Breast Cancer Fundraising

A bit of an addition, Sheila phone this a.m. and tells me that we raised $180. for Breast Cancer research. Well done ladies!
Jackie was quick off the mark with displaying this beautiful 'Roses' Quilt, about the fastest thing that has ever happened to it from the story Jackie tells, she fell in love with the pattern way back last century.....gee I've always wanted to write that.......when she saw it in a Joanne Brasier book ......back in '95 actually.
It was then a 2 year project of collecting and assembling, but Jackie really got a go on around April & May last year, with the quilt living on the floor for a couple of months (either no pets or very well trained pet) and although she now reckons that there are fabrics in the quilt that she wonders 'what was she thinking' no one could agree on which ones they were.
Its a beautiful quilt and will adorn a wall in Jackies Home.

Sue was finishing the binding on this little beauty that she said was an excursion into the realms of what not to do & use. Her sis Marion, that we met in a previous post, named it "Jewel in the Crown" because one of those little squares is not repeated in the quilt at all.
It was a joint effort between Marion and Sue to assemble the squares into a top, with Marion setting the squares out, Sue deciding that it needed the black to set off the colours and adding the green to give it zing.
Ugly duckling into beautiful Swan..........maybe we can re-visit some of those old U.F.O.'s and turn them into Swans for the Quilt Show. ummm perhaps.

The Group recently purchased an 18 1/2" square ruler to add to our 'tools of trade' collection , and as luck would have it, Heather, who had just recently done a Machine Quilting class with Judy Bellingham, and was wondering what to do with the practice squares, decided in the spirit of 'use it up' to make us this great cover for our ruler! Thanks Heather.

Di, one of the Thursday night gals joined us for our Breast Cancer Fundraising Arvo Tea, and was working on this 'Stolen Quilt' - better than a free quilt using your scraps, a stolen quilt comes about when you raid your long term friends stash, and yep they're still mates!
Sue with this vibrant pink and orange quilt, although I conned a piccie, I missed the story! how slack is that. Love the great effect the floral binding makes.
We had our little bit of Australia's Biggest Morning Tea today, it's an annual event to raise funds for breast cancer research, generally aimed at being Australia wide on a specific morning, it's become quite acceptable to hold one within that week. One contacts the Cancer Council and is issued with a kit and off you go...................raising funds to your little heart's content.

Porcelain Painters share the Cottage with us on Wednesday so we invited them to be our Guests and share in the fun.

Inge, who grew these beautiful orchids, bought them along for our table decoration, she suggested they be raffled off at the end of Arvo Tea and we were all agreeable to that I can tell you!
And the were won by someone who had the Good Luck Fairy sitting on her shoulder,

Just look at all the booty! Flowers..........


A prettily embroidered wash cloth and scented soap ummm can still smell that fresh fragrance.

Not to mention a cosmetics bag for it all to go into.

Inge, being shy behind her table runner, (Inge! shy! I here you splutter, your right, really she was hiding from Betty). Just look at that laugh! Gorgeous Japanese prints set on point and sashed with black and a blue/black binding.

Two of the early winners, pretty pleased with themselves, but notice the prize on the chair to their left? that was the beginning of a winnings pile won by Barbara
who was having too much fun sampling Patricia's shortbread to worry about unwrapping goodies, that was to be savoured latter on, back at the worktable.

How 'bout that finger, is she telling me that she has only had one biccie??.................
Lucky Sue won this pattern for a Sewing Folder, lots of storage compartments but she won't be stitching that on Friday, she is off to the Textile Art Show in Brissy.......woo hoo......
One of our guests got a little booty, a lovely silk scarf in just the right colours and a little note book, Next to her Barbara had to be prodded to open her gift cleverly wrapped in a chux dish cloth.........
..............it turned out to be another kitchen goodie, a lovely tea towel, can't have enough pretty tea towels, it's a pip when you have someone volunteer to wipe up and all you have to offer is the 3 for $4 type you picked up at the supermarket.

