Cath Patching

Hello everyone, firstly can I say how sweet you all have been about Alice's stitching efforts, she blushed when I told her and said "Aaawwww muuuuuummm, that's embarrassing you putting me on your blog!". I guess she is coming to that age when it's totally uncool to be on your mum's blog. I'll try and eek it out a little more though :0)Thank you anyway and to say we have been doing a little more stitching this week is an understatement, it truly can become quite addictive indeed. I'll be sharing this with you next week.


Anyway, I'm here to post about my little Patch workshop I went to on Wednesday night in Tunbridge Wells at the Cath Kidston{CK} shop. You see, each Christmas and birthday I buy myself a little gift..not sure how or when this started but I sure ain't going to give it up. Christmas of 2011 was a very reasonable £16 gift of a 2 hour workshop in a CK shop to start to make the Dresden Plate from her latest book Patch.

It was freezing cold on Wednesday night but fortunately didn't snow as Tunbridge Wells is about a 50min drive from the coast.

It was all very civilised with tea, cucumber sandwiches and carrot cake.

There must of been about 12/14 women there all at different skill levels but with one common desire...to make hand stitched patchwork. The shop had brought in an experienced quilter and her assistant to help the likes of us and she was really good fun.

It was an opportunity to chat to like minded people and although the actually patching wasn't terribly difficult or complicated it was nice to meet people who came from a variety of backrounds, both younger and older women and some who had been on week long intense quilting courses {maybe one day when I retire?}.

We were all given a free copy of the book to take home, which RRP's at £16 and has all the fabric included to make this Dresden Plate. I thought the workshop was a rather good bargain at this price. We also of course had an opportunity to shop with a 15% discount on anything.

I like to look around CK shops once or twice a year either in Brighton or Tunbridge Wells but I find it all a little too much and only have a washbag and a carry bag of her range as I personally prefer the vintage things where she gets her inspiration from. Please excuse the blurred photo, but I did decided to purchase this cute button for Alice as she loves London double decker buses and a new washbag for her as her's is split and old now and she can use this for her sleep over's and when she goes on her Isle of Wight trip this year with school.

I chose this pattern as it's a little different from her normal floral designs and Alice is rather pleased with it too.

Oh and I also couldn't come away without these sweetheart buttons too, I can just envisage a cardigan with these beauties sewn on.

All in all it was a bit of fun and I am glad I went. I did learn a very important thing and that is I need to be less lazy and get my iron out to press my patches in place, it sure does make a difference {note the difference between the patches on the left and right}. Oops my hexies need serious pressing attention. 


I hope to finish this little project in the next few days and have the luxury of next week off with Alice. There after I return to work for 1 more week and that's it with my current job. I start my Macmillan job on 27/3/12. Back to full time work again, eek it's going to take some adjusting that's for sure.

I hope you all have a fabulous {snowy?} weekend and see you soon xox 

Last year's snow on the beach