Trunk Show and Tell from Thursday night Patchwok Group

As you have no doubt noticed, we have not had any news from our Thursday night ladies since leader Lorraine resigned to go live in Tassie via a lovely holiday in USA.
We had an e-mail from Lorraine last week, she is missing us all, but having a great time visiting and her long time pen pal just loves the quilt that Lorraine made  for her.

Debbie has now very kindly taken over the job of taking piccies of the Thursday night girls work and frolics for us, and giving us an informative insight into what the girls have achieved.  Thank you so much Debbie, we all appreciate your efforts.

Thursday night we had two new girls arrive to meet us and see what we do.  Welcome Heather and Jules, we hope you both enjoyed our night.

Jenny had a great idea last week and suggested we do a 'trunk show and tell' once a month and she nominated Letitia as our first guinnea pig.  For those of you that know Letitia we all had a fun night with her stories and wonderful treasures she shared with us.

Letitia showed us a very colourful cat quilt that she had made for her mother-in-law when she was caring for her.

There is a jar quilt she made for her youngest daughter.

An Egyptian quilt for her son.  All of which are well worn and loved.

a closer view of a panel on the Egyptian quilt

She bought crocheted treasures like the shawl she made for her Granny.  It was worn every Sunday when Granny went to church.

She made the pink block quilt from warm, cozy cuddly fabric.

She showed us her grunge dolls and Santas that she loves to make and they are all gorgeous.

She made grunge sunflowers a few weeks ago and they are great.  Letitia is a very clever friend.  She even showed us some folk art that she has done.  

 Letitia loves xmas and she has made so many gorgeous xmas pieces.

There were quite a few stitcheries for a few different quilts that are so close to being finished. 

I think Letitia will be very busy when she retires, she will have lots of fun finishing these projects off.

Thanks Letitia for sharing your treasures with us and she has lots more to show and tell, maybe next year.  We had a great night.

Also thanks to Marlene and Jenny for the great job they did at holding up the quilts etc. 

More piccies of Letitia's wonderful work

Wow, what a visual feast!! Thank you all so much for making it possible to share. - A

Inspiration from the 2010 Winter Olympics

 

Back in February, Catti was thinking about making a 'Log Cabin' quilt she had been wanting to try for awhile, but what colour scheme to use??, she got great inspiration from all the colours of the advertising banners and flags of the 2010 Winter Olympics held in Vancouver this year.  A graceful flowing of curves in blues, aqua's and greens, and so Catti's Olympic Log Cabin was born.

And in honour of the impressive Swiss medal tally of 6 gold medals and 3 bronze medals won by her home country's sportsmen and women, Catti created a very impressive label for her stunning quilt

Occasionally, for whatever the reason, the camera just doesn't capture a quilt as well as it should, this quilt sings,  I'm sorry that the pic doesn't do it justice.

Jan bought in some of her pieces that decorate her home to show a couple of lasses at her table, in a former life these lovelies were used as samples in classes that Jan has taught, luckily Sheila spied them and popped them on to the Show and Tell table, otherwise we may have missed out!!

A sumptuous crazy patched Christmas Stocking and Miss Puss, who just lounges around the house, here and there.

More of Jan's Crazy Patchwork, using lots of gold thread and braid and an artful use of some pretty  buttons

 This Montmellic piece was stuffed down in the bottom of the bag, and almost got missed.  It got lots of ooh's and ahh's I can tell you.

Ja` bought in a rather cute little doll, Swiss made, to show Catti.  Along the way, we all had a cuddle, with  Winifred giving us a demo on just how cute and life like the little doll is, at first glance you could take it for a baby, it lays so life like.

Spied Julie's progress with the insy tinsy hexagons, but the decision was that they needed a light background to show them off properly, Catti to the rescue, she draped one of the fabrics Julie is using over her shoulder, arranging it just so...

beautifully displayed!

And then time for Arvo Tea, Apple Strudel, Orange Cake, Date and Nut Loaf and a Sweet Potato Bread, yummmo again!! all beautifully set off with a vase of fresh herbs.

How to: Copy/Paste

After my poor attempts at sketching a computer screen and trying to explaining how to copy/paste a link (such as an e-mail with a link to take us to our Cottage newsletter) were such a disaster yesterday, here as promised is a step by step explanation of how to go about it, or at least, how I go about it. 

Every server has a slightly different screen set-up, two of the most popular are 'Internet Explorer' and 'Firefox', so to start us off, here is a pic of both screens.  I'm sure if you use a different server you will still be able to follow how to go about copy/paste.  It's a great function, not only for following links that may be broken, but also copying word or pics to a word document to save for later.

Being such a picture heavy post, I have made collages for you, just click on each pic to enlarge it and use your back button to return to the post.

