Gals been stitchin' beautiful quilts

Lots of lovely quilts at the Cottage, all captured by Lainey who also sent the stories for you all to enjoy!  Thanks Lainey.

Betty has been clearing out her stash since moving house.

She says that this has hardly put a dent in it but she promises to keep on working at it.

 Julie has been stitching these gorgeous little shapes together. Estelle taught us how to do them a few years ago. They are a great way to use the last of some really lovely fabric. She now has a set of good looking place mats.

 

 Sue has been cutting out more toiletry bags for us to sew. She thought it might be useful to show how they are put together  and demonstrated by wearing one on her head. Not really sure why as the bag wasn’t big enough to cover her completely.

 

 Karen has been working on this lovely Bronwyn Hayes kit. She played around with placement of the blocks and changed the original layout. She also changed the border fabric but the effect is magnificent. 

 Val has been hard at work creating monsters. They are friendly, happy looking ones though.

 Val made this stunner from some leftovers of a quilt she made some years ago featuring sashiko embroidery. You must admit the fabric is far too good to leave in the drawer. I think this one will be for sale at our Christmas Fair. Come early.

 

Sue doing a Foo impersonation. This lovely crazy patch is from Sue’s stash and sewn quilt as you go. I didn’t photograph the back but each square has a different pink backing.

 

 This lovely is from Janice. She has made this rag quilt from some truly good looking flannels. Some extra layers were put around the edge to really fluff it up. This quilt is available for sale in the Atrium Gallery at the Craft Cottage.

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.

Marcia bought these Kaleidoscope blocks along looking for a little inspiration and a few ideas on how to lay them out and use them, Wendy had a great idea of patchwork blocks between the circles and a piccie to boot, Heather lay the blocks into this layout which had a lot of approval, nicely balanced, and Marcia kind of liked the idea of a darker plain background.
Wendy thought a lighter background would be the way to go and proceeded to demonstrate, bit hard with only 2 small pieces of fabric but you get the idea.
Sue came along at this stage and asked Marcia if she realised she had holes. Marcia thought that there is always one in the crowd. I really can't report where the conversation went from that point, but I can tell you that some were laughing so hard tears were shed.

This is some of the original fabric for the Kaleidoscope, very pretty in its own right.
There seems to be a bit of a Kaleidoscope and Hexagon madness going on within the group, there are hexagons of all sizes spread around the tables and Kaleidoscope quilts galore. Sue made this Kaleidoscope variation in a method she named Twist 'n' Stitch, as she stated 'Its a simple quilt because I'm a simple girl', or did she say it was an easy quilt?......oh well.........whatever!
There was the odd thread or two still dangling around on the flimsy and Sue murmured something about them reminding her of someones chin, that started a bit of a rush to the ladies for some serious peering into the mirrors I can tell you, and some people were just mean and hogged that mirror mercilessly.
Found this great piece on the display table and no sign of the creator, but after a bit, Lorraine came back from Lunch and laid claim to it. It was started at the Lorraine Carthew workshop we did last year, as Lorraine said, about 6 months overdue. But heck, its not a UFO anymore so that can only be a good thing.
As is the case so often with a UFO, little bits get mislaid or used either in error or just because we think 'what the heck - I'll never finish that and I really need that little piece of perfect fabric' and that is what happened to Lorraine with this little quilt, the piece of fabric for the top left hand sky went walkabout, .... what to do??
Lorraine solved the problem by using plain white fabric and colouring it with her pencils. Clever girl!, and if I didn't dob, you would never have known, now would you?
Lorraine with her wallhanging saying 'don't you dare dob!'.......oopsie, sorry Lorraine
Now what on earth is Inge cutting out tiny hexagons for?, well she is getting a little take along project ready and the finished hexagons are going to be used in the world's biggest hexagon quilt challenge that will be held in Gatton, Queensland in May 2010, a n d, get this, everyone who participates in the challenge will go into a draw for a Fabric Bundle Prize valued at $250.00 WOW!, wouldn't you just love to win that. All the details and the story are at the end of the post.
Did you notice those cute little cathederal window cushions on the box lid by Inga??
Yes these little cuties right here. They are little Christmas Tree Decorations, how precious are they!........and who was making them?
why, Betty is making them, she was just sitting, concentrating, stitching and churning these little lovelies out, hope they are for the Christmas Fair, the Grandies would just love them.
This is the information for the World's Biggest Hexagon Quilt Challenge, seems that you can make as many or as few of these as you like or are able.
And do scroll down to the next post to see the pics of Carol Wilks and Svenja's information cards on their Gallery Showing.