise I'll be posting lots of photos with my posts very, very soon!