At the top is the 'Internet Explorer screen with the Address Bar at top left, the Google search bar at top right and a Yahoo Search bar on the left under the address bar.

The Middle pic is the 'Firefox' screen, the Address bar top left, the Yahoo Search Bar top right and the Google Search bar in the middle of the screen in it's own little box.

The bottom pic is a mock up of an e-mail with an active link, you can see the nice bright colour.  Occasionally you might get an e-mail with such a long ling that it continues into the second line, therefor breaking the link, this is when you will need to use the copy/paste function.

First step is to place your cursor at the end of the link, left click your mouse - that is depress the left hand side of the top of your mouse - and drag your cursor along all of the link, highlighting will occur as you go.
Place your cursor over the highlighted link address, it will probably turn into a hand, and right click your mouse - same as the left click only on the right hand side of the top of the mouse.
A drop down menu will appear, with your cursor, select 'Copy' and left click with your mouse.  The highlighted area is now on your clipboard.

 Sometimes another pop up message will appear, asking if you want to allow the webpage to access your clipboard, if you choose 'Don't allow', you will not be able to copy/paste and will have to manually type the address into either the address or search bar.  I usually choose allow, but occasionally have chosen not to, in that case I type the link address into the Google search bar, that way, any typos, and Google will pop up with 'Do you mean..........?' and you can choose an option.

Next step is to transfer the info from your clipboard to the search bar of your choice, I always choose 'Google', for me it seems the most comprehensive, you can make your own choice of course.
 
Place your cursor on the search bar, and right click your mouse, a pop up screen will appear, with your cursor, choose paste - it will highlight- and left click your mouse to transfer the link to your search bar. 

 

 Either press enter or click on the 'find' icon and presto changeo........

Google has given you a choice of links to choose from......Tip....Big tip, check out the address at the bottom of each selection, making sure it is connected to who you are looking for, any strange words in that address, take the next bus so to speak, one day, looking for the closest store to sell 12" black invisible zips, I wasn't so careful, and found myself on a very strange site, very strange indeed!!!

If you are confident that you have a complete and correct link address, and wish to copy/paste directly into the address bar, just follow the same directions as above, but instead of pasting into the search bar, place your cursor on the address bar, and right click your mouse, the current address in the bar will highlight, you can either delete the address, giving you an empty address bar, or leave the address highlighted.  Either works.
A drop down menu will appear.

choose paste with your cursor and left click, another drop down will appear with 'go to'...........and the address, either press enter or left click your mouse and you will go straight to the site.

Hope this helps you, specially the right and left mouse parts.

Keeping your Computer Healthy....

now why on earth is she sending us this? I hear you ask. 
Well, simple really, I got a distressed phone call last night from one of our group who thought she "had been scammed".


Scamming and Viruses are part of what we are exposed to on the net, same as 'snail mail', we get junk mail in our post box, and SPAM in our inbox which may or may not contain a virus.

I well remember the worry of my very first virus.............watching the pic on my computer screen decay into oblivion before my eyes. (Not unlike an old masters painting of rotting fruit really - wonder if a virus still has the same visual effect?? -  sorry I digress)

Anyway, in the interests of keeping us all online and happy, I thought I would pass on some info that I have come across in the years that I have been fooling around on the net.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not professing to be an expert, to have all the answers or anything even remotely like that..........these are just some of my own experiences, and most of you will have had the same experiences, this post if for those of us who haven't or who worry about breaking their computer. 


Some of us have received the type of mail referred to above,  or at least heard of it......basically it goes something like this......
friend/relation is overseas, lost everything and is in dire straights and needs you to send money NOW.....

The wording in these e-mails is a bit of a dead give away........obviously written by someone who has the right words but the syntax is all wrong! 

As with any request in life, you get your facts straight before you re-act, make sure the rellie really is travelling, and scrutinise the e-mail carefully, quite often there is a giveaway, such as in the one below

 The To: section, my e-mail addy is not contained in there........this e-mail probably went to every yahoo account holder in cyberspace, and don't you just love the beady little 'eyes' just before the 'Good day'<g>


These are the ones that promise you 40% (always 40%....go figure) of some millions that need to be transferred to your account - from Africa it is the long lost rellie who died intestate....Russia, the oil tycoon who has been arrested for political reasons, poor innocent boy he, and you must help out such a poor soul.  Just send your bank details and you will instantly be rich, rich, rich.


And before you think that no one in their right mind would be silly enough to respond...........know that it happens, so many of these types of e-mails go out and less than 1% of e-mails received are replied to........yes, actually replied to and bank details given, enough replies to make it financially well worth while for the scammer.Which is why we get so many of them.......check out your SPAM box, bet its full of them!

