Everyone's invited............

The Sewing Basket at 122 Brisbane Road, Mooloolaba, has opened its doors.
when I popped in this morning I was given this invitation to pass on to you all, to the Official Opening on Wednesday 15th April from 6.30p.m., how exciting!
Mary Glover has bought what was previously Michell's Patchwork and Sewing and is in the process of a revamp, and here are a couple of pics to show you some of what is on offer.
The ever so friendly Cath, pictured above with a very happy shopper, has a beautiful quilt on the classroom wall. I will take a pic for you on Friday. Yep I have enrolled in a class to do this........

Although the classroom is in the same space, it is now more open and the whole store seems to be roomier.
There is a wide range of classes available, from Beginners Stack-n-Slash to more advanced quilting as well as machine, overlocker and hand embroidery classes, all most reasonably priced.

See those pretty pastel flannels in the bottom right bay above, they are only $15 mtr. same as most of the other fabric in those bays, some are as low as $10 mtr., at those prices I guess we will still be quilting through the 'financial crises'.

Make yourself a cuppa and check these out.....

Free Motion Quilting on a Treadle Machine
This link was put up by a member of an online quilting group, shows a rather proficient quilter doing beautiful feathers on a treadle sewing machine. Scroll down to the 3rd video and turn your volume way down, it's a little loud.

http://2knitwits.blogspot.com/2008/09/toga-madness.html

Got a question? Need info on a technique or need a free pattern?
Sheila sent a link to QuiltBug Quilt Shop, which is also Quilt Bus and Hickory Hill Quilts, it's full of free patterns, tips, mystery quilt patterns, calculators etc. etc. all searchable, and well worth a visit. Scroll and click on 'Free Stuff' on the left, there is a Info search in the top right had corner.
http://quiltbug.com/

Enjoy

Free Motion Quilting Tutorial

Thinking of trying free motion quilting? Elizabeth from 'oh, fransson!'
http://www.ohfransson.com/oh_fransson/2009/03/quilt-along-14-freemotion-quilting.html
has this clear and easy to follow tutorial.
Enjoy!

Textile Art Festival - Class Bookings

Bookings for Classes are now open for the Textile Art Festival in Brisbane on May 29th to 31st.
go online to http://www.textileart.com.au/Brisbane2009/app/pages/view/welcome15727/
to check out the many and varied classes, costs and book your tickets.

'Just love Purple'.......

this was the comment from Elaine, the maker of this stunning purple quilt, when asked for her story at Show and Tell yesterday, it is destined for her own bedroom even though it means that the feature wall has to be repainted, no doubt a job for Hubby.

Elaine purchased the main fabrics, the three purples featured in the heart blocks in Tamworth, she then saw the quilt pattern on the cover of the quilting magazine, APQ, and the rest as they say is history.
Elaine has very kindly agreed to allow us to hang her quilt in our up coming Biennale Quilt Show later in the year.Thanks to Picasa, a closer view of the purple heart.

This quilt with the brighter pastel colours is for Lyn's very new little Granddaughter Dana. The nursery is decorated in mauves and this quilt will star very nicely.
Love this quilt to bits, such simple lines and beautiful fabrics combine to produced a stunning quilt.

What do you do with Selvedges??

Well, you could make a scarf, or maybe a bag, or go really off the planet and follow Jodie from Ric Rac, into the world of upholstery. Yep, she upholstered a chair.

This girl is so talented, go view her chair on http://vintagericrac.blogspot.com/2009/03/not-so-big-but-kinda-more-technical.html and while you are there check out the beautiful selvedge dress that she made for her daughter.

To keep an eye on what Jodie gets up to check out the link to 'Ric Rac' in the side bar under the section titled 'Blogs you may find interesting', scroll down to Ric Rac and click.

Off to post the rest of your pics from yesterday.
Enjoy!

How old are these beautiful table cloths?

the work is exquisite, bought in by Gwen for Chantell (Show and Tell), they were made by her Grandmother, and as Gwen's Mum would have been 110 yrs old this year these beautiful cloths could be into the latter half of 100 years old.
The cloths were worked by Gwen's much loved Grandmother, to match various tea and dinner sets that she had in her home 'Inverness House' in Bexley.

One cloth was made to match part of a dinner set that was made for a visit by Prince George, Duke of Kent, who unfortunately died in a plane crash in 1942 which of course cancelled the visit. As it does.

This is just the cutest, a pillow cushion made by Sheila for the Easter Fair, she's so busy with group business that she stitched half of one eye last week and the other half this week, , as Ailsa pointed out, so far puss doesn't drink and doesn't smell, sounds like a perfect pet to me!

Working away in the background on a beautiful piece of silk fabric with appliqued vibrant silk patches is Meg.
Meg will be turning this created fabric into a bag, hope it makes it to the Easter Fair, I'm starting work early .... (very big evil grin).
Meg told us the story of this fabric, quite a number of years ago, at a store that Meg frequented someone came into the store with a cup of coffee and managed to spill the coffee over the roll of silk fabric, after dry cleaning there was apparently still a little shadow of coffee, so Meg scored about 10 - 12 meters of beautiful silk. Lucky Girl Meg.

