A very special Big 'O' birthday and Charity Quilts

Won't be mentioning which one, but Betty recently celebrated a very special birthday, Marie W bought along a lovely bouquet of roses grown by her Darling, real roses, scented roses. Heavenly

We even had cake, with a candle and all.   Congratulations Betty

Double bed quilt using two jelly rolls and appliqué. Marie W was asked by a friend to make the quilt so she could give it as a birthday present for her friend, mind you there was a ridiculously short period of time involved, like - less than a week! non quilters, what can you do?, sew like crazy and get it done is what.  Great effort Marie and a beautiful quilt.
Marie named it Windmill and Roos

Marie also had another commission to share with us, these two quilts and Marie's story

The orange quilt is called Caravans abound. The fabric was chosen by the lady who wanted it made as they are her logo colours. It is going on her stand at a caravan convention in Melbourne later in the month. And the other one is for the same person and will be given away in a lucky draw for one of her customers. This one is called Camping and caravans. 

For those involved in the conversation a few weeks back, Blue Banded Bees or more accurately Amegilla, yes they do exist! Pic on left was my first encounter with a blue banded bee, photo taken in 2009

Pic on right, taken in 2012, is one of the many lost photos, but the Darling has it as a screen saver on his phone, not a good angle to capture the iridescence of the blue stripes, but you get the idea.

Marcia really started something big with her string quilt, everyone seems to have made one or is making one, such a great way to use up all your scraps.  Val in her new role as Patchwork Group charity quilt co-ordinator has us all organised to make a few for Najidah, hopefully for Christmas.
We all pitched in over the last couple of weeks with workshops at the cottage,
Beryl made a lap quilt  to inspire us..

Strips were cut, organised into colour groups and stitched by many hands

Nothing finished yet but coming together nicely and I'm sure there will be quilts for Christmas.

And in her spare time, Val ran up another two charity quilts, along with these cuties, a mug bag, tissue holder and coin purse, oh and of course, a lovely worded label for the quilts. 

Judy bought us some lovely goodies to show and tell, this Rosella wall-hanging was done in a workshop with talented local Textile Artist, Bernadine Hine.

 
In fact, pop over here to see Judy and the other ladies at Bernadine's class with their beautiful birds and of course to see some of Bernadine's wonderful work, including a new quilt made for her daughter, stunning!.
Judy also bought along a table runner done at the Angel using some lovely fabrics

Some time ago a friend of Judy's traveled to Alaska and bought home little collections of fabric featuring Alaskan wildflowers.  Judy knew she wanted to make something special, but what?.  Inspired by a pic in a magazine Judy just couldn't wait to get home and create this lovely table mat. Works brilliantly!

Using a printed panel, Louise is working on a Christmas Wall-hanging for the Fair,  Can't wait to see the finished hanging.

August comings and goings...and a Mothers Love.

..and there certainly have been some comings and goings, lots of holidays as everyone pops off to escape the colder months of where we live, not that the colder months are all that cold in reality.

Our most exciting 'finish' for the group was Courtney's first quilt, this has been Courtneys 'bring along project' to work on at group meetings.
Made using her favourite colours in a 9-Patch design Courtney surround her cute 'Sunbonnet Sue'  embroidery with appliqued hearts. 

Some time back, (well quite a whack of time back - see the receipt date in the pic!)  Marcia purchased a lovely 'Amish Style' quilt kit, and to make sure it stayed in pristine condition she packed it away carefully in a zip lock bag.
A few days back Marcia though it would make a lovely 'bring along' project for meeting days, on opening the pack she was met with all the points falling off the triangular pieces.  Further investigation showed that all of the fabric had rotted, tearing apart with the tiniest bit of pressure!

The baggie is being blamed, and perhaps it's so, but I have bits of quilts and patterns all stored away in ziplocks and there is no sign of damage (.......yeah......you bet it was the first thing I did after rushing home - had a good look through the stash, and yeah again, some of my stuff is at least as old as Marcia's wasted quilt!
However - there is a bit of reorganising going on I can tell you!
Anyone else ever had this problem - the kit was from a reputable company in the U.S., so shoddy fabric to start with isn't suspected!

