Grandkids Quilts everywhere.....

How cool is this, Sheila was the first to hang a quilt on one of the new stands our group has purchased for the cottage.
The quilt is for Emily to go on her first big bed, a move that is all set to take place soon.
Sheila mapped out the design on graph paper, using 17 different star patterns of varying sizes for a random design. Some of the stars were made using the templates the group has recently purchased and some are design from Marcia Hohn's Quilter's Cache at http://www.quilterscache.com/
Hot off the quilting machine, Julie had just collected this beauty, 'Giant Dahlia' from Fiona of the Quilting Fairy. (wonder why it's named Giant Dahlia? - just kidding..) Hand pieced, Fiona quilted every second block with flowers in the setting triangles and a large floral motif in the center.
The corner triangles from the back to show the quilting.
Quilting on the body of the quilt and the center. Giant Dahlia will be living on Julie's bed. A bed topper she told us.
The colours of this bargello are just great, so vibrant, and beautifully set off with the burgundy and charcoal borders.
Julie, playing 'foo was here'? or just hide & seek, behind a flimsy, her latest WIP.
A Birthday Pressie.........Sheila received a lovely surprise gift from her pen friend from New Zealand and bought it along to show us. Simple and very effective.
Lyn made this quilt for her Grandsons up coming 2nd Birthday. It has some of the animal fabrics that she used for his elder brothers hexagon quilt as well as some newer acquisitions.
The sashing and cornerstones make for a stunning quilt.

Discussing some of the finer points with two very interested co-conspirators, more 'I Spy's' in the planning stage?
Lyn's second 'I Spy' quilt. This one is for the folding bed when the little Grandson visits, and will be staying at Gran's house. Lyn used the left over fabrics from the other two quilts so I guess this is a free quilt too.....
Jackie with her latest quilt, this pattern was featured in Kaffe Fassett's original book. He refers to the prints as 'pinafore prints' from his memories of his Grand mum wearing printed pinafores. Jackie started collecting the fabrics with this quilt in mind some time ago, and really got collecting last year. It's new home will be on a wall in Jackie's home.
This is the front, well part thereof, of Jackie's quilt, hand pieced and most beautifully quilted by Judy Davidson of Furball Farm Quilting in Palmwoods. Judy was once a member of our Patchwork group and is aiming at re-joining in the near future as work commitments have changed.
You can contact Judy by e-mail judy@furballfarm.com.au or phone 0438 520 081.
Jackie began this quilt as a 'bring along' project for Patchwork days, and yes it spent a bit of time on the floor also. Jackie tells us, no pets, and as she has the space she likes to use the floor as a horizontal design wall.
the backing of Jackie's quilt, showing the quilting, using a muted lavender thread, goes rather nicely, don't you think?
Fae has been inspired by her success on finishing the crochet baby blanket and has unearthed another UFO and turned it into a WIP. She came by it quite a number of years ago when an ex member donated her UFO's that had little hope of becoming WIPS and certainly no hope at all of becoming TGIF's. Fae mentioned that this piece appealed to her as it went nicely with the colours of her lounge at the time. There was a bit of an emphasis on the 'at the time'.
Winifred is still working on her paper piecing, but it is an octopus no more, 'it grew legs' she explains and doesn't want to curl anymore.
Afternoon Tea was obviously delish, by the time I got a cuppa and fronted up most of it had been scoffed by the appreciative gals, just look at that poor tiny crumb that's all that's left of the muesli slice, I took the pic and whoosh, it was gone......and the comment? 'oooh, lovely'
Tessa made the apple cake and Lorraine the Orange Cake. Thank you Ladies for a great treat.