There is also a lot of fear about e-mails containing viruses, e-mails cannot contain a virus, they are made of words only, o.k., sometimes the words can worry.........
However, a virus is actually a computer program and can be attached to an e-mail, but it has to be downloaded to infect your computer, and only you can do that. 
The attachment will look something like this in your e-mail inbox,the paperclip icon is the attachment that may or may not contain a virus.

 or if you have opened the e-mail, the attachment will show on the body of the e-mail, again the paperclip!

Just delete the e-mail, don't click on the attachment unless you trust the sender.
Of course, all attachments are not viruses, we all use them every day, your newsletter comes to you as an attachment.

Another trick is the hi-jacking of actual e-mail addresses, imagine my surprise when I got an e-mail from myself promising me Viagra at wholesale prices!!!!.  Yes, I have several e-mail addresses.

When you open these e-mails, you confirm that the address is active, which opens the address up to lots of SPAM, now SPAM is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just junk mail after all, you just need to be careful and if you get an offensive e-mail from someone you know, don't tear into them, find out first if they did actually send you the offensive e-mail, remember the Viagra?!

I was also witness to one poor unfortunate lass who was a member of an online quilting group, she was being flamed for sending inappropriate e-mails, she was innocent of any wrongdoing and the flamer then had the embarrasement of having to publicly appologise.

Then there is the dud internet site, when you click on the site link, up pops a rather alarming notice claiming that you have Malware, a worm or virus, all words aimed at scaring the pants off you and making you panic. I got this sign on a google search, and while taking the time to grab the camera to take a pic,

it morphed into this, that green 'download' bar was travelling at a great rate of knots I can tell you!, again designed to scare and startle. 

 Although this looks very much like the page you visit to see the disc drives and hardware on your computer it is actually just a video animation, but it has some alarming claims on it the red 'Your Computer is Infected!'  the Risk Levels of 'Critical', again in red and at the bottom of the screen the 'Security' box.with all its tricks.

From the 'Turn off messages about virus protection', what a good idea that would be, NOT!, onto what the whole scam is about,  that little box on the bottom right, looking so comfortingly familiar outlined in blue, 'Find a program online', click on that and the virus is IN.


 I shut the site down, but not the computer, so up pops this little beauty, 'Your computer remains infected by viruses....etc, Return to System Security and download it to secure to your PC'.  Well of course if you click that little blue 'OK box', you're a done dinner.....

Get good security on your computer and trust it.....never panic.....never follow links thrown up on your screen.
To get rid of this pest I had to re-boot.......only takes seconds but....

Now, enough of this cr...er....stuff, go, the internet awaits, I really do need to find that quilt pattern! and if you have read to the end, I hope there has been some comfort in there for you.  

Grandsons Birthday Quilt.....

and lots of other lovelies, but first this wonderful quilt Ailsa has made for her Grandson's upcoming Birthday

Black silhouettes on backgrounds with pieced blocks in between makes for a stunning quilt.
Ailsa is also wearing a vest she created in a class some time back.  Lots of lovely 3-D applique, front and back,  makes this vest another stunner.

 Closer views of some of the vehicles, lots of debate as to which one will be the Grandie's  fav. Collectible or maybe the Ferrari?

Winnifred, shyly hiding behind her W.I.P.,  is working on a small version of 'tumbling blocks' that she is hand piecing, hand quilting and then will be turning the finished panel into a cushion.

And yes! neatness does count! tiny neat stitches and quilting.

Fran is also up to her ears, figuratively speaking in W.I.P.'s, she is working on 4, yes 4 of these lovelies, ribbon embroidered hearts, one of which will be turned into a needle case for a lucky family member, the other 3 are to be framed.

Each heart shape is formed with a different selection of embroidered flowers with an appropriate colour scheme, Fran is showing the lovely soft pink roses.

Beryl bought along a quilt that she did awhile back in a class with Jan T. Urquhart, using Jan's own invention, a fast piecing system that also teaches colour value, that she has named 'Listen With Your Eyes'.

Jan has a wealth of information on her web site and blog, including Free Quilting Lessons and Free EQ7 lessons as well as info.  Pop over here to visit with Jan.
Beryl choose an all over quilting design of four leaf clovers and swirls.

Wendy has finished her 30's fabric quilt that she started on our recent retreat (It's still recent, isn't it? less than 6 months ago!)  "All those little squares" she told us, all to be cut and then stitched back together!

When Beryl was packing up, this wonderful carrier was spied, one of the first things she made at the beginning of her quilting journey, The tutor advised against quilting the bag, something that Beryl now regrets, nevertheless it is a stunning carrier.

lots of lovely blocks showcasing not only patchwork techniques, but some lovely stitching as well.

There are sunflowers appliqued onto both ends of the bag.

Arvo Tea was wonderful as usual with an assortment of sangers, a mud cake and two lovely tea cakes, snaffled a slice of the apple one - bottom right, lovely and moist and subtly spiced.  Yummo