A Quantum Leap

The cat wishes to thank all those who, having heard of its plight, responded with emails or other messages of sympathy. Unfortunately all the publicity has gone to its head and it has acquired an agent, bought a pair of shades and gone off to start its own blog!
Upstaged by a cat. I think I've found the downside of blogging.

As the title suggests we made a great leap forward on the work front yesterday. I was contemplating typing out all the book details from Val's millions of books when Clive said 'Why don't you print out the reviews?'. Totally brilliant. Every now and then I remember why I keep him. The Workshop on the Web ones didn't even need typing and, if I say it myself, we do very comprehensive book reviews. Clive then achieved several more gold stars by digging out all the old copies of Embroidery mag and typing out the reviews. It's good too, to have different 'voices' as there were many reviewers - ranging from Yvonne Morton to Moyra McNeill.
So, thanks to Clive, we have a nicely printed laminated sheet for each book. All done. Hooray! Everything is mounted now and I'm meeting with Jane on Friday to check it all through. We have designed our stand at the NEC and are pleased to be right next to the 62 Group, which should send us lots of people. Unfortunately our stand at Ally Pally is smaller so we may be limited to how much we can display.
Another good wheeze yesterday was my discovery that I could combine some work for the book with preparations for my embellisher course next week. I am proceeding with the Apples and Origins piece which I blogged about a while back. It has an embellished background with cut outs for machined pieces. Here is an almost finished component. I got a lot done at the Festival of Quilts when demoing. I am proud of my handstitched stalk on the apple. Don't do much hand stuff.

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One of the inserts is a 'Garden of Eden' background with a stitched Adam and Eve in the foreground. Here are Adam and Eve - or a rough trial version of them.

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I wanted them to be fairly abstract and this wasn't easy when they were unclothed. I thought they just be pink blobs. So they have wound up wearing a sort of tribal rug! They are stitched on felt so that I can cut them out and embellish them into the background. We will see what this afternoon's work brings.