Breast Cancer Fundraising

A bit of an addition, Sheila phone this a.m. and tells me that we raised $180. for Breast Cancer research. Well done ladies!
Jackie was quick off the mark with displaying this beautiful 'Roses' Quilt, about the fastest thing that has ever happened to it from the story Jackie tells, she fell in love with the pattern way back last century.....gee I've always wanted to write that.......when she saw it in a Joanne Brasier book ......back in '95 actually.
It was then a 2 year project of collecting and assembling, but Jackie really got a go on around April & May last year, with the quilt living on the floor for a couple of months (either no pets or very well trained pet) and although she now reckons that there are fabrics in the quilt that she wonders 'what was she thinking' no one could agree on which ones they were.
Its a beautiful quilt and will adorn a wall in Jackies Home.

Sue was finishing the binding on this little beauty that she said was an excursion into the realms of what not to do & use. Her sis Marion, that we met in a previous post, named it "Jewel in the Crown" because one of those little squares is not repeated in the quilt at all.
It was a joint effort between Marion and Sue to assemble the squares into a top, with Marion setting the squares out, Sue deciding that it needed the black to set off the colours and adding the green to give it zing.
Ugly duckling into beautiful Swan..........maybe we can re-visit some of those old U.F.O.'s and turn them into Swans for the Quilt Show. ummm perhaps.

The Group recently purchased an 18 1/2" square ruler to add to our 'tools of trade' collection , and as luck would have it, Heather, who had just recently done a Machine Quilting class with Judy Bellingham, and was wondering what to do with the practice squares, decided in the spirit of 'use it up' to make us this great cover for our ruler! Thanks Heather.

Di, one of the Thursday night gals joined us for our Breast Cancer Fundraising Arvo Tea, and was working on this 'Stolen Quilt' - better than a free quilt using your scraps, a stolen quilt comes about when you raid your long term friends stash, and yep they're still mates!
Sue with this vibrant pink and orange quilt, although I conned a piccie, I missed the story! how slack is that. Love the great effect the floral binding makes.
We had our little bit of Australia's Biggest Morning Tea today, it's an annual event to raise funds for breast cancer research, generally aimed at being Australia wide on a specific morning, it's become quite acceptable to hold one within that week. One contacts the Cancer Council and is issued with a kit and off you go...................raising funds to your little heart's content.

Porcelain Painters share the Cottage with us on Wednesday so we invited them to be our Guests and share in the fun.

Inge, who grew these beautiful orchids, bought them along for our table decoration, she suggested they be raffled off at the end of Arvo Tea and we were all agreeable to that I can tell you!
And the were won by someone who had the Good Luck Fairy sitting on her shoulder,

Just look at all the booty! Flowers..........


A prettily embroidered wash cloth and scented soap ummm can still smell that fresh fragrance.

Not to mention a cosmetics bag for it all to go into.

Inge, being shy behind her table runner, (Inge! shy! I here you splutter, your right, really she was hiding from Betty). Just look at that laugh! Gorgeous Japanese prints set on point and sashed with black and a blue/black binding.

Two of the early winners, pretty pleased with themselves, but notice the prize on the chair to their left? that was the beginning of a winnings pile won by Barbara
who was having too much fun sampling Patricia's shortbread to worry about unwrapping goodies, that was to be savoured latter on, back at the worktable.

How 'bout that finger, is she telling me that she has only had one biccie??.................
Lucky Sue won this pattern for a Sewing Folder, lots of storage compartments but she won't be stitching that on Friday, she is off to the Textile Art Show in Brissy.......woo hoo......
One of our guests got a little booty, a lovely silk scarf in just the right colours and a little note book, Next to her Barbara had to be prodded to open her gift cleverly wrapped in a chux dish cloth.........
..............it turned out to be another kitchen goodie, a lovely tea towel, can't have enough pretty tea towels, it's a pip when you have someone volunteer to wipe up and all you have to offer is the 3 for $4 type you picked up at the supermarket.

