Quilts, Classes and how we use our language

There was a bit of a startled 'look around' last week when someone was talking of using orphans to make a quilt, don't know if the thought was more along the lines of  'what a good idea'   or   'is that allowed?'.... of course it was orphan blocks that were being referred to, well... that was all sorted and we had a bit of a giggle, well not as big a laugh as when the girls were getting ready for Gwen's class today........one of the items on the requirements list was a compass.......Catty, for the life of her couldn't see why you would need one, but it was on the list, so..........

she bought along a compass!!
One of the cool uses for the compass.....the other kind of compass, was how to draw up hexagons,

now where was that little bit of knowledge when I needed it??, You make the radius the same measurement needed for the side of the hexagon.  Cool huh!?  Looking forward to learning lots more tips from Gwen as she takes us through her Beginners Hand Quilting Classes.

Some of the girls, wrestling with the creation of templates, all agreed by the end of the day that it really was easy, once you got the hang of it.
While some were learning new skills, others were enjoying their friends company, Louise was researching ideas to use those pretty circles she has in front of her, and Sadie was really getting stuck into those black hexies.

while Fae was way ahead with her Pink Hexies

all will be revealed at the Christmas Fair, yep, the gals are gearing up for Christmas.......

Fran crocheted two cloche hats, a white one and a steel blue one, both decorated with cute little yarn flowers.  She bought them along to show us, so of course, had to ask her to model one for us...

Innes donated some offcuts from a quilt backing to Val, who promptly added some plain fabrics and turned them into another charity quilt using the disappearing 9 patch design.

Janette bought along her ditch quilted 'I Spy', looking for some inspiration for further quilting on the blocks,

The backing was bought before the quilt was assembled and there just wasn't enough fabric (how often does that happen?!) so Janette was rather thrilled to find a purple and orange that toned in beautifully,

With such a pretty and vibrant backing this is truly another reversible quilt.

Lorraine has finished her 'Orphan' quilt, who would think it was orphans??

The flying geese and strip blocks were from a paper piecing class that Lorraine did, the toile center of the medallion was from a hand quilting class...

and the double 9patch blocks were from last years Row x Row, after making 16 of them, Lorraine then changed her mind and decided on different blocks for the RxR, moral to the story?  when doing classes always use some of the same fabric!  you can then turn the orphans into a stunning quilt! Lorraine even practiced her new embroidery stitching skills to make the label for her quilt.
She then used this continuous quilting design to practice her machine quilting skills in the medallion border.

Arvo Tea saw us scoffing down smoked salmon, yummo, lovely date cake, a buttered slice (didn't manage to get even a crumb of that one) lovely biscuits and some of Fran's shortbreads.