Busy and Productive....our first day back

Yesterday was our official first meeting day for the year, and what a day!,
Everyone busy chatting, catching up, planning new projects, etc..etc..

Sheila must have been influenced by the lovely racing red top she was wearing, busily flitting from person to person, asking, suggesting and just generally getting the group on track for our upcoming Quilt Show, in fact she was so fast she was just a blurr scooting 'round the corner.

Some of the girls had unofficial get togethers over the Christmas break, and others just beavered away at home so lots of Show and Tell to get us inspired.

Caity, who did a workshop on Brazillian Embroidery with the Needlework group last year, decided that she would love to have a go at Elizabethan Embroidery, so with the help of the net, she taught herself the stitches and methods to create this wonderful rooster.

 Caity also finished off two other wonderful pieces that she had started in classes last year, a lovely circle of Brazillian Embroidered butterflies used to make a cushion and a lovely 3-D wheat field scene that she has framed.

In her travels, Sue saw the cutest soft toy ball, complete with enclosed rattle, of course Sue had to meet the challenge and work out the design to create her own ball.

It is a combination of Polygon and Hexagon shapes to get the lovely round shape.  And of course if you don't happen to have a little person in your life at the moment, you could always use it as an earring!?.....

Balls were certainly a large part of Sue's Christmas Break, she gathered inspiration from one of our Library books to create this vibrant 'balls' quilt, with gently curved inserts in the larger balls.

June will be teaching the Wednesday arvo group her 'Hidden Wells' variation in the near future and bought some samples along to show us.  This is the original Quilt June made using this pattern, as she says, "I did this quilt the way I was told in class...."

The quilt has a lovely pieced backing using up the left over blocks with a deep border.

And then of course the fun began, June is not one who generally follows instructions or patterns, so she immediately made several other quilts with variations of 'Hidden Wells',this being one variation

The blocks are assembled by strip piecing, cutting into squares and then umm.....what was that you said again June?........oh well, will let you all know when June takes us for our class.
The design is created by flipping the blocks by quarter turns, one block is the area shown inside the white dotted line in the piccie below.

This version was made by June's daughter Maureen, using fewer fabric choices for a totally different look.

Another version, using 'Oriental' fabrics, June has appliqued kimonos onto the border,

 and echoed the kimonos in the border quilting.

Betty bought along her latest flimsey to share, a tesselated design that she tells me is really quite simple when you get going. 

There is quite a bit of 'updating' and 'improvement' works going on at the Cottage, more storage space being built, among other things, so everything is a bit topsy turvey, stuff pulled out of existing storage and put in rooms for tempoary storage, the result is that we couldn't get at the screens to pin up our quilts, so lots of hands on deck to help out.  Thanks in particular to Janice for her efforts.

Spotted Inge using this lovely little felt and fabric needle case book and the tinsiest little  Cathederal Window pin cushion made for Inge by her daughter Betty.  Inge commented "Betty doesn't have time to make quilts, she does 'little' ". Well yes, she does, we have all seen some of the beautiful little miniatures and things that Betty has created.

A Pretty in Inge's sewing world.