April Quilting Weekend

Our last quilting weekend was just before I went away to WA for two weeks so I am a bit tardy in putting up the pics. Our raffle was won by Suzy from St Ives UK and she has decided to donate it to Bezzina House. Congratulations and thanks Suzy!

We actually achieved quite a lot and after hemming the pinwheel quilt we have added the sashing to Penny's Dresden Plate sampler and also almost finished joining the blocks for Wilma's Brown Roses.

Robyn brought along a quilt she had finished recently. She does superb machine embroidery and quilting. I hope she enters this one in the Sydney Quilt Show next year.

Our next lucky dip is quite an easy one. You will just be required to make two nine-patch blocks matching a tiny sample of fabric I will send out soon. I will type up the instructions and mail them out as soon as I can.

I hope to see you in June at our next quilting weekend.

Central Western Quilting Tour

Last weekend Robyn and I took a three day quilting tour with the Quilters Guild of NSW and headed for Orange. I have added all the patchwork stops to a quilting tour on the right hand side of this page. Just scroll down.

Another unidentified block

I thought this was Wilma's but it may not be. Who does this one belong to?
Yes it is Wilma's

Unidentified blocks

Oops! I made a booboo.

I forgot to make a map of the Red Log Cabin quilt to show whose block is whose before we put the backing on. I have put up those blocks none of us recognise on the offchance that you might be able to tell me if they are yours.

I will describe them as

1. boats
2. owls
3. Mickey mouse and hearts
4. green in flowers and leaves
5. tiny white hearts

Please let me know if you recognise one.

Helen V

Suzy

Jane W

Valerie R

February Quilting Weekend

We worked very hard last weekend to finish off a bit of our backlog of quilts. Robyn, Elaine, Jenny, Linda, Mary and Lian came and we are now very happy about our results. Our Red Log Cabin is complete and our Pinwheel quilt only needs to have the final binding hem done.

 

 

 

We had our first ever in-house raffle amongst those who had paid their raffle fees for the year. Jenny won the Red Log Cabin and Elaine won the Pink and Blue Flowers quilt. They were both absolutely thrilled and spent the rest of their time with us with grins from ear to ear. They will both now be removed from the draws for the rest of the year.

We also spent time arranging the blocks for our two outstanding quilts. Penny's Dresden Plate Sampler has become just a sampler quilt. The two 'Dresden Plate' blocks will be made into two accompanying cushions. We have chosen blue as the sashing and maroon as the backing but have not yet chosen the border fabrics.

 

Wilma's brown roses looks great with the blocks on point with no sashing. We are still waiting on a few of these blocks to come in and will try to buy more of the brown roses fabric to fill in the missing triangles.

Our final task was to see how the Green Twister blocks looked on the design wall. We all agreed that they need no sashing but that appliqueing one of the small square patches left over from the cutting will just fill in the otherwise very blank corners. These blocks were only completed by those who saw my demonstration. However, if you would like to try one the theme is Green and the instructions can be found under the Instructions tab above and is called 'Square Dance'. Be brave and good luck!

In all a fun weekend together accomplished much.

Quilting Weekend in November

 

This last weekend there was lots to do, lots to see and lots to talk about. The first thing to report is that the beautiful red log cabin is ready for quilting and binding  and we have created our 'rules' for a quilt draw amongst ourselves that will allow us to win one of our beautiful quilts and donate some money to charity instead of the quilt if that is the most appropriate outcome.

We spent lots of time completing blocks for our dresden plate sampler and joining our pinwheels together for our pinwheel quilt.

 

There was lots of time to chat and have our 'board meeting' and we welcomed a new member Lian to our group.

Liz's blue and pink flowers are now complete and this quilt will be the first in our quilt draw for 2012 so keep tuned and we will publish the winner when it is drawn at our February weekend.

Then there was a show and tell time. Robyn had a quilt almost finished and I had much to show and tell about my quilting experiences whilst Elaine and I were in Canada and the USA. Here is the quilt top I completed as my project when I went with Marion to her quilting long weekend at Kennybunk Beach, Maine. I collected all the fabrics when I was travelling. They are all fall fabrics as a reminder of the fabulous fall colours we saw as we travelled.

I also demonstrated the twister blocks below that I learned to do at the quilt camp. Everyone is now very excited to be doing a green on green set of blocks for an extra quilt. This is a bit hard to demonstrate for our distance members but if you have a twister template and can follow the instructions below then please do so and send back your experiment including the little offcuts as well.

Fun with twisters

When I attended a quilt camp in Maine last month I learned how to use a Li'l Twister template to make this stunning table mat. At our last quilt weekend I showed those present how it is done so we are all making the starter block. This runner uses 12 x 5" squares of fabric ("charm squares") but we have decided to make blocks for a quilt using only 9 x 5" squares of fabric which will give us 12.5" unfinished blocks. So here are the instructions:

1. Make a 9-patch using 5" squares of fabric in any greens you can find (avoid Christmas fabrics). Add a border of cream (calico or tone on tone cream will be OK). Don't get hung up on the "green", anything that says green to you even if it has bits of other colours will work. Don't forget to use 1/4" seams everywhere.

 

2. Place the template at each point in the block making sure the crossed lines on the template line up with the joins in your fabrics. Draw around the template.

Make sure you draw around every point on the block, even the ones along the border edge.

3. Using sharp and pointy scissors cut out one row of pieces and arrange them just as they were above your block. This step will avoid confusion.

