A visit to the Home Patch

Last Thursday, Brenda, Caroline and I headed to Bathurst to visit Anni Downs' gorgeous shop, The Home Patch. As always it was a delight to visit as every corner is full of tempting goodies! We were very lucky as Anni was there on Friday so we chatted with her which was lovely. She even gave us some sneak peaks of some new fabric that is coming and  some new projects she is working on.

 It was especially lovely to see Nature's Journey in real life! Made me very motivated to get going on my blocks.

 Check out some of these displays.

 Just had to finish my diamond applique so that this month's blocks for the Stitch-a-long are done.

The Home Patch

Penny and I were lucky enough to have time to have a quick trip out to Bathurst to visit Anni Downs' shop, The Home Patch. It is full of the loveliest fabrics, patterns and so many inspiring samples. We headed off on Thursday and came back on Friday with all Friday morning and a little of Thursday afternoon to shop! Here are some pictures of this wonderful shop.

 It was good to see the In My Garden quilt too and get motivated to make some more blocks.

So much to see!!! It was a special treat to see all the Some Kind of Wonderful samples again too.

Work in progress and a new book

Here is proof that I have been stitching recently. I have also been finishing the Christmas Day projects for the class I am running at Hobbysew in November. It was exciting to see that there were 7 people booked in which is great, especially as they haven't seen the samples yet! I have finished the notes for the projects and will post some pictures soon. The samples will be in the shop on Tuesday. These are Anni Downes' Christmas baubles in woven wool felt. These are very time consuming but the results are worth it.

I also couldn't resist getting Anni's new book, A Boy's Story, from Hobbysew this week. We saw all the lovely quilts at Anni's shop when we visited The Home Patch in Bathurst. I haven't even really got any boys (yet) to sew for but just had to have the book anyway.

Here is Peter showing us one of the quilts in the book when we were at the shop. I wasn't allowed to post the pictures till the book was released.

And here is the precious felt robot from the book. I would love to make him too.

Shopping and work in progress

As you know, I have been raving about our trip to Bathurst. Now to what I bought out there! We all bought lots of lovely things. I am teaching the gorgeous projects out of Anni's book in term 4 so I bought some fabric to make the cushion in the book. Here is a picture of the book and my cushion fabric and the applique I have been working on for the cushion. It was fun to do.

I also HAD to get some felt and some lovely fabrics and couldn't resist some neutral fabrics to stitch on.

I also bought some sand (!) to fill the little pincushion kit below and a kit to make up the needlecase for the classes.

The main reason to go to The Home Patch was to get this kit for the woven wool felt decorations. Audrey has been working on these and they are so lovely. I posted some of Audrey's ones a while ago.

And that's not all of it!

Quilts at The Home Patch

One of the best things about visiting Anni's shop is that we were able to see the original quilts from her books and patterns. The pictures are always good but not as good as the real quilts. This one is the quilt from "The World as it should be". I am planning to make this one as it is so lovely and has simple patchwork and good sized shapes for needleturn applique.

This is the back. Anni often uses some scraps to make the back.

This corner has the BOM that is being sold around the country at the moment by a few shops. It has blocks designed by many designers and is a charity project.

This is one of Anni's other BOMs. I have the pattern for this one too and I plan to do it one day! Oh dear.

The Home Patch Pictures

I attempted to take a few pictures of The Home Patch to share with you. The first one is a bit (lot) fuzzy but shows you some of Anni's quilts and the lovely array of felted wool fabric.

Here is another corner of the shop. Everywhere you looked there were samples, beautiful fabrics and homewares all displayed so beautifully. You can see why we visited for hours. There was something to see in every corner.

Here is another view.

And another.

Margaret and Anni and her husband Peter were so lovely and helpful. We wanted to get some kits and some felt for a few patterns and it was no trouble to prepare the kits for us. Peter even showed us the quilts that will be in the Anni's new book for boys coming out later in the year. It was so exciting to see them. We managed to finally leave after closing time and then went to a lovely Thai restaurant for dinner.

I do hope you can see the pictures this time. I gather some have had trouble and today they had vanished from my post as well!

Heading to Bathurst

We are back home again after our adventure to Bathurst. We headed off on Friday morning and had lunch in sleepy Carcoar. Many years ago (when I was really young) I lived in this area and taught school in Blayney and used to visit Carcoar and it hasn't changed at all. We thought the town was deserted but ended up finding a lovely restaurant that served delicious pumpkin soup for lunch. This is the lovely Catholic church.

We were of course heading to The Home Patch which is Anni Downes' shop in Bathurst. Here is Audrey and then Penny outside the shop.

And another view of the shop courtyard.

We went to the motel across the road, checked in, and then spent the rest of the afternoon at the shop. Margaret was working and she was so lovely and helpful and we kept her busy cutting and making kits and finding us lots of good things. The shop is inspiring, especially as all of Anni's samples are there to see in real life. We had no trouble filling in about 3 hours looking, shopping and trying to take it all in.