Like water dripping on a stone...

eventually you get there.  Well, that's what Michelle likened it to.
Many moons ago, when Michelle first moved to the Coast, she tried to enroll in Jenny's crazy class at the Angel, after many requests she was told that basically you had to wait for someone to die to get a place.......well, guess what? you don't!! no, the answer was obvious, Jenny just needed to run more classes!

Michelle is so happy and is working away on some really beautiful squares, as well as embellishing an advent calendar,

oh, and don't forget those cute bow tie blocks she recently started, as soon as they are together, the plan is to learn hand quilting from our lovely expert, Gwen.  Not planning on running out of projects in the near future is Michell.

Lyn's gift to her friend of the 'Elephant' quilt went over really well, Sonia was thrilled that the quilt tied in so well with a previous gift of a cushion, which also featured - of course- and elephant!
Back in the August 28th post, there is a lovely scrappy blue star quilt that Lyn bought along to share with us, well as it happens, there were blue stars left over, and not being one to waste a star, specially not a scrappy one, Lyn created this lovely for her Daughter.

The sailboat backing works a treat, but, and there is always a but, the fabric was a little coarser woven than normal and proved a challenge to quilt.  Lyn quilted circles over the star blocks and squares along the borders.

Estelle is one of the many who brings her own mug along to meetings, and why wouldn't you with a show piece mug bag like this one?

Estelle collects notions from various events she attends and pins them to her bag, as you can see, there is quite the history on this little wonder.

Helen has been busily stitching motifs to create this lovely pastel quilt for her Grandaughter.  Quilted on the diagonal with an embroidered angel in each corner.

Spotted Julie showing a couple of the gals this piece, not a flimsey, no, just part of a flimsey.  

Julie explained that she has another piece at home, slightly larger that will eventually be joined to this piece, there will then be a border, another row of pieced blocks and then it will be a flimsey!  Next step with be to hand quilt it!

Of course there were more Charity quilts making an appearance, yes, its just fantastic isn't it.
Some with their creators and some flying solo.
The Cats quilt was created from panels by Marie, she also used a cat as part of the backing.

 Wendy had two offerings, and although we have mountains of donated fabric, Wendy still used some of her own fabric, such as the girly garden panel.

This very striking red and white Q.A.Y.G was I think stitched by Lorraine C.  now if I am wrong I humbly apologise, it's beautifully stitched and will be a lovely quilt to snuggle under.

Arvo Tea was all about Chocolate!, scrummy!

Sashiko, knitted Teddy and a vibrant beauty...

...just some of the lovely items for you this week.
Courtney has been bitten by the knitting bug, she is working on an all in one knitted teddy, just beginning to take shape.

Wendy had Pizazz to share, yep, and a quilt named 'Pizazz' as well, spotted at a recent local quilt show Wendy just couldn't resist, a rather intriguing arrangement using 9 patch, 1 patch, logs and extra large one patch to showcase some really special fabric.  This pattern would be just the ant's pants for one of those fabrics that are just too lovely to cut or, as Wendy has used, a large scale print.

Wendy followed through with the 9 patches design by using 2.5" squares for one of the borders.

A dear friend of Lyn's. who is on the move, not just out of town but out of the state, is also having a birthday next week, two jolly good reasons to make her a remembrance quilt.  Sonia is very fond of elephants and has quite the collection, now with an elephant quilt in her favourite colours for her to treasure.

Lyn was thrilled to find this cute elephant print for the backing.

Lots of work continuing with the Charity quilts, and although what looks like a small mountain of fabric walks out the door and returns as quilts, I can tell you there doesn't seem to be much of a dent made in the overall stash.
Val, Debbie and 'she who is hiding behind Val', were hard at work measuring out the wadding for completed flimseys that will then go home to return as finished quilts.

June, who has found some extra time in her life said "Pick out some purples, mauves and some reds that will work together and I will make one".  Well, Beryl did just that, sending off a great collection of fabrics that resulted in these, 2 stunning flimseys and a W.I.P.

same simple design, different fabrics and colour placement gives a different look

Square Triangles, a new block pattern that looks remarkably like a H.S.T.block, sashed for a different layout for this promising beauty.  June reckoned she had just the right fabric for the sashing, it's just that for the moment she has misplaced the rest of it....

Good thing she has a bit of a full calendar and those flimsys to quilt, takes the pressure off the search, 'cause we all know about searching the stash for that fabric we just know we have tucked away somewhere!

Two strip pieced charity quilts from Val, on with ric-rac over the joining seams to add some visual interest and the second, also strip pieced with a silhouette giraffe appliqued to the quilt.

Finally finished with the batting measuring and cutting, Val took her seat to settle down to hand quilting what promises to be another stunning quilt.  Purchased 2 years ago at a quilt show, Val finished off the Sashiko embroidery in double quick time, but then came the laying out of the blocks, a totally different story, Val reckons she needed to be a maths genius, well it may have taken time but from the looks of things, success was hers.

Looking forward to seeing this one out of the hoop!

