Farewell Irene

A big 'Thank You' to Lainey, she took the pics and wrote the words for your enjoyment.

Sandy made this lovely for someone really important - herself. 

She bought the kit at the Houston Quilt Show, but who’s dropping names, and had to buy an extra suitcase to bring it home.

Karen is a new soon to be member. She has moved up here from Bribie. This bright quilt is from a design by a fellow member of the Bribie Island Quilters. She has had this fabric for some time and just had to give it a go.

Irene has been in Australia on holidays and proved to be a really nice temporary member. Unfortunately her time with us is over as she heads back to London next week. Her last offering is this gorgeous needle turned wall hanging that she made from a book of Baltimore Album patterns.

She will use it to cover over a painting on her wall to protect it from fading.

Lastly a pile of bags for our Najidah filling in a couple of months.

 

Tent Makers of Cairo...

...we have heard so much about them over the past few years thanks to the promotion of their work by Australian quilter/tutor/textile artist Jenny Bowker, and today we got to see a piece 'in the flesh' so to speak. 
Anike bought along her smaller piece to share with us, it has an envelope backing so was probably a large floor cushion cover.

 The pieces are stitched very quickly, and are not made as heirloom pieces, rather more of the everyday and not designed to be kept longterm, serving the purpose of background hangings for celebrations and even funerals.

The tentmakers, all male, stitch these intricate pieces for all and any celebrations  but as is so often the case these days, this ancient craft is being overtaken by the fast, cheap, easy with printed polyester that you can buy by the yard such as this meterage Anike also bought along to share

Jenny talks of her work promoting the tentmakers and there work here while this link will give you a glimpse of modern day applications of the tentmakers work - great pics of celebrations and some of the works.  Both these links are to pages on Jenny Bowkers blog.  You can visit the Tenmakers community facebook page 'Stitch like an Egyptian' here.
Listen to Jenny talking about the tentmakers while watching a father son team and their amazing stitching speed here.
Enjoy!

Irene had a lovely to share with us, made back in 2011 from a layer cake using a disappearing nine patch design, as Irene said, a simple but very effective design, perfect for showing off beautiful fabrics.

Irene hand quilted around each block and placed a watermelon and square design in the larger squares with a string of hearts in the borders.

Remember all those squares Lainey had been chopping into existence?, well she stitched some of them into this rather lovely charity quilt.  A combination of white & patterned H.S.T's with solid squares stitched together in lines, either vertical or horizontal, doesn't matter but Lainey reckons a design wall or floor is 'very necessary' for the stepped placement of the solid blocks.   Machine quilted in vertical lines

Lainey also quilted these two charity quilts, assembled by Val from Derrick's darlings stash.  The Cathederal windows was an assembled piece that Val simply bordered with fabric from the stash.

All three of these quilts will be donated to the Rockhampton womens shelter in the very near future.

So, would you be upset to loose this cutie in the making?

Val was!, helping with the charity quilt pics she inadvertently bought the block along, placed it on a chair and forgot where it was for a minute.  Erk!  All ended well with Santa back where he belonged.

So so many more of the toiletry bags bought in this week, there will be quite a tidy number ready to be filled next month.

They look so pretty with their pocket trims. (Was thinking gay and pretty but well, I guess that just shows my age, I really miss using that word, it was a goodie! spoke volumes)

Courtney is getting stuck into the stitching part of her table runner, all under the watchful eye of tutor Lainey.  Just look in the background, another roll of wadding, my goodness you gals are churning out those charity quilts!

A W.I.P. of a different kind

A different take on that old quilters saying, er..that quilt saying that's been around for awhile, W.I.P.'s It's not only for work in progress but today it was a workshop in progress.

Lorraine was the mistress of controll, making sure that the bags are all of a uniform size and construction, well not so much size, Sue and her electric scissors had alread cut out dozens of them, thanks Sue.  More on the workshop with a few pointers on the bag construction at the end of the blog.

Courtney has decided to take a break from stitching with a needle and is giving her machine a run by creating a table runner, and just because she could, Lorraine was also helping Courtney out with some basic lessons, starting off with 'Thou shalt never cut crinkly fabric', yep Courtney was give an iron and told to go for it.

Stella bought her flimsey along to get some advice on what fabric to use for the binding.  Dunno what the joke was but boy those gals had the giggles up.

One of our library books, 'Black and White & Pieced all Over' was the inspiration for Stella's pattern, with the addition of corner stones in the sashing as a variation.

