And the other doll..

....arrived on Saturday too, and is also settling in very well to life in the States with my friend Melissa at Ardea's Nest. I was so busy getting ready for the Festival of Quilts that I didn't log on and only discovered she had also arrived at her destination yesterday.

This is Evie, the Quilting Witch:


She's all cloth (well she does love to quilt, so it seemed only right.)
Evie is a sunny soul, who loves stitching and flowers, and lots of bright, cheerful colours! No dull black for her. She's also very environmentally aware, hence her green outfit. She'll be perfectly at home creating lots of different fabric projects with Melissa, who is always coming up with wonderful and practical stitching ideas. I hope Evie makes herself useful!

So there we have two very different dolls, for two very special and talented ladies!

Now the show - well, it was a great day, and as it was the final day of the four it was relatively quiet, pleasant and easy to walk around. Having said that, it's so huge, that we did not see even half of what was on show, and I'm afraid we had to spend a large proportion of time looking around the marketplace, ahem. I bought lots of pretty fabric, some silks and embellishment for my doll course, and this book, which is a advance copy signed for me by the author, Lisa Lam of U - handbag.

She has some great pictures of the show over at U- handblog. It was great to meet Lisa, I've found her tutorials so useful. She's lovely, and great fun. The book is excellent, rather than the usual idea of several easy projects to follow it's a really useful guide to creating bags, and making them look professional. It's like having all your tutes in one place and being able to carry it around. There are lots of tips and tricks and it's written in a user friendly and fun style, with really good photo references. A winner!

My friend Helen bought Kafe Fassett's new book and he signed it, but he was rather quiet. We got the feeling he would rather not have been there..... It was great seeing his quilt designs 'for real' thoug,h and also those of Jane Brockett, I'm going to try one of her quilts for my patchwork class. Sadly we missed seeing Amy Butler, maybe next time. There were no dolls or doll related items which I could see, nor hand any embroidery, I probably need the Knitting and Stitching Show for that........ x