Crafty Ladies: Meet Lucie Summers

This week's Crafty Lady is Lucie Summers of Summersville. 

Lu is a designer and quilter whose work positively pops with colour and pattern. I am always wowed by her quilts, adore her fabric designs and drink tea out of my Summersville mug most days. 
 

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Hello! 

I’m Lucie Summers, known around the internet and to my friends as Lu. I’m a screen printer, award winning quilter, and now author (!) living in the Suffolk countryside with my farmer husband, two football/cricket mad sons and a large ginger cat, imaginatively called Ginge. I’m pattern mad and like nothing better than planning my next print designs or dreaming about the next quilt to make.

 

Recently I’ve been making… 

I’ve actually just finished piecing quilt number 4 for my second book which is due out next year. In Quilt Improv, the quilts were very much for walls - I hesitate to call what I do as ‘Quilt Art’ because that sounds a bit pretentious - but they were colourful and joyful and definitely meant to be hung and enjoyed. This time around, I’m making bigger quilts for beds and I’m really enjoying myself.

 

I’ve been working on…

When I’m not sewing, I’m designing surface patterns - I’ve got a few ideas up my sleeve for some new collections of quilting fabric that I’m really excited about. I recently completed an online surface design course and really enjoyed it - I’d definitely like to take more to brush up on my digital skills.

 

I’ve been blogging about…

I’ll be honest - I’m a terrible blogger! I haven’t updated my blog in such a long time. I’m much more frequent on my Instagam account these days - so I’ve been Istagramming sneak peeks of my new quilts, and some screen print experiments and some little sewing makes like pencil cases and coin purses.

 

I’ve been reading…

When I get downtime, I’m more likely to be found reading books rather than blogs, although I always drop in to read my friend Katy’s blog at I’m a Ginger Monkey to see what she’s been up to. I also enjoy Life Style Etc written by the team at Living Etc magazine. I’ve got lots of creative books I’ve been dipping into lately too - the Orla Kiely Pattern book, Sarah Ahearn Bellemare’s Painted Pages and The Collier Campbell Archive.

I’ve been watching...

I watch a lot of TV while I work, I really enjoy a good mystery, so I love Agatha Christie’s Marple. I watch BBC iPlayer where I discovered Inspector De Luca which was really good to watch, although not so easy while I worked as it had subtitles! I watch lots of Endeavour, Lewis and Inspector Frost.

Lucie’s 3 Top Tips for Making Patchwork

1. Start with something small - that way you’ll get it finished! A piece for the wall or something tiny like coasters or placemats are ideal. I love to make 12” mini quilts.

2. Don’t stress about it - it’s meant to be fun! Don’t worry about matching seams and points - you’re never going to be laying on your deathbed thinking ‘If only I’d matched my seams!’

3. If you think you’ll make more, invest in decent equipment - get yourself a cutting mat, rotary cutter and acrylic ruler and buy the best sewing machine you can afford - if you plan on using it every day, you’ll never regret it!

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Click here to visit Lu's shop, Summersville. You can also find her on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

P.S. I'll be reviewing Lu's fabulous book Quilt Improv as part of a "book week" here on my blog next month!

You'll find all the posts in the Crafty Ladies series HERE.

Please note: the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links.

It's Nice to Be Nice

If you've bought some felt from me recently, your parcel has probably had this pretty tape on it...

... lovely Russian dolls reading "It's What's Inside That Counts". Here's a better shot of it on my desk, earlier this summer along with some tape from Summersville:

I love this tape, and adore how cheerful it makes all the parcels I send out. So I was delighted to see that the designer, Hazel Nicholls, has some new tape in stock...

... a biscuit-y "It's Nice to Be Nice" (image from her Etsy shop).

I've got that design as a print (it's currently in a box somewhere while I don't have space to hang it, but it used to hang in the kitchen in my old flat) and I do love a) biscuits and b) being nice, so I couldn't resist buying the tape version to add to my parcel-packing supplies.

I just ordered some this morning, so it should be making an appearance on my parcels sometime soon :)

Jubilee Weekend Bits & Bobs

I hope you guys enjoyed the Jubilee weekend!

Here a few snaps of what I've been up to over the past few days...

I used some pretty tape from Summersville to make lots of mini "thankyou" cards to send out with my orders - this was the perfect task to do while sitting watching coverage of the Jubilee festivities on the telly! I use the same tape when packing my orders, sealing bags and envelopes. 

Following the fine example set by our kitties, I've been spending lots of time curled up with blankets taking it easy (although I haven't gone as far as to have have actual naps yet, haha). The weather has been so cold & miserable here lately that both cats have adopted a very "pro lap" policy this week and I've had lovely purring bundles of fur keeping me company (& keeping me warm!) when watching films in the evening.

Thanks to the chilly weather I've also managed to get caught up with my sky blanket. It's definitely the right sort of weather to sit with a half-finished blanket on your lap, sewing in yarn ends. I've been knitting so many grey squares for it lately, I don't think this blanket is going to be a particularly great advertisement for the charms of the British summertime!

I've also been framing some large prints & posters, the frames for which have been on my "to buy" list since I sorted through my pictures back in January. January! At this rate, I may have actually hung some art on my walls by the end of the year. (The print in this slightly blurry pic is by Hazel Nicholls).

