New Extra Wide Quilt Back Fabric has Arrived!

When I bought my ABM Innova Longarm and stared to quilt for customers, I found many of my customers struggled to find extra wide backing fabrics and instead turned up with all sorts of backing - from old sheets, to joined fabric etc  for me to put on their beautiful quilt tops.

As a consequence of this I started to look into extra wide fabric and I discovered that it is very hard to find a good selection in one place in the UK.

The reason for this is firstly all the fabrics need to come from the USA and few manufacturers provide the extra wide 106 /108 inch fabric and if they do they only offer a very small range. This has to be ordered and can take several months to arrive. As the fabric is two and a half times the width of standard patchwork fabric and still comes on a bolt, the cost of stocking a large range is also high. Nevertheless, I decided that we needed to get a good range available in the UK.

By dealing with many different manufactures I have now collected a superb range of extra wide quilt backing fabric - one of the very best selections in the UK.

Today's delivery from Timeless Treasures, as usual turned up with no warning. It was ordered well over three months ago!

I have now listed all 32 bolts of X-Tonga and some tone on tone fabrics from this delivery on to the shop on my website here -

Quilt Sandwich Shop

The now brings my total bolts to just under 100!  (don't tell Tim !)

Fabric & waddings can be purchased from my website and I ship by carrier. If you are local or coming to Bridlington and want to have a look, just give me a call in advance on 01262 672433 so I can make sure I am here to assist.

Kathleen Laurel Sage Retreat

Unfortunately this blog is a little late. So many apologies - many of you know why, but for those who don't  - I was taken into hospital very suddenly on the second day of this retreat. I was gutted to miss day two and three!

Anyway on the first day with Kathleen we began to learn her signature technique with a flower panel.

Here are some of Kathleen's examples

The pattern is traced onto heavy water soluble stabiliser.
Layers of organza is put between two layers of the heavy water soluble stabiliser with the traced pattern on top.

The traced pattern is then sewn- free motion on the machine.

The water soluble stabilizer is then dissolved and then a soldering iron is then used to burn away some of the organza to make the cut work and holes.

Here are some more examples of Kathleen's

Students hard at work

and here are just a few of the ones made by the students

As I mentioned earlier I missed day two and three. However one of the ladies has kindly emailed me pictures of her work. Thank you Linda and wow - what fabulous work.

Watch the website and newsmail - the ladies enjoyed the retreat so much with Kathleen that they have requested her to come back again to Quilt Sandwich.