North Country quilting…day 2

It being summer, here in Lancashire it has done nothing but rain, rain and rain some more for the past 3 days.  It’s raining now as I type.

Saturday, therefore, it was raining too.  A perfect day for sitting quietly with a lovely group of like-minded women and sewing a quilt.

So that’s what I did.

It was the second day of the North Country quilting course.  The day where we put our layers togetherpinned it all in placeand tacked it to within an inch of its lifeAs you can see we all worked together to layer and pin each other’s quilts. The conversation turned to the women across the centuries who had gathered as we did to work on quilts together and how, had they been transported in time to our table, they would have recognised everything we were doing.

I love this connection to the past, and that there were 3 generations of my family working together on 3 quilts, leaving our mark for the future.

Once the quilts were all basted it was time to learn the specialised rocking stitch used to load the needle and create evenly spaced stitches.  I can only say that it’s not as easy as it looks.  Jean, our tutor, was very patient and encouraging.

But, by the end of the afternoon, having been fortified with much apple and ginger cake (from the simplest recipe ever)and strawberries supplied by HimmelbjergetI was starting to get the hang of it

My quilt is started.