Maree was happy to win this pretty magnetised shopping list pad for her fridge, very handy, just what she needed she was saying

Another big winner was Heather, who decided this little lot was just the ant pants for the new caravan
she also won this lavender embroidered shower hat,
and Sue thought that it should be modelled...........
How cute is this covered and logo'd little notebook, just right to pop into your purse with a list of must buys from the LQS.
Barbara nearly had a conniption when she won this, white hangers wrapped in bridal paper, ...omg...but then she remembered, her daughter is engaged......whewwww
It's been mentioned before (and will again) that we are gearing up for our quilt show, and as all you quilting folks out there would know, advertising is a bit of a challenge as every penny spent comes our of revenue, it's a tough call on where to spend your advertising dollars, well how lucky are we.........
Elaine has a son in the printing business, and he very kindly made us up this eye catching range of variable sized posters. Thank you so much Scott.
So ladies when you next need printing done pop over to Maroochydore to see Scott at Snap Printing, just across the road from the R.S.L. - Now that's gotta be good business placement, a great place to wait for your printing to be done........
Now there was a fair bit of shyacking around when I took this pic, and a lesser person would have posted those pics, ...........oh all right then, if they were just a little in focus I would have, but I guess shyacking at the Cottage should stay at the Cottage.

Meanwhile the quiet achievers were hard at work, Patricia stitching perforation lines on more raffle tickets to be formed into books.
This is why Patricia was our 'Star of the Month' recently.
and Betty, who was so busy with the photocopier that she managed 1 3/4 lines of her knitting, what wonderful colours, and that's the pattern under the skein of wool.........maybe when you finish Betty, you might bring it in for us to see.

It's visitor time of the year,

We live in the sub-tropics, so its a pretty safe bet that not too many of us are really fussed about the cold winter weather, but one of the benefits of living up here is the folks that come to visit us during our mild winter months.

We had 2 visitors today that you will meet further down the post but firstly we have Lorraine's Green Daisy Quilt, and a cure for her habit of buying green for the stash.

Lorraine does a lot of applique and is always on the look out for just the right green, buying a little here and a little there.

When she needed a quilt to take to her quilting retreat, she decided to investigate her 'green stash' and found that she had 81 green fabrics, and that is how this quilt was born, each block has 4 different greens with a daisy appliqued in the center.
The daisy is machine appliqued using a variegated Signature thread. Lorraine is also a fan of the method of leaving a half inch of fusible web at the edge of the applique and using the cut-out or donut for another, smaller daisy. Very effective as you can see.

Lorraine quilted the blocks in a 'quilt as you go' method to reduce the strain on her shoulders, she used a King Tut variegated thread and a leaf quilting pattern.


The only extra fabric Lorraine purchased for this quilt was for the borders, so of course, it's an almost free quilt. Dontcha just love free quilts??

Our 2 visitors today, Dorothy's bought her lovely cousin, a fellow knitter, along and after confessing that she rather liked quilting but didn't think she would have the patience for it.........a knitter without patience? I ask you...........I digress, anyway, she found herself being encouraged to take up quilting, there were some very cheap (read free) quilting 'how to' books on the bring & buy table that she succumbed to. Dorothy will be expecting lots of phone calls from Cuz after the visit.

The other visitor was a friend of Julies, from N.S.W., they were having a ball, chatting away......this was taken on a quiet moment,.truly...

Julie was knitting and Dawn was making jewellery, she made that lovely necklace she is wearing


and she also bought this set along to show us. The clever girl even sells her jewelery, one outlet is Holland Wines Winery in Pierces Creek Road, in Crows Nest. So if you ever find yourself sipping samples at Holland Wines, you can see more of Dawns lovely work and maybe even spoil yourself a little.

Maree's Recipes

Maree gave me this really cute page printed from her personal recipe book, so am including it here as an update. To view the recipe, place your cursor over the page and 'left click', that is click the left hand side of your mouse. The page will then pop up in its original size. Just use your back button on the toolbar to go back to the post.

I have also updated the original post to include the recipe for 'Chippies', the lovely cheese biccies we enjoyed that day.

To access the older post, just go to 'Blog Archive' in the right hand side bar,

Place your mouse over the sideways pointing arrow for April (8) and click once,
The drop down menu for the 8 postings for April will appear.
Place your mouse on the posting title that you want, in this case Quillo Workshop and that posting will appear, scroll down to the recipes, about midway through the post.

An exciting extra treat

One of the newer Cottage groups, MMM or Mixed Media artists are having an exhibition in the Cottage Atrium, so we got to see some pretty amazing artwork, including this grouping of fruits.
Painted by Rozanne, purchased by Gwen.
Rosey painted 4 of these, apples, pears, oranges and lemons in acrylics and tells that she really enjoyed capturing the different light and shade effects.

They will look stunning hung on Gwen's wall.

