EMQE, Cathy Franks and city chic messenger bags

I had a great week last week spending 7 days with old and new friends at the European Machine Quilting Expo down in Castletownbere in Co Cork. Ireland. The lead teacher this year was fibre artist Cathy Franks and she was a delight --- all 4' nothing of her .. lol. I took all her classes and really enjoyed them. She is sooo enthusiastic and passionate about her work and a very good teacher. We played with all sorts of goodies, including Tsukineko inks, paint sticks and colouring pencils, messed about making 'flash and trash', couched with wool and made complete quilts directly on the longarm frame! Who would have thought to piece and add borders, let alone iron directly on your frame. Amazing! I loved it all.

I taught 2 classes as well. A Frenzy of Fillers and my City Chic Messenger bags. I was very impressed with my students and they all did a super job. Annie and Claudio -- or the kids ... as I called them because they are soo young did an amazing job making their bags having done very little sewing ....ever ... at all, Sherry over at Irish Quilting learnt to topstitch and Valerie was thrilled to install a zip. I really enjoyed teaching this class, plus I also got to make a few myself.

Today I have been messing about with Aperture 3 and created a slideshow of the bags I have made. I'll be putting them on sale over at chubbymummy.co.uk later this week. Hope you enjoy the slideshow. It was fun to make.