What a lovely review!

Last weekend, I taught another contemporary quilting class. I love it more and more every time I teach it. I hope that my students feel great and inspired at the end of it, but the below review blew me away (and yes, it made Ed a bit teary eyed...  he's a writer, what can I say...)

Excerpt below, full the full review just click here as Becks wrote about The Papered Parlour also.
 

Thanks Becks - your quilt was very,very beautiful.
 

"Well. Within the first five minutes I kind of felt like a failure... Our teacher for the day was Cassandra Ellis, who was wonderful and inspiring and gave us a rousing speech at the start of the class about how special quilts are and how they should really mean something to the quilter and the recipient of the quilt. We'd all been asked to bring a special piece of fabric to work into the piece of patchwork we'd be making today. As we went around the room introducing ourselves, special pieces of material were pulled from bags: sarongs from special holidays, favourite curtains, something special for someone's daughter... I coughed and mumbled that I'd bought my fabric from Liberty the week before. #Fail. But in the end I was rather glad I did. Fabrics were provided for the class and people sewed some lovely things with them, but they weren't really my taste (all a little too pink!) and I was glad to have this selection to fall back on.

Still, I wanted a story behind my first quilt too. When I was at the V&A I picked up the Gentle Art of Quilt Making and loved the ideas in it of finding quilts themes in every day life (tiles on a wall, a Russian scarf, fields of tulips...) Then, with the fabrics scattered on the table in front of me, I saw it. Inspired by the pottery of Holland, I decided to make a Delft quilt. I love the blue and white colours of Dutch pottery, and, since I grew up there, it has the nice sentimental touch I was looking for. So, it took me a while, but I got there in the end, and started cutting.

 

As well as inspiring us by showing off her fabulous quilts and telling us great quilting stories, Cassandra was also a great practical teacher, showing everyone at their own pace how to cut fabric with a rotary blade, giving us several different quilt patterns to work from and showing us to to sew our squares together".