Mountmellick in Mittagong

I had a lovely weekend in Mittagong teaching Mountmellick embroidery at Quilting in the Highlands. I had a full class and we had a great time! The students made good progress with learning new stitches and then getting them onto their cushion front.

One part of a Mountmellick class that I really enjoy is helping students troubleshoot the issues they’ve been having with various stitches. Because most of the stitches are common to other sorts of embroidery, it is not unusual when I introduce a stitch for at least someone to say “Oh, I can’t do that stitch.” “YES, you can, or you will be able to soon!” It was great to see people so much happier with their bullion knots, coral knots, palestrina knots, satin stitch… and the list goes on.

As with last year, the food for the weekend was excellent, and the staff at the venue are always so helpful. On the Saturday night, we had a special dinner at which the tutors were all introduced and there was a display of some of our work. The quilts of the other tutors (I’m the only one who isn’t a quilter!) were simply beautiful.

I was originally going to have a class on the Monday and Tuesday, but it didn’t go ahead. Instead, Tamsin and Sue from Berrima Patchwork (the organisers and powerhouses behind QITH) offered for me to do a morning in Sandra Leichner’s class. Sandra was back for a second year of tutoring at Quilting in the Highlands (as was I). She is an incredibly talented hand appliqué specialist, who also utilises embroidery details on her quilts. She was a bit daunted by having me, an embroidery teacher, in her class. I told her not to be silly – I was there to learn needle turn appliqué! And I did. 🙂

I enjoyed the morning SO much. I had attempted a little bit of needle turn appliqué just to try it out, after last year’s QITH. Sandra said my attempts were pretty good. But yesterday she showed me how it was really done (thank you!) and the details of some of the trickier bits, like inverted Vs with no bulk, and points with no bulk. I did a leaf with points that I was pretty happy with, and there were no little whiskers hanging out either!

I’ve decided that seeing I worked over the weekend, I’m going to give myself a few days off to continue working on the little wren design that I started. It is The Wren Block which Sandra taught last year. Hers is brown, but I’ve adapted mine to be a blue wren – because that’s one of our Australian birds which I love. Hopefully completing the design in the next few days will mean that the techniques I learned will be cemented in my head, rather than leaving it until after I finish this book that I’m working on. Also, I’m pretty realistic about this – if I don’t do it now, I’ll probably never get back to it to finish it!

I’ve just realised that although I took some photos of Sandra’s work, I didn’t actually take one of the block I’m doing! You can see it using the link above to Sandra’s website, and scroll down through the patterns to find it. If you’re interested in purchasing one of the patterns, they’re available in Australia exclusively through Berrima Patchwork, or you can order through Sandra’s website.

So, while I didn’t get a picture of Sandra’s wren, I did get one of her purple finch block. (I have permission to post this, and wouldn’t post it otherwise.)

I think I’ll have a fun few days working on this appliqué block, and then I’d better get back to real life and work on my book again!