4. Twist each piece anticlockwise until it lines up along the edges of the cut squares. Join these squares with 1/4" seams.

5. Cut out the next row of squares and line them up as you did before. Then twist them anticlockwise and join them. You will notice that you will have small squares of fabric left on your original block. Be careful with these scraps and try not to cut into them as they will be used later in the border of our quilt.

6. Once you have all the pieces cut and joined as rows, sew the rows together to form your block. Remember, for our blocks you will only have 9 stars, not 12 stars as in these pictures.

Hints:

• Small prints work better than large prints.
• Put colours and textures together than contrast with those around them.
• Cut accurately and try not to cut into the left over scraps.
• Keep all scraps.

I have now written the instructions for this Square Dance block and linked it from the Instructions tab at the top of this page.

Patchwork in August

What a productive weekend we have had. Unfortunately there are very few photos of people working but of course I have photos of quilts.On Saturday we had a small but hard working crowd with Linda, Jenny, Wilma, Robyn, Elaine, Mary and me.

Elaine sewed the label on Jane's Birds to finish off that one. I finished off the quilting the week before. We can now donate that quilt to Bezzina House.

After I had completed the borders of Liz's Flowers last week we all worked hard to tack the top to the polar fleece then hand quilt the feature flower fabric. All now complete. Linda attached her first binding to this quilt. This quilt is now ready for hand hemming and Ruth (not able to come this weekend) has offered to do this between now and our next weekend in November. Here is a picture of one of the corners of this quilt. I have now worked out how to avoid what I call 'crappy corners' in the binding so that they consistently turn out beautifully mitred and pointy. I'll put up some instructions when I have written them. Linda did these ones beautifully.

Then there is Suzy's Red Log Cabin. Of course there was some discussion about the arrangement of the blocks then the borders and binding. Here is the progress so far. Mary took on the challenge of trimming all the blocks to size, we designed corners for the border so we did not have to join the border fabric at all. (My rule is if you have to join it make a feature of the join.) We have so many people in our group now that we have enough blocks to make a few cushions to go with the quilt or to add to our next orphan block quilt. Robyn and I decided this one needed to be mounted on batting rather than polar fleece.

During this discussion a suggestion was made that perhaps occasionally we could raffle a quilt amongst ourselves because these quilts are really stunning and we'd all like the opportunity to keep one. Elaine and I have taken on the task of writing up the 'rules' for such a raffle whilst we are travelling together so stay tuned, you might eventually be the owner of one of our beautiful quilts.

Now we are up to the Pinwheel Quilt but as some of the blocks have not come back yet we have thought no more about that one. Please remember to add a 6.5" piece of the centre plain fabric when you return the block. Here are a few of the blocks we have had returned so far.

Finally we had our next lucky dip draw. Actually this was done as soon as the second person arrived on Saturday and was drawn by the first person to arrive. Linda drew Penny's Dresden Plate fabric. Linda and I had discussed an idea to have another 'Sampler Quilt' so we all thought it a good idea that rather than everyone doing a Dresden Plate block that Penny could do that if she wants to (as it was her choice) and it could take centre stage on the quilt then we could all do a block of our own choosing to go with it. You can do a Dresden Plate if you'd like to try it too. It won't matter if we have more than one. We have chosen a cream fabric to go with the focus fabric then everyone can choose other fabrics in the colours supplied. In fact we might even end up with enough blocks for two quilts or some cushions to go with it.

So stay tuned for details of the raffle (it will only be amongst group members). And have fun making the next block. I hope to have fabrics posted before the end of the week. All Pinwheel blocks are due by 1 November and all 'Sampler blocks' or 'Dresden Plate blocks' are due by the end of January ready for our first quilting weekend of 2012. Gosh does time fly! If anyone has any ideas for the structure of our quilting weekends next year please let me know. Our membership comes and goes but now we have about 20 active members (about 10 locals and 10 overseas). There are also a number of members who are not active for various reasons but who we consider part of the group also.

June Weekend

Last weekend we had a great time and it was extremely productive.

We have now finished hemming Jane's Birds and I am now quilting it (done in the wrong order but it worked best that way). Evelyn and Robyn were Trojans getting all the hemming completed.

We then had our usual discussions about how to arrange Liz's Pink and Blue Flowers. As we had an extra block, the extra one has become a frame for our label on the back of the quilt. It looks fabulous with the usual label sewn in the centre. I have just received another one of these blocks which will be saved for one of our orphan block quilts.

Then there was another discussion about framing, borders and binding and here is what we have ended up with. It actually looks quite stunning.

There will eventually be a thin blue binding around this border.

The next task was to put all the Red Log Cabin blocks that have been received onto our design wall. As we still have quite a few to be returned, this will be arranged properly next time. People have found this block very challenging due to the need for absolute accuracy in squaring, sewing and trimming. Funny that such a simple looking block is such a challenge. The trick is to not just trim it straight each time you add a strip but also to trim it square with the centre block. Another trick is to cut the strips a generous width (extra 1/8") then trim them to size after they are sewn on.

The final activity was to draw the next lucky dip which was some fabric donated by Jane in Connecticut. There was no block design with it so Jenny (who drew the lucky dip) chose a block design. Instructions for this one will come soon and you will receive your pieces of fabric which will become the background fabric of the star.

All in all a fun weekend with lots of patchwork, eating, chatting and good company.

Thank you all.