Fae was busily pinning her binding to yet another of her charity quilts.  Didn't want to share, well truth is, we have had some heavy rains over the last couple of days and last night was a cracker of a downpour, so of course the humidity today took us up to sauna like conditions and really... all that unfolding, holding and re-folding... she has promised us a 'look see' next week.

Some of the gals who did the Jan Phillips workshop a couple of weeks back bought their W.I.P's to date along to share, everyone seems to have a different layout design and quilt size.
Beryl was sharing her lovely when we almost got run over by Jackie...oops.

Grabbed a pic of the back of Beryl's for a peek at the seam construction, mind you, Beryl wasn't fussed on sharing, "It hasn't been pressed yet, ran out of time"!

Jackie's work to date was in two strips, so she used her verandah to help showcase her work, almost as good as another hand she reckons, others just reckoned she was doing a bit of skiting!

Val chose some lovely desert colours to go with her aboriginal design fabric, along with yet another layout.

Now as we know, Marlene doesn't do small, and this is definitely no table runner.  While stepping outside her box, Marlene went for sashed large cuts to create these blocks and using yet another layout has created this full sized quilt, along with an innovative use of two of the quilt fabrics she has created an unusual mitred border for her quilt.

We have promises of more quilts next week, looking forward to them.
AND.....
Talking of promises, there is a jolly good chance we will see Michells beautiful crazy all finished and framed next week as well.  A real treat to be looking forward to.

Now we all know how prolific Val is, so if you are wondering why she hasn't finished her quilt, perhaps this will shed some light.
Yep, another two charity quilts, assembled and quilted.
Val unearthed this beautiful needleturn block from the stash donated to us by Derrick back in 2014, she attached several borders, sandwiched, quilted and bound it for another charity quilt.

Her friend made 13 of these 'Shadow Star' blocks and then lost interest, (how often does that happen?!) she found the perfect recycle answer by passing them on to Val, who promptly assembled, sandwiched, quilted and bound them for one more charity quilt.

Of course, block no. 13 has found itself in the orphan drawer!
There is a link to the Karen Combs pattern Shadow Star here
or a variation named Star Shadows on Punch with Judy's site, here 

Irene, who hails from London, is visiting the Sunshine Coast to visit family and will be joining us for a number of weeks,  she was spotted working on this lovely fairy quilt, which coincidentally she purchased some years back here on the Sunny Coast.

Irene also shared this quilt she made for her sister using the 'Lovers Knot' block.

Inspired by Irene's claim that it is a simple block, a net search turned up a you tube tutorial by that wonderful quilter Elenor Burns from Quilt in a Day fame.
If the link fails, just open youtube and search for 'Elenor Burns', there is a squillion of her informative videos to be had.

Lorraine's instructions on assembling Najidah toiletry bags.
For uniformity of size, Sue has cut dozens of bags in the correct size for us, just take what you need from the stash.

For the cord casings you will need 2 strips of fabric, one front and one back,  the width of the unseamed bag fabric and 3" deep.
Janice demonstrates just how exact these measurements have to be. No rotary and rulers needed here!

1.  Take one casing strip and double fold the ends in by 1/4" each fold.  Stitch ends closed.
2.   Fold casing strip in half lengthwise, raw edges even.

3.   Lay the casing raw edges along the top front edge of the bag, equidistant from the side edges.
4.   Stitch casing to bag using a 1/2" seam.  Fold casing up and press seam down towards the bag body.  Topstitch a 1/4" down from casing seam, catching the seam allowance to the bag body to form a flat seam.
Repeat for the second casing on the back of the bag.

If you want to decorate your bag with a bit of tizz, an orphan block or pocket, now is the time to do it.


5.   Turn the bag fabric inside out and with top edges level, stitch both of the bag sides together, making sure not to catch the casing into the side seams.  Double stitch the top edges for strength.
6.   Box the bottom corners of you toiletry bag.
There is a corner boxing tutorial from Lazy Girl designs here
or a youtube video tutorial here
 

 There will be a working bee at the cottage to insert the cords in the near future.

Job well done, thank you.  Now sit back and feel good about being a part of this worthy enterprise.

While all this hard work was happening, Sheila, Loraine, and Pat were spotted doing a spot of sandwiching, or as one lass piped up, she was more into a spot of slacking....

Nothing wrong with takin' a break girl, nothing at all.