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.