summer holidays part two....

So having taken on the floods, the traffic and the emergency services, got to my friends wedding, and out again, I collected my daughter, and battled my way out to Birmingham airport, from where we flew to Scotland to join my dh and stepson. We had a fantastic week on the west coast, not far from Tarbert. Glorious sunshine, lots of playing about in the water, barbecues and chilling with friends. It is a beautiful place to visit.
My thoughts and prayers though remain with the thousands of people who were affected by the floods, not only in this area, but in the north west as well. their lives have been devastated, and it will be many months before they experience something like normality again.
From Scotland, we flew to spain, and spent 2 more fantatic weeks relaxing in the sunshine, and playing in the pool. We visited the aquarium at Valencia one day, and drove miles around some pretty precarious hilly tracks (roads is too dignified) on another, seeing some fantastic scenery on the way, ate some great tapas, drank lots of tinto verrano, (my spanish drink) and read the entire library of books in the villa. 6 if you're interested.
When we came back from Spain, we dropped my daughter back with her father, my stepson back with his mother, and then dh and I departed next day for Budapest. This city comes highly recommended. easy to get around, with buses, trams, metro and trolleybuses. plenty to see and do, some great restaurants, and shamefully, they speak pretty immaculate english. to be fair though, Hungarian is one of the most impenetrable languages in the world. We had 4 wonderful days there, filled with wonderful things to do, including the ethnography museum filled with beautiful folk costumes from the different regions and classes of the country from 100 years ago. sorry, no photos, my camera battery died. Dh then returned to Kuwait, and I headed to Birmingham for the last 2 days of IFQ at the NEC.

What a treat the IFQ was. I know that many of you visited for at least one day, and like me were absolutely blown away by it all. I caught up with Maggie Grey on the WOW stand, and with Angie Hughes of Ledbury Art Place, and met Ruth Isset at long last. I was there with the Faces of Arabia stand from Kuwait. You will have seen some of the quilts previously on this blog, but this one was new. and he would have pretty much stopped you in your tracks as you walked past our stand.
He is by Jenny Bowker, Australian quilter, and the lady who came to judge our show in May. We invited her to submit a quilt to show with ours at Birmingham.


However, the star of the show as far as we were concerned was our own Paramjeet Bawa. she took up quilting 5 years ago, and was persuaded to enter one of her quilts, called 'Duststorm', into the pictorial competition. She was placed second, won the amateur award, the best use of colour award, and the judges award. We later found out that she had also won the viewers choice award. the quilt then went to Houston, and today, Paramjeet has found out that it received an honourable mention there. Are we proud bunnies or what?!!! For those of you who didn't make it to the show, or didn't see it, here it is:

















There followed a week of visiting friends, travelling the length and breadth of the country, before returning to Ledbury, and a 21/2 day workshop with Angie Hughes. Now that is the way to finish a holiday, well nearly. there were 4 of us, in the heat of a proper summers weekend playing, sorry, working with mixed media, and having so much fun. I will add photos to this when I get my work back from the art teacher I have lent it to. The Ledbury Art place offers all sorts of wonderful workshops throughout the year, but this was the first time I have been able to fit one in.

My last textile trip of the holidays was to the Forge Mill Needle museum in Redditch to see the finalists in the Charles Henry Foyle Trust competition. The winner Karin Millson, lives in the Middle East, and has just finished a C&G level 3 Diploma in design and stitched textiles with Sian Martin and Distant Stitch. (the same course I am on). The pieces was a hanging, and was a very clear winner. Congratulations to Karin.

So anyway, that is why I have been out of contact for so long, promise not to let it be so long til the next post. Now I am concentrating on the first meeting of the KTAA, but more of that next post.