Now about that Mothers Love, the Darling Daughter wanted Mum to make her a quilt, so D.D. chose the design, 'Hidden Wells' and popped off to buy the fabric - not really Mum's colours but the quilt was duly made, quilted, bound and delivered.......now here is the Mother Love bit.
D.D.'s response was.........'its lovely Mum, and you did a good job, but...it's a bit yellow!!!!
So Sue fixed it!   -  How I hear you ask over the sound of all those jaws dropping.
She unpicked the quilting and hand appliqued strips of blues on top of the yellow dots!  yes! she did!

The revamped and re-quilted quilt, cute huh?!

and here you can see where Sue appliqued a blue chevron over the yellow dots, creating a yellow, blue, yellow stripe.

On this block Sue appliqued a blue square over the yellow dots to create a square, in a square, in a square.

Now scroll back to the quilt pic and just see how many of those chevrons and squares there are!!
Now if that isn't Mother Love, I don't know what is.

Our in house workshop for August was a repeat of the workshop done on our first retreat, the ever handy 'Tie Pouch'.
Made from a re-cycled men's tie, it is just the thing to cart your mobile around in, especially at meetings or similar places where you put you handbag down and then wander around, greeting friends, having a sticky at what they are working on and of course nibbling on something delish from the arvo tea table.
Janice, Sheila, Louise, Lorraine, Sue and Aila show off their pouches.

Marie bought along her latest 'Grandies Quilt' to share with us, a striking combination using a mix of a busy 'Batman' fabric and panel with plain fabrics in the borders.  Very effective use of colour to create a stunning quilt.

Val is still busily creating simple quilts for the kiddies at Laurel House, and although she generally uses simple construction methods, the quilts are always beautiful.  Val was just popping the binding on this, her latest, a Q.A.Y.G block set into a diamond pattern on the front and sashed strips for the backing, all quilted with a decorative machine stitch.

Birthday Cake, a quilt beginning, News and lots of hand work...

Happy Birthday Inge!!
Yep, Inge had a rather special Birthday with lots of lovely celebrations including a fab afternoon tea at the Cottage courtesy of her lovely Daughter Betty.
The Birthday Cake was a yummy affair with slices of fresh strawberries over the top...

plates and plates of wonderful goodies to munch on and some of the best curried egg sandwiches I've fanged since....well since the last time!
Betty then popped herself up on a chair to take this great 'Birthday Party' Pic of the group.

Debby, one of the Needlework group, joined us for Patchwork, she is starting on a cute floral applique quilt for her bed, 3 blocks done so far, great job Debby!

The Ladies on the Top Table.......is that is 'top of the class' table? 'top gals table'? or the table at the top end of the room?.. or all three?......anyway, they are all busy beavering away for the Big Tree-mendous Quilt Show that is coming up in a rush, Winifred is creating a lovely cushion, appliqueing a pieced tumbling blocks to the cushion front.  Louise is also creating a cushion, lots of lovely hand quilting going on there! and Dorothy is knitting up a storm with a squiggly scarf, lots of little 'fingers' down the side that will twist and turn as the scarf grows.

We were all very sad when Lorraine H decided to re-locate back to Tassy, Lorraine was a very involved group member, taking on Leadership of the Thursday night group, and always happy to share her knowledge and tips, lots of which she learned from the many local classes and retreats that she attended.
Although Lorraine has been able to keep up with all our news and work by accessing our blog through her local library, we have just had little snippets now and again, so it was a wonderful surprise to finally get an e-mail from her, yep, finally on the net...well it takes time to get connections and cables laid when you live in the middle of a National Park on a Tassy coast!   ;)


The most exciting bit of news? remember the stunning  Lone Star quilt Lorraine shared with us before she left?, then a flimsey, it has since been finished and entered in the Annual Quilt Guild of Tasmania's show....and won 4th Place.  Congratulations Lorraine!!

Lorraine also entered her 'Friends of Buderim' row x row Friendship quilt.

 and....
yeah, there is more....
she also entered her Hexagon sampler 'Start of Something Big'

 and for those of you who want the details, Lorraine has also sent us pics of the show notes.

