Stitch Gathering 2018 Report and Goody Bag GIVEAWAY!!

Last Sunday was the 6th annual Stitch Gathering! Every year I organise this one day event which is held in Edinburgh in October. Around 90 quilters come together for a fun filled day of sewing, chatting, shopping, learning and sharing!

This year we had some new teachers such as the amazing Karen Lewis (seen here on the left in full flow teaching lino printing!), Laura Cunningham and Lisa Dolson.  And we welcomed back Lucy Brennan, Mandy Munroe and Sarah Ashford – that’s Sarah’s Modern Landscape class on the right.

I taught my Tiny Improv Streetscape workshop and you can see the results in the top photo.  We put all our wee houses together to make a patchwork town at the end of the class – someone even made a Town Hall!

We hold the event at Napier University’s Craiglockhart campus and they always serve up an amazing buffet spread at lunchtime!

We have a long lunch with plenty to do. There’s shopping from our myBearpaw pop-up shop and from the teacher’s stalls. That’s Sarah’s on the left (under my Vintage Home BOM quilt which I took along to display), she brought along her pouches and decals.

We also swap pincushions (or whatever that year’s item is), having swapped our nametags at registration, the swaps are always such a great mixer for everyone!

Then we have an amazing lucky dip (unfortunately this year I didn’t get any photos of this!), this is my favourite bit of the whole day! Everyone gets a prize, some small like a spool of thread or a fabric stick and some big like an Aurifil large thread box.  We had two this year (as Aurifil are super generous to our little event!) and the reactions of both the winners were a sight to behold!  And everyone applauds!!

At the end of lunch we have a wonderful Show and Tell.  This always ends up quite emotional (I tear up every year) due to the beautiful heartfelt stories behind the quilt. That’s Lesley, Alison and Janice above. Janice started her quilt at Krista Hennebury’s workshop earlier this year and Alison made her’s after being inspired by Krista’s talk! Here are some more highlights…

Margaret and Glynne finished off both their class projects from last year’s Stitch Gathering classes by Mandy and myself!  I do like people who do their homework 😉

Marilynne’s gorgeous quilt is her version of my Squaring the Circle quilt, though she has made it look completely different by her choice of blue and white.

Poppy’s The Avenue quilt has gone right to the top of my quilting bucket list, I absolutely adore her version of Louise Papas pattern. I just love the look on Lynne’s face in this photo! And Sammy is just beginning her quilting journey with this fantastic Elizabeth Hartman unicorn!  Great work by a beginner Sammy!

 Jo pattern tested this Latifah Saafir quilt and changed it slightly so that it accurately represented her mum and dad. This was the story that really got to me – such a wonderful quilt Jo!

Two year’s ago our Stitch Gathering ticket project was making House blocks.  At the end of the event I asked for volunteers to make the blocks into charity quilts and by now three quilts have made their way to Siblings Together.  But there was still one left which Poppy just managed to finish up before Sunday!  Here it is being help up by Janice, what a beauty! This will be heading to Siblings Together too.

This year’s ticket project was Cats and Dogs, you can read more about this here. It must have really inspired our attendees as we got so many blocks this year we had to display them out in the corridor!

I got my amazing Girl Friday Jane to arrange them into groupings and photograph them in the afternoon.

As you can see there were plenty of Juliet Tartankiwi scottie dogs and plenty of the cat from my block tutorial, but also wonderful creative original blocks!

Jane divided these up into enough for 5 quilts and again another 5 very generous volunteers stepped forward and took the piles of blocks home to turn into quilts for both Siblings Together and the Social Bite Village Quilt Drive.  Thanks so much ladies!  And while I’m about it, thank you so much also to the incredible Jane and my amazing helpers Pauline and Ali.  Jane made us all gorgeous embroidered Helper badges this year!  She is a treasure…

Aren’t they fabulous?!

And then I received all these beautiful gifts from other attendees, like a wee crocheted donkey from Jenny, a Clover roll and press from Sue, Manchester Beeswax from Lucy and that lovely pouch from Jane with thread conditioner and chocolate inside!  And best of all my lovely quilty pal Karen made me a tiny hexie nametag!! Thanks so much to all of you! Mwah!!

In the afternoon I taught my Bird Applique class and look how well my students did…

A whole flock of blue tits in differing states of completion!

One last pic before we get on to the GIVEAWAY!  My sweet wee donkey playing with the fabric in the shop 😀

I’ve had such wonderful feedback from this year’s event and we’ll definitely be back in 2019.  If you think you might like to join us then sign up for our newsletter via the Stitch Gathering website, I’ll be ‘saving the date’ by the end of January.

One thing we haven’t mentioned yet is the incredible Goody Bag that everyone gets!  Every year I keep two of these back to giveaway, one here on the blog and one on Instagram, because I want to share the love with all the folks that can’t make it to the best quilting retreat in the world!

And, drum roll, here it is…

WOW!  So much booty!

There are Fat Quarters from Dashwood Studios and Riley Blake, a whole third of a metre from Lewis and Irene and a fantastic bundle of Cori Dantini ‘Little Red’ from Blend Fabrics which along with a pattern for Glove Puppets and Softies makes up a kit!

There is a large 50wt spool of Aurifil thread and a skein of Anchor stranded thread. A copy of Love Patchwork and Quilting, a sewing themed tissue pack, another FQ and a scrap pack from myBearpaw. A Liberty Tana Lawn scrap pack from Duck Egg Threads (a highlight of the goody bag every year!), a Mug Rug Kit from Sewmotion, and mini patterns from both Beth Studley and Cakestand Quilts!!

Thank you so much to all our fantastic sponsors!!

So how do you win all this fab stuff??
Just comment below! Say any old thing you like – it’s pretty simple!  And afterwards head over to my IG feed and enter there as well if you like (for a chance to win a second goody bag!)!

The Giveaway is open to international entries and you have till next Tuesday at 8pm GMT to enter.

Good luck everyone!!