I’ve finally shuffled through the paperwork and boxes that arrived after they were needed to be able to focus on this post. One must take note that I am easily distracted. 🙂 I’ll get a thought in my head and then off it goes onto another tangent before I’ve even figured out where it came from. In a group, these creative tangents take on a whole new aspect. At Peaks 4, they became creative chain reactions.

Peaks 4 brought six new people to our lovely group of  ladies. More people meant rearranging the space into two sections of five people plus two on the “Big Table”. New people naturally meant new ideas.

We had a break from the usual all quilting/all the time to create the lovely Aeroplane bag designed by Sara of Sew Sweetness. Miss Katy (and Jack), of The Littlest Thistle, brought the bag in a variety of fabrics & sizes and had us drooling with the possibilities.

After the initial flurry of activity to get the bits for the bags organised, everyone set down to serious business.  At one point, with the bags under construction, I heard “Oh, I stole that idea from Miss H.” Looking closer, it seems that Miss H had picked up an idea from Miss C of adding a contrasting piping to the bag. Seemed that it caught on pretty quickly because five of our 12 participants ended up with it. Each bag had it’s own personality, much like their owners, and looked very professional.

When we moved on to appliqué, we used the Texas Teardrops pattern as a springboard to try new techniques. With the fusible option, Miss LT was able to show many of the different techniques she’s done with her domestic machine’s extensive stitch range. This prompted others to try out their machine’s own special stitches, some of which had never been explored. Just takes a little encouragement to get everyone on board. The results were amazing!

Miss JJ decided this was the technique for her to focus on and she set about creating a top that was distinctly hers, with every block having different stitches of her new Aurifil threads to give it great texture. She even used the leftover bits to create a new design in the centre.

Miss H made a lovely bag from hers, later adding a fabric flower embellishment. Such fabulous tangents!

With the porthole technique, the ladies learned how to do a method similar to reverse appliqué, but with a finished edge. Miss N was having a great time musing about all the things she wanted to do using the technique. Miss J used beautifully elegant Christmas fabrics that made hers look like ornaments. I wanted to break out my own Christmas fabrics. To be truthful, hers are so much more interesting than mine. 🙂

I was very lucky to have both my mum and grandmother attending this time too. My gran isn’t much one for sewing so she took walks in the area with Sarah, the chalet manager and Charlotte, one of the owners of Chalet Ste Marie. Mum made up for that by making Gran a thread catcher and a dumpling bag, along with her own aeroplane bag and fabric flowers.

And we still had time for relaxing in the hot tub, having a massage (or two!) from the talented Bev of Morzine Massage, Fabric & Ribbon flowers as a Mystery Project from Quilt Fairy Gina, Show & Tell, Dice Swap, and a bit of nature walks as well. Once home again, Mum & I whipped up a couple more Aeroplane Bags so my gran could have something in which to carry home those 4 (yes, FOUR!) kilos of chocolate!

Miss Katy has done a fabulous job of recounting Peaks in Parts 1, 2 and 3, along with Miss L and Miss JJ, making me miss all of the ladies again. I hope you’ll take a moment to go and see Peaks from another perspective. We are also thankful to the Fat Quarter Shop for their generous discount for attendees too. My creative muse has just tapped me on the shoulder to say I need to share what we’re going to do for Peaks 5. I shush her and say not yet, it’s still a secret. 🙂 Soon! Hope to see you there!

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