Last week we saw Sadie and Maureen sandwiching a quilt for one of Sadies Grandies, here is the proud Grandma and the finished quilt.
Well done Sadie!
And what's this I here you say, some of last weeks piccies? no no no, this is Sadie and Maureen sandwiching a second quilt this afternoon. Yep, it's for another of Sadies Grandies.
A long table view and no doubt we will see the finished quilt next week.

Janette will be off having fun at a family re-union at Easter and so has donated this lovely wall hanging of a Japanese Geisha for our Easter Fair.
Janet took the sandwich with her to while away the wait time for a recent day surgery procedure, the wait was a whole lot longer than Janette was banking on so most of the quilting was done in hospital.
The Geisha doesn't show up too well in the top pic, so a little faffing around with Picasa and presto, a much better view - Don't you just love Picasa!

How stunning is this, Barbara (of the nine patch r x r - for those of you who read my blog) saw this great idea in a patchwork magazine, they are her mothers doilies, all worked by Mum about 80 years ago.
Barbara plans on giving this to her daughter, no special occasion, as Barbara says, 'out of my cupboards to hers.'
This stunning quilt, another of Barbara's, started off as stitcheries done with a friend some years back, in fact Barbara remembers that it was a pattern but cannot remember who's or even just how long ago.
A close up of the 'girl sleeping' block
The central panel of park gates
This block is named the 'bird watching chair'.

There are more pics of wonderful quilts, but the Darling is making tummy rumbling noises, so off to feed my Hero. Will post the remainder tomorrow and believe me they are worth waiting for. Stunning purple quilt and the cutest softest little baby quilt

Making Memories Quilt

Sun shining through fern, way up high, at Mary Caincross

Alzheimer's Australia is having a quilt block competition, to raise awareness of dementia and Alzheimer's.

Entrants are asked to submit an 8" finished (8 1/2") block and a written explanation of what the block represents. There are 3 prizes to be won and 60 highly commended blocks will be used in the 'Making Memories' Quilt.

http://www.alzheimers.org.au/content.cfm?infopageid=5521
follow the link for more info.

Competition closes 25th. May.

Textile Art Festival

Expertise Events, the people who give us the Craft & Quilt Fair, AQC etc. with the Support of ATASDA - Australian Textile Arts and Surface Design Assoc. are having a Textile Art Festival at the Brisbane Exhibition Centre, South Bank from Friday May 29th to Sunday 31st.

They are calling for exhibitors of wearable art, surface decoration, knitting, crochet, embroidery, etc. etc.

http://www.textileart.com.au/Brisbane2009/app/pages/view/welcome15727/
follow the link for more information, it would be great to see exhibited some of the lovely work you talented ladies do.

Charity Quilts & Birthday

Having been tied up with family commitments for the last few weeks, it was good to get back to the group's Wednesday meeting. Lots going on and lots of lovely work - either WIP's, or the finished product.

Lyn Solomon managed to pick up a length of fabric on one of her overseas trips with these great horses and flowers printed on it.
Lyn is using the Broderie Perse method of applique to create a table cloth with a ponies border and a table runner for the center piece. How versatile!

Lyn showing her WIP, the table runner.

Birthday Girl Gwen was rather tickled by a card from her neighbour, here she is showing us and a couple of pics of the card.





After a good giggle there was a bit of a rush to put on 'lippy' to brighten the face. Well...........you have gotta keep your end up as the saying goes.

Gwen and Janet did some rather hard work over the past couple of weeks, Bloomhill, one of our local cancer respite centers had an unfinished quilt given to them. They decided to ask our group to finish the quilt so that they could raffle it as part of their 'Mothers Day' fundraiser.

It's never easy to pick up someone else's work and finish it off, and this quilt had a few problems that the girls overcame. Gwen did a great job of machine quilting it and Janet then had the challenge of using the cut off fabric from around the edges to bind the quilt, she tells us that she had about 6" of fabric left over.
Here they are showing off their great work.


The group recently purchased some handy dandy clips to hold the sandwich layers together prior to pinning. Maureen and Sadie decided to try them out today on Sadie's quilt

So much easier than bulldog clips or masking tape.
A closer view of Sadies quilt, she is making it for one very lucky young man, her Grandson.

In a recent class, Julie made this quilt top from 2 jelly rolls for her teenage grandson, don't these Grandies do rather well from their Grandmothers? - and don't we just love making them quilts.


Another quilt from Julie, soft florals for her Sis's 60th Birthday, the quilt is machine quilted by one of our Thursday night group members,Fiona, aka the 'Quilting Fairy', Fiona can be contacted through Patchwork Angel and she will quilt an allover design for you starting from $3.35 per square foot.

Batik Dyeing & Elmers Glue

Having read an interesting article a little while ago at this site, fabric dyeing 101,
http://fabricdyeing101.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-to-make-batik-like-fabrics-with.html
about using Elmer's Gel Glue as a resist to dyeing batik fabrics I ordered some from the ever so helpful Catherine at Catherines Place, http://www.catherinesplace.com.au/
an online store over in W.A., and it arrived this arvo. Yay!

Guess who will be playing with water, dye and glue next week. - I'll be the one down the back with all the colour splodges on my hands.

Bye the Bye, Catherine has a selection of really nice F.Q.'s for as little as $1.50 up to $3.50.
pop on over and check them out.