Maree was happy to win this pretty magnetised shopping list pad for her fridge, very handy, just what she needed she was saying

Another big winner was Heather, who decided this little lot was just the ant pants for the new caravan
she also won this lavender embroidered shower hat,
and Sue thought that it should be modelled...........
How cute is this covered and logo'd little notebook, just right to pop into your purse with a list of must buys from the LQS.
Barbara nearly had a conniption when she won this, white hangers wrapped in bridal paper, ...omg...but then she remembered, her daughter is engaged......whewwww
It's been mentioned before (and will again) that we are gearing up for our quilt show, and as all you quilting folks out there would know, advertising is a bit of a challenge as every penny spent comes our of revenue, it's a tough call on where to spend your advertising dollars, well how lucky are we.........
Elaine has a son in the printing business, and he very kindly made us up this eye catching range of variable sized posters. Thank you so much Scott.
So ladies when you next need printing done pop over to Maroochydore to see Scott at Snap Printing, just across the road from the R.S.L. - Now that's gotta be good business placement, a great place to wait for your printing to be done........
Now there was a fair bit of shyacking around when I took this pic, and a lesser person would have posted those pics, ...........oh all right then, if they were just a little in focus I would have, but I guess shyacking at the Cottage should stay at the Cottage.

Meanwhile the quiet achievers were hard at work, Patricia stitching perforation lines on more raffle tickets to be formed into books.
This is why Patricia was our 'Star of the Month' recently.
and Betty, who was so busy with the photocopier that she managed 1 3/4 lines of her knitting, what wonderful colours, and that's the pattern under the skein of wool.........maybe when you finish Betty, you might bring it in for us to see.

It's visitor time of the year,

We live in the sub-tropics, so its a pretty safe bet that not too many of us are really fussed about the cold winter weather, but one of the benefits of living up here is the folks that come to visit us during our mild winter months.

We had 2 visitors today that you will meet further down the post but firstly we have Lorraine's Green Daisy Quilt, and a cure for her habit of buying green for the stash.

Lorraine does a lot of applique and is always on the look out for just the right green, buying a little here and a little there.

When she needed a quilt to take to her quilting retreat, she decided to investigate her 'green stash' and found that she had 81 green fabrics, and that is how this quilt was born, each block has 4 different greens with a daisy appliqued in the center.
The daisy is machine appliqued using a variegated Signature thread. Lorraine is also a fan of the method of leaving a half inch of fusible web at the edge of the applique and using the cut-out or donut for another, smaller daisy. Very effective as you can see.

Lorraine quilted the blocks in a 'quilt as you go' method to reduce the strain on her shoulders, she used a King Tut variegated thread and a leaf quilting pattern.


The only extra fabric Lorraine purchased for this quilt was for the borders, so of course, it's an almost free quilt. Dontcha just love free quilts??

Our 2 visitors today, Dorothy's bought her lovely cousin, a fellow knitter, along and after confessing that she rather liked quilting but didn't think she would have the patience for it.........a knitter without patience? I ask you...........I digress, anyway, she found herself being encouraged to take up quilting, there were some very cheap (read free) quilting 'how to' books on the bring & buy table that she succumbed to. Dorothy will be expecting lots of phone calls from Cuz after the visit.

The other visitor was a friend of Julies, from N.S.W., they were having a ball, chatting away......this was taken on a quiet moment,.truly...

Julie was knitting and Dawn was making jewellery, she made that lovely necklace she is wearing


and she also bought this set along to show us. The clever girl even sells her jewelery, one outlet is Holland Wines Winery in Pierces Creek Road, in Crows Nest. So if you ever find yourself sipping samples at Holland Wines, you can see more of Dawns lovely work and maybe even spoil yourself a little.

Maree's Recipes

Maree gave me this really cute page printed from her personal recipe book, so am including it here as an update. To view the recipe, place your cursor over the page and 'left click', that is click the left hand side of your mouse. The page will then pop up in its original size. Just use your back button on the toolbar to go back to the post.

I have also updated the original post to include the recipe for 'Chippies', the lovely cheese biccies we enjoyed that day.

To access the older post, just go to 'Blog Archive' in the right hand side bar,

Place your mouse over the sideways pointing arrow for April (8) and click once,
The drop down menu for the 8 postings for April will appear.
Place your mouse on the posting title that you want, in this case Quillo Workshop and that posting will appear, scroll down to the recipes, about midway through the post.