Busy, Busy, so much to do and so much done.

Lots of amazing work to share with you today.  So much so it's hard to know where to start!

First port of call on arrival at the Cottage was to see what that noisy table up the end is up to, well, what a surprise, they are all doing the same quilt! shades of Quilt Shows past?.

It seems to becoming a Quilt Show tradition, these gals choose a quilt pattern and all make the same quilt, but with their own interpretation, its always fun to compare the finished results at the fair.  This time the chosen pattern is 'Leanne's House' a block of the month by Leanne Beasley from 'Leanne's House Patterns'.
Marcia has previously made one of these luscious quilts, so this is a second for her and she is toying with the idea of perhaps changing the wording of the central panel...perhaps...perhaps not!

Of course when Marcia had finished her quilt she contacted the lovely Leanne to request permission to add the B.O.M. patterns to our group library and permission was gracefully given.
Tempted to try your own? pop over to Leanne's website for a list of pattern stockists and a peek at her other lovely patterns.

Gwen is busily hand quilting another quilt, also stitched by another friend, (see last weeks post) this quilt was made by our lovely Janet who passed away in January 2012.  She is so sadly missed.  Janet and Gwen and a number of other Patchwork group members formed an offshoot group that met for an extra shot of quilting fun each week, they called themselves 'The Bossy Stitchers' or 'The Bossies'  for short....a group that is still going strong. (and if rumor has it right, they are still bossy!!)

The Pics really don't do this lovely quilt justice.  The subtleties in the fabrics don't photograph very well.  There is a very faint, almost watermark effect on the central hexagons and the little patterned wedges have a splash of colour while the straight pieces are charcoals and greys. Gwen is using a rust thread to hand quilt the hexagon centers, to pick up the rust in the wedges..
Getting a good match for the borders wasn't as easy as first thought either, but a nice pin striped fabric was found and Gwen is rather pleased that the strips meld together nicely at the mitered corners.

Julie had a very intricate flimsy for us to view, based on a Sue Daley design 'This goes with That', using Sue's English paper piecing papers. 

'This Goes with That' has now been replaced with Sue's 'Cotton Wood' Pattern, another lovely for those who love E.P.P.
Not sure how long it took Julie to create this lovely, but certainly not as long as the one she is working on now...
Found hiding in her stash, a pile of blocks created about 10 years ago! Julie bought them along yesterday to have a play with the layout.

Marcia, who had just bought in a pile of 'stash thinnings' (moving house will do that for you) thought that Julie should go 'shop the thinnings' to add to her blocks, Julie wasn't fussed....she is over little H.S.T''s, well yesterday she was, who knows about tomorrow?
See that lovely quilt hanging up in the background? 

Lyn bought it along to share.

As everyone seems to be scrap quilt happy at the moment, Lyn decided to have a go at reducing some of her scraps, she sourced a great star quilt pattern from one of our library books and feeling that she just couldn't cope with a truly scrappy quilt, she settled on using some of her Blue & Yellow scraps with a really cute spotted white background to set everything off nicely.

The star points are created by stitching squares of background fabric corner to corner at the end of each oblong of star fabric, (Pic 2) this of course leaves you with two nice little triangles of fabric that you can very fussily form into miles of H.S.T squares to form an interesting border insert as Lyn did.(Pic 1)  Lyn has also used this idea on a previous quilt with a twist to the H.S.T. layout to form a chevron or zig zag border insert.
Sorry about getting the pics turned around, just one of those things!
Lyn had the quilt quilted by Fiona from the Quilting Fairy.  
Fiona used a metallic thread for the quilting which gives the quilting a nice sparkle and lift. 

Julie had another flimsey to share, a free pattern she found on the net that would be a simple variation for some of our Charity quilts. 

Now as you all have probably heard, we are making lots of charity quilts for Najidah, using some great fabric we were donated.  Well, guess what, we have been given more fabric, lots more fabric, which means we can make many, many, more charity quilts.
It's a lovely story, though tinged with sadness and the short version is, that organised through Jan, our vibrant and energetic Cottage President,  a very nice gentleman, Derrick has decided to donate his late wife's stash to our group for the purpose of making charity quilts, Derrick visited a couple of weeks ago with part one of the stash.....this....

Yes, I know, amazing isn't it! so many beautiful fabrics.
We are so grateful to be given this opportunity to help the community with this ever so generous donation.
The Thursday night part of our group will be using some of these fabrics to create quilts for STEMM
the mothering and mentoring program of Burnside High School in Nambour.

There was stacks of goodies on the 'Chantell' table (Show and Tell).
Firstly those toiletry bags we make for Najidah have taken on a life of their own, going from a simple drawstring bag to now having an outside pocket, some in funky designs or the  occasional orphan block makes a great pocket.

Some fab finished bags from last weeks workshop, organised by Marcia and presented by Lainey.

Lyn put a different spin on her bag, using D rings and lengthening the straps to create a shoulder bag for her upcoming trip.

Marie had also created a 3 zippered shoulder bag

which hung very nicely, thank you Estelle,over the corner of the framed embroidery Estelle bought in to share with us. Estelle started this with the Embroidery group about 4 years ago, not sure when it was finished but it has recently been framed and looks fantastic.  Sadly the pic of just the embroidery work didn't come out too well, (reflections...eerrrggh) hence the 2 for 1 pic.

Now Marie had also bought along something else to share,

a square, a pressie of fabric roses all wrapped in cellophane with handy beaded pins and an amazing story.
Marie celebrated her birthday several weeks back, and like the rest of us, birthday done, celebrations over, not to be thought about until next year.  Well, not so in Marie's case.
She was busily quilting in her studio downstairs when an 'out of town' friend or two knocked on the door, Surprise!! a birthday party had been secretly organised,
'Keep quilting Marie' they instructed, and upstairs they all tripped
They had the lot, everything to make a fantastic party, all colour coordinated in red and black, including their outfits.  There was luscious food and cakes, and a wonderful tutorial on fabric weaving for the fun part of the day.
Marie's Darling also entered into the spirit of the day, scooting off to change his duds to fit in with the colour scheme.  What a fantastic group of friends, and a lovely day. 
And the tutorial on fabric weaving? well that is the square in the pic above, and yes, we will be having a workshop on fabric weaving in the not too distant future.  Lucky us!

Val has been hard at work with 3 more charity quilts, all these quilts come from orphan blocks either from Val's own stash or other orphans given to her as well as fabric bits and pieces.

She certainly has the imagination and talent to make all these leftovers work in creating lovely charity quilts.

Two cat panels create this great quilt with offset orphan blocks and a pieced border.

Courtney has almost finished her longstitch embroidery, hoping to see the last stitch next week and find out her plans for this lovely piece.

Deanne was as busy as a one armed paper hanger, she has set herself quite a deadline.  This terrific quilt is to be finished by this weekend for the Model Boat open day that will be held at University Lakes this weekend.  Deanne designed everything about this quilt, deciding on what boats to feature, all based on model boats owned by club members, she designed, pieced, appliqued and embroidered  each block.

Hope you bring us in a pic of the finished quilt Deanne, we would all love to see it!

My goodness me....at the end of the piccie pile, except for this one....Fae has graduated to Funky Footwear.....yep, tossed the flimsy fashion and gone for the Funky!
Few of us thinking this just might be a very good idea!