The Needlework Group, who meet on Wednesday mornings have been having an 'in house' workshop for the past few weeks on Gold work.
This is one of the finished pieces, left on the display table by Gwen. It's just the most beautiful butterfly, not sure if it is a pattern or individual design.
Needlework ladies seem to have taken on needles of a larger design, there seems to be a lot of knitting going on, the class on petite knitted purses as shown in the "April 22nd Quillo Workshop" post and here, Jan and Lorraine, 2 Needle workers / Patch workers, flashing their needles and having a good time.
Jan, however did have a very very sad tale to tell, with help from her daughter, she recently did one of those famous 'clean ups' that crafters do from time to time, sorting the good stuff from the stuff that needs to go find another home, all into black plastic bags...........
you know whats coming don't you?, my blood was running pretty cold at this point in the story, and yes it happened, all the bags were the same, all black plastic, and Jan lost all of her sob.... UFO's. sob...sob...

I have heard that if you want to do this type of clean out with plastic bags, at least use white for good and black for 'outta here' but frankly folks, having just helped someone else in one of these clean outs, which also had a small disaster.............use boxes and bags!!

Sheila is rather pleased with the raffle she won at the Maleny Patchwork Show, and bought the goodies in to show us.


Janette, bought in her latest WIP, hand quilting this lovely quilt in such vibrant colours, I didn't get the quilt story as these gals were so into their conversation, which ended in Sheila doing a chicken/rock'n'roll dance that who would want to break their chain of fun?

Arvo tea featured quiche from Heather, cheese scones, Fran's biscuits, some cake from Needle works morning tea and at the back white chocolate brownies.....or should that be whiteies.........and how on earth would you even spell it??, anyway names to one side, here is the recipe.
Cathy's Chocolate Brownies
Ingredients and Method:
Melt 150 grms butter (not margarine) in a saucepan, add 250 grams white chocolate buttons or block, stir til melted and combined. Remove from heat.
In bowl whisk 4 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla essence.
Add 1/2 cup sour cream or thick vanilla yoghurt - I use yoghurt from Maleney Cheese factory.
whisk to blend.
Add 1 cup plain flour, 120grams of almond meal, and stir to combine
To cooled butter-chocolate mixture add 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, stir to combine and add to egg, flour mixture, use whisk to mix thoroughly.
Pour into slice tin approx. 20 Cm's x 30 Cm's.
Bake in moderate oven for 30 mins, or until cake springs back when lightly pressed.
Notes: you can substitute castor sugar for the brown sugar, the flavour will not be as fudgy but the colour will stay whiter.
This recipe is based on a very nice one from Cathy at Cowbells Patchwork in Bell, Queensland.
Cathy has a lovely coffee shop and patchwork store, all under the one roof, so next time you are travelling the Bunya Highway, drop in and say Hi. or pop over and visit on http://www.cowbelles.com.au/ or catch up with Cathy's blog at http://cowbellespatchwork.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

Janet's Kalidoscope, some really cute Bears ....

.........and a beautiful soft kiddies quilt were some of the lovelies to be drooled over yesterday at the Cottage.
This stunning quilt 'Midnight Garden' was made by Janet in a workshop with Fiona from the 'Quilting Fairy',
Janet tells us that it is made from one piece of fabric (4 meters of it) with some cunning cutting and very careful stitching.

The method is to line up your pattern repeats, pin carefully, cut into 6" strips and then cross cut at angels to form triangles. You know, real easy!


The blocks are formed as hexagons and then assembled, another easy step no doubt.

These two close ups show the quilting, done with a nice variegated thread.

Janet used a beautifully soft Moda wide fabric for the backing which really shows the quilting, beautifully done by Fiona from the 'Quilting Fairy".
Well done Janet, on this more than stunning quilt, its a keeper!

Betty was hard at work finishing the binding on this lovely kiddies quilt, destined for the sale table Betty tells me.

WOW! This is stunning!, when Heather bought these blocks along and did a test layout she decided that the fan and the tile was a bit bland, well she certainly fixed that.

Heather added the tiny hearts, the yellow dots and green teardrops to this one, it certainly has life now.
Heather kept mumbling about, 'Well they are all finished now', well girls we have all heard that one before, this quilt goes from fabulous to more fabulous-era. (Yeah, not a word but it should be in the quilting vocabulary) Yesterday the blocks were being squared up, so we will hopefully get to see it sandwiched in the near future.

How cute is this? and who made it? so pretty, so vibrant, I do hope, hope that I win. -- o.k. yeah, I know, that's selfish, but isn't it the cutest?, who wouldn't want to win!

A WIP from Heather, just to add some variety to her quilting and lampshade making life.

And who was so deeply in concentration on starting this long awaited project that she was late for a cuppa?, can't wait to see this work further along.