Six ladies in person and another four on Zoom

 Yesterday we enjoyed our first gathering for 2024. Our first task was to take tacking out of 3 quilts finished in the last few months and iron on labels then take photos. 

This is Elaine's applique flowers. 

A few of us met to arrange some orphan blocks for this quilt and the one below.

I will be keeping the pink doiley quilt but the other two are up for grabs if you would like either of them. Otherwise we will donate them to an appropriate cause.

Karen, Elaine, Stephanie, Glenda, Kathryn and I spent a great time debriefing holiday activities and issues and enjoyed a wonderful Feast of Fools for lunch and afternoon tea. 

In the meantime we discussed our two outstanding projects and now have Carol's ballerinas ready to sandwich and Lynette's aboriginal print ready for me to write some instructions for and send out fabric pieces. I'll get there. Hint - if you have a favourite star block, find it and test it. If you don't, do a bit of googling to find one you like.

Then it was time for our 3 o'clock zoom with Heather and Lynette. We also had two visitors on Zoom - Chooky from Coonamble and Lou from NZ. I meet these two guests on Chookyblue's zooms along with many others from an international audience.

A lovely beginning to 2024. I hope we are able to continue.

Karen's holiday achievements and finds

 Karen sent these photos through saying:

I can't bring the attached on Saturday because I made them as Xmas presents so I thought you might be able to put them on the blog for others to see. 

I wanted to use up starters and enders (based on 1.5" squares) but scarcely made a dent in my stockpile. 

The blue runner is bound; the other two are finished by cutting the backing fabric large enough to bring it over to the right side as a pseudo-binding. 

The cat-fabric table mat went to a friend with several cats. 

She also gives advanced notice of a coming exhibition...

For those who can get to Canberra March-August 2024, there's an exhibition of historic quilts, including the Rajah quilt: 

And then there is a link to a hexagon star block which we are hoping to use for our next quilt...

Thanks Karen for all this inspiration.

Join in the Chookshed Stitchers Challenge for 2024

 

Deana is hosting a challenge for the Chookshed Stitchers and anyone else really that wants to join in that blogs. 

If you read the post above you can find out the details. 

I had attached the logo if your joining in you can add it to your sidebar and use if when you post about the challenge. 

Go on be brave or crazy (like me) and join us. 

I've made my little list of 10 things we'll need to complete in 2024. However, because of my renos downstairs and then the family living in half my quilting studio upstairs the list will be a little different to the lists of others who are focusing on quilting. My focus is on Studio Decluttering and Maintenance to enable our group to make quilts. I have broken the huge jobs down into manageable tasks that I hope friends can help with and it will start when the family moves out in mid January.

1. Quick tidy and clean to start the ball rolling moving furniture back to where it used to live.
2. Deep clean of the banisters with a toothbrush and oiled cloth.
3. Deep clean of the drawers that store my cut squares. These were not sealed during the last part of the painting so are quite dusty inside.
4. Move and clean the treadle machine so it is again usable.
5. Empty the cotton reel holder (holds about 100 reels) and dust the nooks and crannies.
6. Clean all sewing machines, find homes for the ones I no longer want, clean and put new needles in the ones I will keep.
7. Find homes for all finished quilts.
8. Dust inside all display cabinets. They got dusty inside even though they were sealed.
9. Put solar resistant film on all front and back windows.
10. Make a quilt !!!! at last.

How about that for a list???

For more on my progress through these tasks take a look at the dedicated page in the page list above.