Our Easter Fair...

...was a bit smaller than previous years, however we certainly had a wide range of goodies on display and for sale and the cottage looked a treat all spruced up in it's new dress.
The very first quilt to catch your eye as you entered the Patchwork Group's Sales Room were these two, a clever 'I Spy' version of the disappearing 9 Patch and a 3-D floral wall hanging, sadly the only way to photograph anything on this wall is to pop into the cupboard opposite - and wouldn't you believe it! someone was already in the cupboard - doing important things and organising, so please forgive the pic.

 

The Geisha Girls in this Oriental inspired Wall Hanging were created using Machine Embroidery, paired with just the right fabric combinations in the Dresden Plates, along with a use of piping between the blocks and clever quilting to make this a real eye catcher. 

The large Snowball quilt got a lot of interest, all those tiny pieces and beautifully intersecting seams.  The clever design of the outer edge blocks help to create an impression of a 2nd border.

The Patchwork Girls met market demand with the supply of smaller quilts this Easter, including a number of children's quilts such as these cuties.

and another clever disappearing 9-Patch using a novelty print 

 There were also a range of designs and colours in Lap and Smaller quilts, to suit all decors and ages.

This bright Hourglass/1 Patch combination would be loved by any little recipient, and if the colours were not just the right thing, the pastel pink and blue around the corner would surely be the ant's pantz.

Along the line of more adult quilts there was also a large range of designs and colours, including this clever blue and white quilt.  All straight edge piecing but giving the illusion of circular lines.

A recent in-house work shop on the Hidden Wells design and variations produced some lovely quilts, such as this lovely.

There is the promise of a nip in the air today, which makes me wish for the warmth and softness of this lovely raw edge design using soft flannel fabrics.  The wall hanging was one of the creations from another in-house workshop on Tessellated Quilt Designs taken from Christine Porter's book 'Tessellation Quilts"

Amongst the wonderful display of quilts there were tables of smaller items offered for viewing pleasure and sale.  Bags, bibs, baskets and bunnies were a few scattered throughout the tables.

There were Beach Bags, Aprons, Soft Toys, lots of hand and kitchen towels, table linnen and the cutest 'cup and saucer' pot holder.

Sewing Machine Mats, complete with little thread bins and matching pincushions, 'Crazy' silk shoulder bags decorated with the prettiest stitching and plaited shoulder straps, lots more pretty aprons and potholders.

Very handy hand massages, just right to take a break at the machine and relax those fingers, Luggage Tags to easily identify your luggage, coasters, tissue holders and stitching compendiums, all backed by a fresh lemon baby quilt.

And  how special would you feel wearing this wonderful Sashiko inspired Vest, just the thing to keep the winter chills at bay.

 

Just outside the Patchwork Group's Sales room, the Needlework Ladies had their 'Novelties' table all set up with a huge range of Easter Egg inspired goodies for the little folks.  The Novelties table is expressly aimed at providing small quality gifts for the kiddies to spend their pennies on and be part of the 'Fun of the Fair'.  It has a faithful following of littlies who visit Fran every Fair Day.  

Further along the Machine Embroidery Group, many of whom are also Patchworkers, had their tables set out with a huge range of beautiful goodies all under a Happy Easter banner

 There was even the cutest quilt decorated with Matryoshka Dolls, with its own little soft doll in the Martyoshka style and matching  Martyoshka pillow case, and some beautiful table linnens, including this tray cover worked with twin needle embroidery. 

And what an eye catching way to display your beautifully worked jewelry, Turquoise and Silver, Stunning!

 Hope you made it to the Fair and had a Fun time, we all did!. 

Our Easter Fair Extravaganza and New Members

The excitement is mounting in our neck of the woods, our big Easter Fair is only days away, on Saturday 23 April and we are all looking forward to showing off our new kitchen extension, the Cottage renovations and updated Garden Entrance.......mind you, there is a bit of a push going on to put the finishing touches into place with a working bee this Saturday to lay the pavers, and of course we all have our fingers and toes crossed that the car park is finished in time.

Jackie O. joined our group a few weeks back and promptly took herself off on a bit of a holiday, she joined us today and bought along this beautiful Baltimore quilt.  Although it took Jackie 2 years to create, each block only took between 7-11 days to complete!.  Jackie was shown how to do needleturn applique and as so often happens, she was hooked.

