Liverpool progress and some new toys

I've had a very varied day today - started off watching DS play football (they won 3-2 'just' - but it gave them lots of practice in defense)

Then as we were half way there we headed off up to Weston-super-Mare, a 'seaside' town about 20-30 miles from home which has a beach that stretches out for miles at low tide into the Bristol Channel - hence its nick-name Weston-super-Mud!

Method in my madness here, as you might ask why anyone would want to visit a run-down Victorian seaside resort with an uninspiring beach

Well the real pull was the fact that Weston Quilters were holding their biannual show

However in a bid to keep DH sweet we called in at a canoe shop on the way that he's been meaning to check out since we moved here.

The rest of the family were very good, they dropped me off directly outside the show building and then went off to park right at the opposite end of the Promenade.

By the time they'd had a leisurely saunter up the beach and had a good throw about with the rugby ball they didn't have very long to wait for me to come out of the quilt show and it was off for ice creams on the pier.

I kept my spending to a minimum - only replenishing my stocks of white-on-whites and cream-on-creams which are extremely low - there were some very pretty fabrics that were very tempting but I managed to resist

I did take a real shine to the Husquvarna Mega Quilter machine that was on special offer at £499 instead of £599 but I thought Nigel might just lose the plot if I'd walked out with one of those

However I just couldn't resist the two items in the picture above

The husband of one of the group members is a wood-turner. He had made these beautiful pointers for pushing out corners if you're turning stitched items the right way out - you know the sort of situation where you use the point of your scissors or a knitting needle and push clean through the fabric. The other item is a pressing tool which you can use to hand press seams if you don't want to jump up to the ironing board every two minutes - a bit like a Japanese Hera I believe.

These items were so tactile I could have brought the lot home - the smoothness of the wood was like velvet

They cost me the princely sum of £2 for the pointer and £3.50 for the presser. The wood is so beautiful - it looks like cherry to me - that they were worth it just to bring them home to look at, never mind use.

So of course when I returned I was all fired up to stitch again and having bought a load of white-on-white I thought it about time I did a bit more of Nick's Liverpool quilt. 'Peter Crouch' was the result and the presser tool was very useful for smoothing out the seams between stitching

That makes eight names done and six to go - I've also dug into my stash and come across some fabric with footballs on against a background of flags (obviously with the world cup in mind) so I may use some of that in the quilt when I start putting all the names together.

Once I've downloaded all the rest of the photos I took today I'll treat you to some of the quilt shots over the next few days