A Day Off

Hi Smites!

I had such a lovely day yesterday. It is very very rare that I ever go to a class as a student - I am 99.9% of the time the teacher. Yesterday though I pretended I didn't have a million things that needed doing and I played hooky.

The class was at The Crewel Goeblin on Sydney's North Shore. If you're from Sydney and you haven't ever been there, it really is delicious. I have been going there since I was a small girl, because my Mum used to sew there and also buy her quilting and embroidery threads there. I think the shop has only ever had three owners in it's nearly 50 years in business! The current owner, Julie, has taken it to new heights and the shop is stuffed full of beautiful embroidery threads of all kinds, French gifts and Sophie Digard pieces, and all the latest embroidery and tapestry designs and kits, notions and more recently some patchwork fabrics too. She has just expanded into the shop next door and now has a large, airy and bright classroom off the main store. I went with my mum, then I went for the threads for my first business (making and embroidery baby clothes and toys), and then for many year before we opened Material Obsession they had by far the best selection of perle cotton in Australia, so it was whee I bought all my quilting thread! And now it where I get all my embroidery supplies, linen, tapestry kits… all the stuff I don’t really have time for but somehow cram in anyway. I have been a customer for a long, long time.

It's always a bit of nostalgia going there for me in more ways than one. My mum passed away when I was in my twenties, so the little memory lane trips of her that I sometimes have through my stitching are special gifts. The Crewel Goeblin was just around the corner from my Grandma's house on Werona Ave, so often a trip to her house meant leaving our house in St Ives, driving up through Pymble to Du Plessy Pralin for something sweet for morning tea, a little stop in at The Crewel Goeblin and then on to Grandma's for a visit. The visit always involved tea in a pot and a cake out of the big cream and mint tin in her 1940's kitchen, and chocolates. My Grandma was particuarly fond of their after dinner slices, and they came packaged in either a white box with a French man on it (ooh lala) or a beautiful flat gold box, that was then wrapped in thick white paper and gold cord and stamped with their logo and a gold sticker. So very elegant. Mum and I used to save the lovely gold boxes and put our embroidery threads and projects into them. I used to love them for my drawing pencils too. Recently my youngest son's girlfriend's parents, Gaius and Maria, came for dinner and Maria brought me a box of Du Plessy Pralin chocolates - they are still packaged exactly the same way in their gold box with the wrapings, and I hadn't seen them since my teens with my Mum. I'm embarassed to say I burst into tears. Poor Maria she probably thinks I'm a psycho. :)

Did I save the box? Yes I did, and it now has embroidery threads in it. It's the little things.

Anyway I digress! Julie put on a lovely morning tea and lunch (reminds me, I must email her for the orange and walnut cake she made, omg YUM it was amazing!! If she parts with the recipe I'll post it for you), and kept us all fuelled with coffee and tea. She did lovely kits up for everyone so we all had a damask napkin to appliqué on to, little Liberty pieces for our ladies dresses and of course the pattern.

Sue Stichbury is an English quilt designer from Liverpool. She is primarily an appliqué teacher so it wasn't that I was LEARNING anything yesterday per-say, other than how to make tiny little scraps into cute as a button little people!

Her work is very different than mine, and I admire it a lot, its so folksy and charming. Scruffy, she calls it. I have both her books, and I have made quite a few little projects from them over the years, most recently a thread roll for my friend Belle this past Christmas. She and I have followed each other online for ages, so it was very fun to finally meet in person.

We were making this little quilt in class, she designed it especially for her Australian tour. It's called Baby Butterflies. It's about 20" square, so the little ladies are only about 1" or 1 1/2" each in total.

Others in the class were working on this little cutie,

but as its very similar to one of the quilts in the other books I thought I would make the butterflies - I have a ring of little ladies about half finished currently, and I made one for a friend's baby some time ago.

This is Sue's quilt

These are my butterflies

It's the little details in these quilts that make them so special. All the ladies have different hair, from plaits to ringlets to bunches to windblown. Some have little dogs on leashes, others a kitty or a basket, or are holding a bunch of flowers. All the little houses have gardens, and clothes lines with quilts hanging over them, or kites or whatever you can think of really. In class, Sue sews a little lady for each student (either onto your quilt or on a seperate piece of fabric) and lets everyone request their custom person - and then tells a little story about each one! She had a very full class yesterday so she didn't quite get to mine (I told her to leave me until last, I'm a big girl), but I promised to send her some of my needles to try and she is going to put my lady into the post for me when she gets home from her trip. I'll show her to you when she arrives, I might make her into a thread roll for myself.

Yesterday was a reminder that I need to take time for myself. It was refreshing to sit and stitch with like minded people, with no obligation and no deadline or agenda. I was absolutely exhausted afterwards too, which was another little reminder of how much personal energy it requires to TAKE a class! Quite a different wellspring I dipped into on my Wednesday.

I hope your Thursday is lovely and if you have time, poke about and find out a little more about Sue- she’s a lovely and talented lady! You can find her at @calicoandstitch on Insta. I don’t think she has her own website but she’s here in Aus until the end of Feb, lots of shops have her book online (including The Crewel Goeblin), and in the UK she often teaches at Pincushion Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells.

Sarah x