 And to fill you in on what she has been up to, some of Lorraine's email....

 "However, I have been able to keep up with all the Buderim Group news when I travel into town and visit the Library using their computers. It seems like you all are still producing lovely work and having a lot of fun. As soon as we arrived here, I joined the local Patchwork Group - Wynyard Cottage Patchwork - and I have really enjoyed attending their meetings. They are a lovely group of around 25 members who meet 3 times a month in each others homes. There seems to be a big emphasis on hand work down here with lots of beautiful applique and hand quilting everywhere! I have also joined the Quilting Guild of Tasmania and recently went to a wonderful retreat with them - 5 days of unlimited quilting in the middle of Tasmania in a lovely mountain setting. A few weeks ago, the Annual Quilt Show for the Guild was held in Launceston in conjunction with the Craft Fair. I had some quilts entered, and was lucky enough to win an award! My blue and white lone star quilt was awarded 4th place in the Amateur Traditional Section. As this was the largest section in the whole show, I was really surprised to get an award. It was so exciting to be at the show and see all the wonderful quilts there, and one of mine with a rosette on it ! I have attached some photos of my quilts at the show." 

Thanks for the update Lorraine, and once again congratulations on your Show win.  How about some pics of the work done by your new quilty friends?, I am sure we would all love to share. - A.

Quilts, Classes and how we use our language

There was a bit of a startled 'look around' last week when someone was talking of using orphans to make a quilt, don't know if the thought was more along the lines of  'what a good idea'   or   'is that allowed?'.... of course it was orphan blocks that were being referred to, well... that was all sorted and we had a bit of a giggle, well not as big a laugh as when the girls were getting ready for Gwen's class today........one of the items on the requirements list was a compass.......Catty, for the life of her couldn't see why you would need one, but it was on the list, so..........

she bought along a compass!!
One of the cool uses for the compass.....the other kind of compass, was how to draw up hexagons,

now where was that little bit of knowledge when I needed it??, You make the radius the same measurement needed for the side of the hexagon.  Cool huh!?  Looking forward to learning lots more tips from Gwen as she takes us through her Beginners Hand Quilting Classes.

Some of the girls, wrestling with the creation of templates, all agreed by the end of the day that it really was easy, once you got the hang of it.
While some were learning new skills, others were enjoying their friends company, Louise was researching ideas to use those pretty circles she has in front of her, and Sadie was really getting stuck into those black hexies.

while Fae was way ahead with her Pink Hexies

all will be revealed at the Christmas Fair, yep, the gals are gearing up for Christmas.......

Fran crocheted two cloche hats, a white one and a steel blue one, both decorated with cute little yarn flowers.  She bought them along to show us, so of course, had to ask her to model one for us...

Innes donated some offcuts from a quilt backing to Val, who promptly added some plain fabrics and turned them into another charity quilt using the disappearing 9 patch design.

Janette bought along her ditch quilted 'I Spy', looking for some inspiration for further quilting on the blocks,

The backing was bought before the quilt was assembled and there just wasn't enough fabric (how often does that happen?!) so Janette was rather thrilled to find a purple and orange that toned in beautifully,

With such a pretty and vibrant backing this is truly another reversible quilt.

Lorraine has finished her 'Orphan' quilt, who would think it was orphans??

The flying geese and strip blocks were from a paper piecing class that Lorraine did, the toile center of the medallion was from a hand quilting class...

and the double 9patch blocks were from last years Row x Row, after making 16 of them, Lorraine then changed her mind and decided on different blocks for the RxR, moral to the story?  when doing classes always use some of the same fabric!  you can then turn the orphans into a stunning quilt! Lorraine even practiced her new embroidery stitching skills to make the label for her quilt.
She then used this continuous quilting design to practice her machine quilting skills in the medallion border.

Arvo Tea saw us scoffing down smoked salmon, yummo, lovely date cake, a buttered slice (didn't manage to get even a crumb of that one) lovely biscuits and some of Fran's shortbreads.