Many of the blocks in Jackie's quilt are her own designs, with others inspired by traditional Baltimore Album designs.  Hopefully Jackie will be bringing this wonderful quilt along to our up coming Quilt Show for you all to have a drool over 'in the flesh' so to speak!
Jackie quilted around the design in each block but had a friend machine quilt the borders in a double heart design.

End of day, Jackie's Darling came along to help pack up the quilt, couldn't resist getting another pic, this time including the top row.

Janet's Daughter gave her a book on 'Skinny Quilts' for Christmas, and Janet set herself the challenge of making as many as possible using her stash only!  This vibrant creation is Janet's second from her book and stash with number 3 already in the works.

Two new members joined us yesterday and were settled in and  made to feel welcome by Fran, our charming 'welcome committee'.
 Lynn bought along her scrap pieced flimsey, made by request for her Grandson who is moving out of home in the near future.  Using many 'memory' fabrics from her scrap pile, Lynn created each block from a central hexagon, adding strips by just diving into her scrap box and sewing her little heart out.

 

 Our second new member, Jenny bought along some lovely Beatrix Potter print fabric to work on, looking forward to seeing Jenny's completed creation.

 Welcome Lynn and Jenny.

Christine also bought along a flimsey to share with us, made in a one day 'Stack and Slash' workshop down at the Angel, Christine decided to join the blocks using a gold bias tape.

She then choose some nice wide bias binding to be incorporated into the borders, but wouldn't you know it, it was one tinsy little inch too short!...what to do....while playing around with the problem Christine thought of popping a little embroidery over the bias binding join, she liked the effect so much she did the same in each of the corners.  Brilliant solution Christine.  Hopefully the completed quilt will be for Sale at our Easter Fair.

Betty bought along another 2 Quilts of Love for the Selengor Hospital, she is also working on pieces of Hardanger, "Oh just using up some leftovers" she airily told me........have you ever done Hardanger?...it doesn't start with Hard for no reason!

 Sue has very kindly offered to deliver the Quilts of Love to Selangor for us on her way through that neck of the woods.  Thank you Sue.

Judy Wiltshire Quilt being raffled....

Opened the Buderim Chronicle, our local paper, to find an article featuring this wonderful and vibrant quilt made by Judy is being raffled.

 A quick call to Megan at the Chronicle and she sent us this image to use here.  Thank you so much Megan.

Judy always created the most amazing quilts, all beautifully worked, and this one is no exception, hand done in lovely vibrant colours it is the last quilt Judy worked on before she was taken from us.
Proceeds of the raffle are for the Buderim Local Ambulance, a very worthy cause.

To get your ticket.......or really, at $1.00 per ticket, more likely to be tickets, pop along to the Ambulance stall at the Buderim Easter Fair on Saturday 23rd April,  they are usually on the veranda overlooking the Cottage and  lawn area.

The Easter Fair has been a feature of our local Easter celebrations for many years, and brings a range of local crafters together at the one location.  The Lions Club allocates stalls in the Memorial Hall to various crafters whilst the members of the Craft Cottage have a huge variety of hand crafted goodies from all of our 13 groups, such as beautifully hand painted ceramics, Wall and Garden art of many mediums, stock up on designer greeting and birthday cards from the Calligraphy Group, a special memento box or article from Machine Embroidery, a myriad of hand knitted, Lace or embroidered goodies, something special from the talented gals in Fiber Arts and of course, a chance to grab a special quilt to snuggle into in the coming cooler months.............oh and guess what??   if you manage to find the display of the Patchwork Group's raffle quilts for our upcoming quilt show in June....and you look very carefully, betcha you can find a raffle ticket just sitting there asking you to take a chance.
Wow, talk about a chance overload, 3 astoundingly beautiful quilts will be won this year by 3 lucky people!...........oooh, makes you go shivvery all over with the excitement of it all.  Good Luck to all ticket buyers, and who knows, maybe the winner is YOU!

Quilts made with lots of love for kids affected by the Floods

The Thursday night girls have been ever so busy making quilts for kiddies.  Debby has sent us piccies of quilts made and tells us all about them.  Thank you Debby

On our first night back after Xmas Di W suggested that we make and donate some quilts for children who have lost everything in the floods.  Great idea Di.
The next week we arrived with fabric, sewing machines, and cutting boards ready to sew. 


Letitia did a great job delegating jobs to all of our enthusiastic ladies.   She had girls cutting fabric, ironing, sewing then squaring up blocks 

 

The log cabin quilt donated by June

Another of June's scrappy quilts 

Letitia and Penny, yes we can see you Penny!  Holding first finished quilt.

