More to the story.....

Remember this quilt??

of course you do, 'Roses and Magnolias' is in yesterdays post, but there is more to this quilts story, lots more,  Lorraine I continues Lorraine H's story.

Lorraine H. is taking 'Roses' to Arizona to give to her friend as a gift, she is a quilter who likes bright quilts.

Lorraine and her friend will be celebrating Lorraine's 60th birthday and 50 years of being penpals.  The quilt will travel in a suitcase so there will be a nice big space left to come home - hopefully filled with an antique quilt Lorraine is hoping to find in her travels.

News from our groups...

...bit of a catch up for the Buderim Patchwork Group, with two Lorraine's giving us the low down on what the girls have been up to.  Firstly, from last Thursday, some words about the Thursday night group from Lorraine H.

Thursday night this week was a hive of activity with 4 large quilts all being pinned ready for quilting.  

Our newest member, Ivanka, bought along her gorgeous applique quilt and her the whole group are admiring her beautiful hand stitched work and lovely soft colours.

Many hands make light work, and with lots of help, we all managed to get four large sized quilts pinned ready for quilting. This pic is shows three of these - Ivanka's applique, Marleen's black and white scraps, and Lorraine H.'s latest - Roses and Magnolias which is destined for USA next week!

Thank you for the lovely pics and your words Lorraine, your beautiful quilt will surely be greatly admired when it reaches it's destination. - Andrea

Lorraine I,very kindly took these great piccies with her phone!.....are you old enough to remember when a mobile phone looked like and weighed about the same as a house brick??....and now you can take a pic, a video, and surf the net with a tiny little thing you can hold in your palm! - Forget about Dick Tracy and his wrist phone, we have gone way way beyond that!

From Lorraine I, ....

It was a small group today. Maybe the wet weather kept people away, although we really need the rain.

The Queensland Quilters raffle tickets of a quilt designed by Jennifer Chivarini (Elm Creek Quilters fame) were snapped up very quickly.

Sue Andrew was seen to be busy searching through books looking for some scrap quilts.  Is she trying to empty out her stash or just researching for a workshop she has promised to run?

Janice brought in the bag she will be showing in the workshop in a couple of weeks.  Not quite finished but it sure looks good.

Lorraine Hunter showed us the quilt 'Roses and Magnolias' made with a new fabric range from Moda.  It is a very American style quilt but that will be fine as it will be off to America next week.

Catti has made a gorgeous baby quilt with farm animals embroidered on it.  A bit of trouble reading the labels until Catti told us the animals were labelled with their Latin names.  Catti doesn't have anyone to give this quilt to yet but is hoping for a grandchild in the future.  Hoping for an early start in botany maybe?

A couple of close ups of Caitti's quilt for you.  Cropped from the pic above, the phone did a great job of capturing the detail of those ever so cute little animals.

Thanks for the pics and words Lorraine - Andrea

Shepherding.....its in the Genes

Just chatting to Lorraine, about animals...dogs in particular and she mentioned about her 'little' boy Max and his penchant of herding everything, including the chooks and more recently these cute newly hatched Guinea Fowl.
Lorraine promised me some piccies and they are so cute I thought you might enjoy them too....

Max spent hours just laying by the cage, protecting he new hatchlings, you can imagine the excitement when Lorraine and her Darling moved the cage!

Staring 'em down, I am the Boss!

And what am I up to?, quilting the blob?, borders on the Disappearing 4-Patch? Housework??yetch!
Nope, I am working up a tutorial to make these cute folding shopping bags with a pretty wrap to disguise them.....courtesy of Fran and Marcia.......that is, Marcia bought one for Fran.....Back to the drawing board...

Tinsies in our quilting world..........

Yep,they've gone and shrunk the hexies..........take a look at these little darlings

That coin in the top piccie....with the fussy cut hexie resting on it, thats our 5cent coin, measures about 7/8" diameter, or 2cm if you are in the metric world.  The bottom pic shows the pattern and a finished flower, and who I hear you ask is making these tiny little blocks....well Julie is, as relaxation!  Mind you she is going through all the stress of building a new home at the moment, so maybe tinsy hexies are a relaxation.

Took the piccies and feeling a little gobsmacked showed them to the girls at the table where I sit, we were all gobsmacked! and then Marcia decided to share a 'little something' that she has been making, tinsy tinsy Suffolk Puffs.....

Aren't they darling?  The Coin is our $1 coin, 1" diameter, or close to 2.5cm, its also what Marcia is using for a template!
Anyone out there ever made anything smaller than either of these??!  I'm speechless....sort of....

Gwen is teaching a series of hand piecing classes.  We are learning the basics from the beginning of creating templates, hand piecing the block and eventually, hand quilting, all very exciting and wonderful.  Marcia, Catti and Christine have finished their first blocks.

More template creating with concentration, curved piecing was today's lesson.

Sue has assembled her Friendship Row x Row and bought it along to show, lots of lovely Japanese fabrics

 There is a row of 3-D folded Kimonos, 3-D folded flowers and what quilt with a Japanese them is complete without fans?

 Marie made this deliciously soft little quilt to donate to Project Linus, made from pale pink Minkee with applique hearts and a soft flannel backing, soft and pretty, just right for a little princess needing comfort.

 Val will be teaching another Tessellation workshop on 18th August, this time using strip piecing, and bought in two flimseys to give inspiration. The body of these quilts is a two colour design.

 Julie has been working on the stitcheries and this quilt for a little while now, she has made it to hang in her sewing room of her new home.  Probably right next to those tinsy hexagons she is currently working on.

Some of the beautiful blocks in Julies quilt, 'Dragonflies and Daisies'.  Julie has used some lovely brooches/pins as well as beads, notions and buttons in these lovely blocks, don't forget to click on the pic for a larger view.

Arvo Tea was a wonderful selection of cakes, slice and a lovely assortment of finger sandwiches, Yummo.

Viewers Choice Winner

The Results are in, the Viewers Choice winner for the Lyn Ballinger Challenge is........

Lola!  Lola's entry also won one of the Highly Commended awards from Jenny, our Challenge Judge.
Lola's prizes included a very handy gift voucher, a certificate and the use of our quilt stand perpetual trophy for the next year.
And in no particular order, except the prize winners in the first pic, here are all the Challenge entries with the name of their creators and of course a pic of our lovely Judge.

To get a better view of these lovelies, just hover your mouse on the pic and give it a click, a new page will open.  To return to the post use the back button at the top of your screen.

Look what I found on entry number nine..........well yes, truth be told, look what was pointed out to me on the side of Barbara's entry....the cutest little knitted cat, all dressed up with a pretty beaded collar, you can see how I missed her can't you, hiding behind the flowers at the bottom.  Barbara is also working on the black and white cat in the bottom pic.......do you think she may be a cat lover??

Janice presented a class on ruched roses or flowers, depends on how you squint your eyes at the finished ...um? rose?

The pink gingham is the ruching in progress, followed by a finished rose, and a petaled flower almost finished.

No other show and tell .....lots of researching and chatting about ideas for the fair and I know there was definitely an arvo tea, but I had the opportunity to dash off and collect the Grandies from school....Yay!!

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.