Christine was also busily stitching a Sashiko design.  The kit, also bought at a quilt show, and again, also a few years ago, was the result of one of those 'brain fever frenzies' that have been know to take hold of we quilters when we get quilt show sensory overload.  Christine reckons that it was a bit of a surprise to open her packet of loveliness and discover what really lay within.

Lorraine's Grandie has moved into her very own room, for which she has chosen a purple theme, Lorraine knew she had just the thing and resurrected (not to mention, completed)  this great wall hanging for her lucky Grandie. 

The wall hanging is all about 'My Garden',  choc full of interesting snippets and eye candy, a cute poem and a clever array of 3-D flowers.

Lorraine gave a brief 'how to' on those amazingly tactile flowers with the button centers.  Mind you, no maths was offered, so just try it and adjust as desired... b.t.w....don't you love that word 'desired', as in 'quilt as desired', cut to 'desired length' etc. etc.

After you cut the length of fabric, as long as you think will be necessary to form a circle flower, fold the length of fabric in half lengthwise, cut edges together.  Cut from the folded edge in toward the cut edges at 1/8th to 1/4" gaps,  making sure to leave at generous 1/4" seam allowance along the cut edges.  When length is snipped, use a running stitch to stitch a straight line end to end, just inside the seam allowance, pull up the thread and the fabric will curl into a circle, forming a flower, take a securing stitch on back of flower.  Stitch to quilt and then stitch a button into the center.  Cute huh??

Last pic to share, Lorraine and Gwen holding up this pillow sham.....starting to get an idea of what is in store for the Quilt Show raffle quilts??? To to delicious, just take a peek at that hand quilting!

Dresden Plates and a colourful knee rug...

just some of the interesting items shared this week.

Now we all know that Lainey is the queen of the purple, so when someone mentioned that the Dresden Plates quilt was Lorraine's I put 2 and 2 together and got 6, yep! wrong Lorraine!
This stunner was started a few years back as a 'bring along' project by Lorraine L.  Lorraine, in the nicest possible way, evaded the question of just how many years ago it was started, however, one gathers that it was quite a few, so if you have such an item in your U.F.O stack, take heart.

Lorraine has had the quilt professionally free motion quilted and now faces the task of popping on the binding...of course if she is guided by the gals from the 'noisy table' who insist that it is only necessary to do 5 stitches a day at Cottage meetings, well, the finishing line could be a few years away yet.
Lorraine was inspired by her stash of Pansy fabric to create the Dresden Plates, they are all hand pieced with 1" cornerstones of Pansies between the sashings, each plate center features the border fabric.

Pat has created a cute wall hanging for the Christmas Fair,  pieced triangle 'trees', and heavily quilted with a variety of free-motion designs in the negative spaces.

Pat has used Christmas fabrics to incorporate hanging tabs as opposed to a hanging sleeve, just one more visual effect on this beauty.

In our group there are just about as many supported charities as there are group members.  Beryl has created this blue beauty for a charity that she supports.

An extra wide sashed border surrounds multi-sized quarter square triangle blocks.

While talking charity quilts, Val bought along 3 quilts in earth tones with designs suitable for Aboriginals.  These 3 quilts are going to Murgon, in central Queensland to be given to Aboriginal children in need.
Strip pieced batiks and traditional aboriginal design fabrics with appliqued kangaroos.  Val has serpentine stitched along the fabric joins which breaks up the solid lines and gives movement to the quilt.

Lots of aboriginal motifs and symbols incorporated into these fabrics.  A simple one patch- 9 patch alternating block arrangement set off with an unusual border.

A vibrant tessellated quilt using just two fabrics and bordered with the feature fabric.

Lorraine C also had a charity quilt to share, this one a red and white Q.A.Y.G crazy patch design, sashed with dots and a wider pieced binding that acts as a border.

Sue W. has been busily hand appliqueing little boy and girl bears onto this colourful kiddies quilt.  Sue only had another few inches of binding to finish stitching down and then into the finished pile with this darling.

Have been watching Betty create this innovative knee rug, she began crocheting it a few weeks back as a bring along piece, Betty is now up to threading the loose weave with colourful lengths of various thickness of yarn and wool, using her crochet hook to pull the yarn through the open loops.

There is quite a bit of length dangling from the edge of the rug, a fringe to be perhaps?  Looking forward to seeing the finished rug.

Lainey, who has been away on retreat bought these two in to share and supplied us with the story.

Our trip away this time we decided that we were only taking UFOs.

The pink butterflies have been put away for a long time. I found the pattern sheet I used for the butterflies on an AP& Q sheet dated 2006. The quilt was originally planned for a great niece when she was about 5 (she is now in high school). I started to make the butterflies in both pink and purple for 2 sisters but when I asked the older one which one she would like I was told “I’d rather have dinosaurs, please.” The butterflies were put away. The pink quilt is finished and the purple one is still a top but I will finish it soon as I have 2 new little girls to give them to.

 

The watery Bargello came about several years ago when the Australian dollar was so high against the American one that I was buying quilt kits and the postage was the difference between the prices in $A and $US. This kit came with rather garish orange fish and lime green weed.

Both of these left out fabrics will find their way into another quilt some time.

PS – she did get the dinosaurs.

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!