In other news....I'm trying a few new things:

1) I've switched off the word verification widget on my blog's comment form. I keep reading on blogs etc how much people hate them / how they prevent some people from commenting, and I'd hate for that to be happening here on my blog! However, I am a little concerned about getting a sudden influx of spam in my inbox so I'm going to give it a try for a while and see what happens. If there ends up being too much spam it will have to come back again (sorry!).

2) I'm giving up caffeine for a bit, to see what effect it has on my energy levels. I've been trying to cut down on my tea drinking for a while now but it's all too easy to let those tea breaks slip back into my routine (especially with my parents freqently offering to put the kettle on). Today is Day 2. I'll let you know how it goes! :)

and 3) I've resolved to stop neglecting my Facebook page as I have shamefully done pretty much since I first got it. I don't use Facebook very much in my personal life & it's taken me a while to get used to it / work out how I want to use it for my business. I've been linking to my latest blog posts, but really that's not very exciting, is it?

So from here on I'm going to be trying to share some more fun stuff over on Facebook - links to cool projects, tutorials or crafty products I find in my online travels, reviews of my book or nice things people have been making from my tutorials, and other bits and pieces that are great but aren't normally things I blog about... plus I'll keep you up to date about new posts here on the blog & anything new / any special offers in my shops. Sound good? Click here to visit my Facebook page.

Festival of Quilts 2011

As promised, here's a (much longer!) post about the Festival of Quilts.

I have to admit to knowing very little about quilts and the wonderful world of quilting (I have never made a quilt in my life) but after seeing so many fab quilting projects on other peoples blogs lately I've been very tempted by it.

Then I heard people mentioning this mysterious thing called "FoQ", found out more about it and could not resist buying a ticket. I'm very glad I did, because it was quite wonderful!


If you've never been before, The Festival of Quilts is a mix of exhibition spaces (displaying quilts and other textile pieces) and retail spaces (selling fabric, thread, buttons, felt, embroidery patterns, books, magazines, stitched wares by an array of designer/makers and all manner of other crafty goodness). Oh, and there are classes and talks too though I didn't go to any of those.

Here are just a few of the quilts which caught my eye...

Stars and hexagons quilt by Lu Summers of Summersville (made using her own screenprinted fabrics)
Huge quilted flowers:


Teacups quilt! Complete with panels made from old tablecloths, 3D teacups, ring marks and (if you look closely at the bottom there) brown seed beads spilling out of a torn "teabag".


One of the competition winners. The detail and bright colours in this = amazing.


A lovely traditional quilt - I loved the pattern and fabrics used in this.


A knitted quilt! Knitted pieces, stitched together in the log cabin style and quilted. So many hours must have gone into this...


Black and white quilt with circles of richly textured & incredibly detailed colour embroidery. Gorgeous.


A detail from a quilt made as a series of panels. This quilt makes me want to make an embroidery sampler RIGHT NOW.

A memory quilt about the quilter's teenage son's travels in his gap year. There was a map of his journey in the centre and then the rest of the quilt was covered in extracts from his emails home during the year. (Apologies for the very blurry photo - my camera is rubbish!)

I was also very pleased to get a chance to see Lu Summers' Portholes quilt (which won its category at last year's Festival) as it was displayed on the Fat Quarterly stand...


... and I got to meet lots of lovely crafty people, including Lu (Summersville) and Kirsty (Love PaperFish)...


... plus Katy (I'm a Ginger Monkey) and Ruth Singer.

I was also delighted to discover the work of Janet Clare...


... who sells gorgeous embroidery and applique patterns over in her Etsy shop including (be still my beating heart!) two sets of patterns for making quilts appliqued with British birds.

I didn't do much shopping - though I wrote down a lot of shop names to visit later when I've got the funds and/or a specific sewing project in mind - but I did treat myself to some wooden flower buttons and some super cute mini ric rac.


I've included some standard sized ric rac in the photo so you can see just how tiny the mini ric rac is. I bought the buttons & ric rac from different stands, but I was clearly in the mood for those colours that day, huh?

All in all: total textile overload! I'm already planning to go back again next year, maybe for two days as there was just so much to see.

Festival of Quilts

I took a trip to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham last week and it was AMAZING.

So many interesting quilts, so much stitchy, textiley goodness to see and buy... and I got to meet lots of lovely crafty people including Kirsty of LovePaperFish, and Lu of Summersville whose fantastic quilt we're posing in front of in this pic:

(thanks to Kirsty for the photo)

I'll be writing a longer post about FOQ sometime soon, but in the meantime you can see lots of pics over on Kirsty's blog HERE.

All Taped Up

A quick snap of some of the parcels I packed up over the weekend...


... sealed with pretty Bloomsbury tape from one of my favourite Etsy shops, Summersville:


(Image from the Summersville shop).

Mmm... pretty packaging supplies...

Lovely Supplies: Fabric

Having finished my 365, I'm going to let my camera rest for a few days and write about some other crafty things instead of my works in progress - though they will be back soon, I promise - starting with a few posts about some of the fantastic suppliers on Etsy who sell so many kinds of yummy haberdashery goodness.

First up, I have to mention summersville: the new shop from artist lusummers, selling gorgeous handprinted fabric and other printed goodies. Summersville has had some fantastic blog press lately, showing up on Design*Sponge, Poppytalk and Modish [edit: and now decor8 too!], and it's not surprising: delicious looking prints, and some of the most charming and quirky product photos around! I've been dreaming up lots of things I could make with her Totem print ...
... any project would be made even better by a piece of that print, I'm sure of it! I'm also eyeing up some of her finished products, especially the pouch and notebook in this lovely turquoise blue: