Blog Up-Date and re-organise.

Blogger now allows you to have stand alone pages for static information, what this means is that the information is always available and easily accessed by just clicking on the link.  We are now in the process of making this part of our blog.

You will notice that just under our blog header there has appeared a few tabs, clicking on any one of them will take you to a static page of our blog to catch up on information we often refer to, so far we have:
Biennial Quilt Show - self explanatory,

Winning Quilts, - let me know if you enter any of your work in any shows, its not always about winning - entering is part of the journey, we patchworkers  are a pretty diverse group, so any work entered will be welcome.

Lyn Ballinger and Challenge - need a better tab heading for this one - this page is being assembled, not much to show at the moment but will give our story about Lyn and about how the Challenge came into being.

Group Equipment - There will be a post going up soon on all the equipment we have available for our use - the static page will be fully updated asap so when you need a tool for a job, check out what the group has available.

and Lastly there is a Home tab, this will always take you back to the current blog page.
We will be able to post 10 stand alone pages, so if you have a suggestion, send me an e-mail or drop a word in the old shell pink some Wednesday.
Enjoy the exploration and please know, these tabs will be updated and polished - heck gals, I just figured out  how to do it......

The Funny Fairy Visited Today

Well, that's the only answer I can come up with, I arrived at the end of Sheila's tutorial on paper pieced crazy patchwork and as the gals left the back room it became evident that everyone was a comedian, they popped out from behind screens, they hid behind quilts, they pushed screens in front of one another having pics taken, they did mean things with fingers to others in pics...........who were then really shocked to find a friend had been so daring, really, it was just a fun house today.

but I struggled on (yeah, struggled) to bring you these lovely creations. 

Lorraine H is back from her visit to Tassie, and is busily making these rather luscious needleturn blocks........

using this cute pattern from 3 Sisters...............

in a method she calls 'organic needleturn'..........ever heard of it, nope I hadn't either, it simply means that no aids were used, no starch, no paper, no anything, just cut the leaves out of your fabric, and following the pattern placment, draw a simple line to represent the leaf placement, can you see the green placement lines below?

Place the center of the leaf along the line, pin in place and then needleturn the edges under.  How cool is that!

Lorraine I. bought along her Disappearing 9-Patch flimsey, we will be having a workshop on this method in the very near future, as you can see, a great design and not a worry about joining up the intersections or lines. Now that has gotta be a good thing.

Wendy, who loves to hand stitch while watching T.V. has another lovely red work quilt for us to drool over. 

This time a Sunbonnet Sue alphabet quilt with lovely red blocked sashings

Miriam created this quilt from some of her leftover fabric strips, scattering beautiful appliqued butterflies and flowers over the surface.

And of course the backing had to have a cost saver story too, 

 

Miriam found this backing sometime ago at Spotlight for the princely sum of $2.00 a meter, so all round a very good story for a beautiful and happy quilt.

Lorraine H was just off to the back room to sandwich this flimsey, it is a simply constructed one patch quilt with a very innovative fabric layout.  Lorraine calls this a mirrored quilt, that is, for each fabric used, the same designed fabric in a different colourway is mirrored in the next row of blocks

 

What a clever and ever so effective way to make a stunning quilt.

Nappy bags for STEMM

Debby, with a little help from her son,  has sent us some pics and an insight into what the busy Thursday nighters have been up to this week.  Thank you Debby.

A big hello from the Thursday night girls.  Firstly we would like to welcome our 3 new members.  

Louisa joined during the last few weeks before Xmas.  Louisa got into the swing of things quickly when we had Jenny teach us how to make a cute little bag for cotton, needles, buttons & bits, unfortunately Louise was not at tonight's meeting so we will catch up with her another time.

We also welcome Sue, (who also made the cute bag) and here is holding one of her colourful quilt tops.

& Karen who have just joined.  Karen told us that she loves Japanese fabric so June showed her the tessellated quilt quilt she made & Karen came with machine under her arm the following week & within 2 weeks has nearly finished her tessellated quilt top.  Go Karen.

Tonight, Di helped us make nappy bags for STEMM.  Thanks girls for helping this worthy cause.

We will make more next week.  Thanks Di. Its a nice feeling to give.

 The finished Nappy Bags and their creators, Sue, Jenny, Debby, Lorraine, Denise, Karen and tutor Di.

Planning in progress, Letitia, Jane, Fiona and Lee, wonder what this will grow into?

Easter Fair Preparations............

O.M.Gosh!..........did you notice?, its only 2 weeks to Easter and the Easter Fair?!?, where has the time scooted off too?.

Thankfully, Easter isn't a surprise to the rest of the group who have been beavering away making sure that there are going to be lots of goodies available for the Fair sales.

Our BOM is slowly growing, with another convert today, some of the group just couldn't wait to skite and let it be know that they are up to block 2, while the rest of us think we are doing pretty well o.k. having finished.......well finished-ish block 1.
Wendy was putting the finishing touches on a block, with the Suffolk Puff flowers, 

This is going to be one really cute quilt, and hopefully after the Easter Fair we will get more of the group joining us.

Marguerite and Fran are both busy with needle and thread this week, Fran is hand quilting  her Hexagons and Marguerite is doing 'satin stitch, just satin stitch', on some rather cute doilies,

a little closer view of Marguerite's doily

Catty, has made some really lovely baby bibs, and on a dare, modeled one for us while holding the others up for us to see.

Some time ago, Marcia was doing some tinsy little crocheted 'granny squares', intricate - yes, sweet - yes, very, but to what end? what on earth can you do with tinsy little granny squares?, well, thankfully some people have lots of imagination, 'cause this is what Marcia made with those little crocheted squares,

this divine scarf, and while we were all oooh-ing, aahh-ing, goo-ing and ga-ing one of the girls piped up and told us that she had seen a similar scarf in a boutique not so long ago...........and I tell you, if Marcia sells her scarf for half that amount we all want to be treated to coffee and cake at that ritzy Coffeehouse down the road - I kid you not!

Here's a closer view, the whole scarf is only about 4" wide, those squares are small, the stitches, tiny.

Val has finished assembling and quilting her Row x Row  and bought the finished quilt in to show us today,

full of wonderfully vibrant colours, Val also introduced a range of 3-D blocks into her quilt, such as these 2 blocks

Marcia is also a member of the Machine Embroiders group where she stitched these lovely little squares,

bringing them along to patchwork to hem by hand and to assemble them into this luscious bag,

Sheila, has a much loved similar Shasiko bag that she made in a previous workshop, about 10 years previous, that although it is holding up extremely well, it has faded, as blue tends to, Sheila thought she might do a little swapsie, and for sure Marcia just wouldn't notice, didn't work out, Marcia was onto Sheila in a flash.........

Arvo tea was delish again, with Lorraine and Jackie making a yummy moist orange cake and biccies that must have been just great, 'cause they flew off the plate and I dipped out .........again.......sniffle-sob, but the cake was yummo..

Baseco Mahal Kita Tote bags,

Dawn from Dawn Hay Designs has designed the 'Baseco Mahal Kita' tote pattern and is aiming to sell 1000 patterns through her blog or her Etsy Store to raise funds to help the people of Baseco in Manilla.

Baseco has an estimated population of 100,000 people living in dreadful poverty, they live on, and eat food scraps from the rubbish dump.


A pattern  will set you back US$4.00 or AUD4.50 - pretty much the cost of a coffee, but each $4.50 will buy medicine for a child, or go towards Emergency Relief kits, 1000 pattern sales could build 10 new homes.

Click on the button above to pop over to Dawn's blog for her story and links for more information on the dreadful plight of the people, and if you feel you can help, get yourself a cute tote pattern, make it up and blog about it.

We're all soggy......still.....

......started this post last week, but unfortunately there has been a hiccup or two, nothing major, just life slowing down the old fingers across the keyboard kind of hiccup, but with the help of a friend from the cottage we are able to suss out what those clever ladies at the cottage have been up to.....last week was a bit of a short showing of numbers at Patchwork group meeting....there was so much of the wonderful liquid stuff falling from the heavens and congregating in the lower areas that some folks were unable to motor up to the cottage.  However, those that could make it, took part in some in depth reasearch into Crazy Patch in preparation for our upcoming yearly challenge.

Sheila gave a tutorial on 'the fastest way ever' to create a crazy patchwork block, and she was so 'fastest', that all I got for a pic was a blurry streak, but how wonderful is this little Elna? those little sloping supports actually fold up to become the carry case, a perfect light weight machine for taking to workshops.

Fran got into the creative mode with a vengeance, Fran loves embroidery, so is really looking forward to assembling a canvas for some of her lovely stitching.  Patricia, who wasn't so convinced at first, decided to give crazy a go after Sheila's tutorial.......with the occasional comment or two of  'maybe.....perhaps....'

Judy was up to her elbows in books from the library.....lots of planning and ideas flowing there, but what's this?.....Patricia is back to her hand work, but not ruling out the possibility that crazy might take a hold on her life in the near future.

Here is a rather interesting little thing for you to try out, and if you have a colour blind family member or friend, this site gives you a real insight into just what colours they do see,..........in my world....this answers a whole bunch of questions about teenagers bedrooms and the decorating thereof.
It is a Colour Scheme Designer, you get to click on your main colour and then choose you colour wheel, be it, complementary, triad, etc etc., so pop on over to http://www.colorschemedesigner.com/ for a visit and click on the 'vision simulation' tab in the top right hand corner for the various colour vision simulations and the ratio of men/women and the rest of us ..........bit scarry really.  But a wonderful tool for planning your next quilt colour palete.

Remember this lovely quilt from Lorraine?

Lorraine vowed that this was the first and last pastel polka dot quilt she would ever make........I reckon that when the little lady below is able to sit up, look Great Auntie Lorraine in the eye and sigh..Lorraine will be stitchin' another pastel polka dot or whatever this little ladies heart desires.  What makes me so sure?  These are Lorraines words that came with the Pic....

"The totally un-me pastel polka dots have finally been put to use.  Ava arrived in January but I only got to see her last week.

She is obviously the most beautiful child in the world, being my great nice, but the quilt don't look half bad either".

Lainey

Sorry about the quality of the pic, its had a bit of a travel, from phone, to computer, to computer to you.

Denise bought in some delicious bags for show and tell, two ruched lovelies decorated with organza flowers that she got from Johno's, firstly sweet roses all in a row.....

 and a lovely multi layered daisy

and lastly, a strip pieced log cabin style with really great leather handles, the handles have punched holes to make it easy to affix them to the bag.

Denise will bring along others from her current collection next week to show us.

We rounded the afternoon off with this lovely spread, mini banana muffins, a lovely fruit cake and biccies and dip..........yummo, we really do do ourselves proud.

 and just as we were finishing up for the day, a ray of sunshine broke through the clouds and shone on this lovely Croton.......not proton as some bright spark first uttered..........well, I was kind of on the right track.

It's been so long since we have seen the sunshine, we all rushed to the window for a little visual relief and trot down the old memory lane of 'gee, sunshine.....is that what it looks like'........as opposed to a few weeks back when we couldn't remember what rain felt like.  -  no, no complaints..........after all the dams are now full, the grass is green,  the ceilings are black....you have to live in the tropics to get that one!

And now, in Lorraine's words and with her pics,  a chance to catch up with what the lovely ladies got up to last Wednesday.  Thank you so much for making this effort for our group Lorraine. -A

'Cos you were away I thought I should get out the Camera, aren't you glad I had it with me?, and do the rounds of the pw room.
Starting with Beryl.  She created a roll based on a Aust. Post roll to carry blocks.  The sealed ends of the roll let her casrry the necessaries.  Neat and compact.

Pic to follow.  -  am having a few probs with some of the e-mailed pics.
 
Wendy has been playing with Dick and Jane.  She made a gorgeous bag,

but the main item was a Disappearing Nine Patch.  Never heard of it?  Neither had I.  A cry went up of "Workshop" so there might be a few more of these in the future.  We might even give away the secret.

Denise has been playing bag lady again.  These are really lovely.  Loved the charcoal and gold fabric.  I want a pup out of that when she breeds it.  I am glad to see that Denise never wastes her left over knitting yarn.  What great embellishments.
Pics to follow

Lorraine presented a mystery object.  Everyone had a guess but no one came close. 

The new truck has a flimsy polystyrene cover over the 'Bed' behind the seats and the vinly cover started to tear very quickly.  The Darling, knowing his wife is agreeable to almost anything, asked her to make a patchwork cover for it.  They contract to Boral so Lorraine used the company colours of green, yellow and black.

Here it is, in situ, in the Cement truck.

Another day was spent in the back room with ladies going crazy - patchwork that is.  Another day of fun and help for those crazy challenged.  I wouldn't have thought that was a problem in our group.  Jan, our resident expert on all things crazy lent some expertise.