Jules and Libby getting into the job sewing and ironing on the second night of stitching

Marlene and Leanne sorting fabrics and squaring up blocks

Elaine made this little cutie at home for us to donate, thanks Elaine.

Elaine and Jules holding 2 more scrappy quilts

Elaine, Marlene, Denise and Libby with another two quilts.

Denise and Libby with a smaller scrappy quilt that Marlene and Di G made together.  Thanks girls.

 

Again, June and Denise holding June's quilts. 

June, this is so cute!

 

June is hoping a special little boy gets this cat quilt

Thank you so much ladies for giving your time, fabric, enthusiasm etc. to make these very colourful and happy quilts.  I know there will be some very happy children snuggling into these very soon as the nights get cooler.  We have been in contact with the Northern CWA.  We have also heard that Gail Chalker of Sew Creative in Gatton is organising collections of donations for Grantham as well.  Fortunately with both we are able to get free transport as we have also collected books, fabric, thread, patterns etc so we have quite a collection of goodies for some very needy friends.  We will make a decision in the next week.  Thanks so much again ladies.  It's such a pleasure being involved with such a warm and caring group of ladies.  Debby. 

Last of the Library Bags...

 Yep! this bag made by Sheila was the last cab off the rank! bringing the total library bags made  in the 2 week period allowed to 102 bags, surpassing the 90 that had been requested.
Machine Embroidery Group was asked to make as many as they possibly could to help out the kiddies at three of the flood affected schools in Ipswich, 90 being the total number needed, with help from the Patchwork Group the target was reached with a few extras that can be pressed into service to tote togs to school swimming lessons, so they certainly won't go astray. Well done all!

Sue had a bit of a UFO clean out, Catti snaffled them up and finished off the goodies for our Sales Table. Thank you to the donor and the finisher...

Catti also made this cutie, the 10th Quilt of Love requested by the Selengor Private Hospital.

 We saw Catti's WIP, the windmill quilt last week, and here it is all finished! It's to be a pressie to her Mum in Switzerland when Cattie flys home for a visit.

Made from a pack of co-ordinating fabrics received a few years back with a magazine subscription renewal Lorraine has created this 'floor' quilt for her Great Granddaughter Charley. Originally there was a pattern included but as quite a number of the 10" squares happened to include the selvedge edges in the measurement, the box was put on the shelf to await inspiration.  Lorraine has cleverly cut and assembled the blocks used to form a stepped pattern while still using some of the 1 patch blocks.  There was enough fabric left over to allow Lorraine to piece the binding to match the quilt.

Jackie bought along two of her completed wall hangings, both of which spent quite some years in the UFO pile.

 

Debby's Trunk Show

Another month has passed.......gee isn't that scarry, seems like just a few days ago I was posting last months Trunk Show for you to see.  This month we were treated to the wonderful work of Debby who has also organised the pics for us.  Thanks so much Debby.

Debby has attended crazy quilting classes with Jenny at Patchwork Angel for about 4/5 years.  She loves doing these classes with Jenny although she said it does make you a little crazy at times.

A pillow covered in embroidery, beads and buttons along with a cute mug bag that June demonstrated at a Thursday night meeting with some added 'crazy'

 3 pics of 3 sides of Debby's special little crazy box.  Another made with Jenny.

  

A large quilt bag with more crazy

And it just gets crazier!!  This is a 9 x 9" block encyclopedic quilt.  A wonderful idea to look back on for ideas with your next crazy creation!!

 Debs 1st quilt, her favourite, it's a bed topper.  She made the hexies about 15 years ago and didn't know how to put them together until she started with the Thursday night group about 7 years ago

 A mystery quilt was organised about 5 years ago. so Debs thought it would be good to get out of her comfort zone and make something different, she made it for her sisters 50th in her colours.  She loved it!

 Here is a scrappy quilt done on a Thursday night with Jenny.  About 9 girls joined in and they had great fun.  In front is a colourful Marinar's compass, another weekend course a few years ago.

 A photo of her wedding ring quilt in white, green and pink.  She started this 6 years ago this April.  Yeah it's finished! with Debby showing another 9 x 9" crazy sampler with help from Jenny in front of the Wedding Ring quilt.

 This photo shows lots of things Debby likes making in her spare time, stitcheries, making kids toys, dolls, crocheting, cross-stitcheries etc...

 A close up of the wedding rings.  Debby wanted to do Trapunto and Gwen offered to show her how it was done.  Gwen also showed Deb how to hand quilt which she just loves.  Thanks Gwen.