Mini Retreat

What a great day yesterday at the Cottage, group members involved in the mini retreat were hard at it when the Grandie and I arrived to have a bit of a sticky.
Janet was tutoring the girls in this rather innovative wall hanging.  A Christmas tree decorated with small buttons - a.k.a. tree baubles - for you to display your Christmas cards, simply using paper clips!

 

 Lots of different fabric combinations for individual looks,  even a design change.

While Janet was busily assessing and guiding, Marcia was refueling with the aid of a cuppa.

The girls had a beautiful array of home baked goodies to go with their cuppas, and lunch was delish, toasted Turkish breads filled with Turkey, Brie, Cranberry etc. followed by fruit and sweet nibblies,  major yummo.

The Grandie shared some of his fave jokes with the gals for a bit of light relief, I'll bet you can't guess why the coco-pop crossed the road?

It was stuck to the chicken of course!

It was then time to move on to Janice's Christmas decorations, firstly a showing of what was on offer...

and then down to serious business.....

Sheila was to be next cab Tutor off the rank with her Tutorial on these wonderfully personalised Christmas Stockings, Sheila has made one for each of her Grandies, but only had a selection of 3 to show yesterday, (I won't tell you how many Grandies she has, if you are a bit light on in the Grandie stakes it's enough to make you weep.......truly.....ask Janice).

Sadly, the Grandie and I were too late for Sue's wonderful hexagons,  fancy being able to totally machine assemble hexies and even use your machine to join them together to make so many different goodies. I'm sure we will be seeing some marvelous creations on the Show and Tell table in the near future.

Group's A.G.M.....done and dusted

We have all been impatiently awaiting the Group's A.G.M., not for any group business reasons, although its always nice to have all the positions filled by a great group of volunteers, no, yesterday was the day Sheila drew the raffle for this wonderful quilt.

Lee Clelland's 'Single Wedding Ring' version 5, one of the many quilts she made and quilted with a different design for her book 'Quilting makes the Quilt', IMHO if not the best book on machine quilting then close to it, and yes, you can still purchase copies.
And who won??

Lorraine did!!!, she rushed right over and gave it a 'Welcome to my Life' Hug.  Congratulations Lorraine.
Oh yeah, and the fact she had a scrummy sanger in her hand didn't slow her down one little bit.

There is a very special birthday party in Wendy's life this weekend, one of her Grandies is turning 1 year old.  He is a great fan of that book about the caterpillar that eats a hole in everything, you know the one, and Wendy has created this 'Hungry Catterpillar' quilt as his gift.

The little lad's Mum must be as talented as Wendy, she is drawing on the tale for party food inspiration. 

all of the above will be on offer, what a marvelous way to remember your 1st Birthday.

 June, one of the Thursday night regulars joined us yesterday and bought along some quilts to show.

 

While we were all drooling over this lovely version of 'Hidden Wells' Janice suggested that June might like to hold a workshop on this classic design.  Yipee! June accepted!, so dear readers, there will be 'wells' galore next year.

June used some of the lovely hand dyed silk 'scraps'  that were donated to the group by Meg to form the centers of her border applique flowers.

June then free motion quilted a petal pattern in the center of the wells and interspersed flowers through the meandering quilting design over the rest of her quilt.

This lovely was paper pieced by June for her son.........for his boat!, she also did 2 more the same for the single bunks.  

Somehow or other I don't think the boat is a fishing tinny, do you?

 The intersection of each block forms a secondary design in each corner.

June was inspired by the sea for the quilting design she choose for the quilts.  Stars around the border, followed by a row of 'waves' and then a water inspired meander for the body of the quilt.

June spotted some of the tessellated quilts that other members have made in Val's workshop, and decided to have a go at drafting out her own T block pattern, and this is the result, a beautiful 'Kimono' tessellated quilt.

June has free motion quilted the background between the kimono's, compressing the background and forcing each Kimono forward.  The same fabric as the narrow first border will be used to bind her quilt.

After Lorraine finished rolling around on her new quilt, she showed off the backing on this beauty, Lorraine spied the backing a couple of years ago on sale, it was a great buy and she scooped up the entire bolt, its been just the ticket for all the niece and nephew quilts that she has made.

 Lorraine's quilt story:

I have been collecting 'I Spy' fabric and charm squares for a while now - just another of my collections.

The I spy quilt was done last year with a boy theme bias just waiting for a family member to oblige with a likely recipient.

My nephew, Ben and his wife Jody added to two daughters with Daniel Benjamin earlier this year.

I won't be at his naming ceremony as I will be away on a quilting retreat for the week, but the quilt will be in the mail to him in time for the ceremony.

Cheeky Susie created this table runner to use up some more of her scraps. Vibrant flowers appliqued to a black background with embroidery to delineate the petals.

And why cheeky??  well I'm no dobber, suffice to give a warning, if you leave your tongue outside your head, it will dry out and go crispy! and then you won't be able to enjoy lovely goodies like our arvo tea, fresh tasty sangers, tiny tomatoes, moist fruit cake and a lovely iced banana cake..

Note to self......

.....Don't yabber on the phone while posting on the blog.....or you just might make a big mistake.
While editing I was chatting, and deleted a bit more than I bargained for, so with apologies to Catti, here is her latest silk ribbon floral embroidery, this week beautiful vibrant geraniums.

 Sorry I almost missed your lovely work Catti, gotta be a bit more careful in the future.

Unsewing with a Change of Plan, and a very useful camera hint.

Lorraine was doing a wee tad of 'unsewing' today,

two rows of this quilt to be have been assembled but are now having their sashings removed and will be reassembled in the QAYG method that Lorraine showed us in her tutorial.
Brilliant idea, the quilt will measure 9' x 9' so quite a bit to maneuver through the throat of her machine.  I saw most of the blocks on Lorraine's design wall, this is going to be a stunning quilt, and when finished it will live on Lorraine and her Darling's bed.

Ja` is one of Gwen's hand piecing students, and bought along her 3 completed blocks to discuss some of the finer points with Caitti, well of course we all had to have a peek.  When finished Ja` will be giving her quilt to a very lucky friend who has even chosen the colour pallet.

Betty wasn't able to be with us today, but we still managed to see her latest flimsey, it's on it's way to be quilted by Fiona.

Betty has swapped at random, patches from the darker coloured rows throughout her quilt, giving the whole quilt movement and sparkle.

Wendy has finished her QAYG table runner from Beryl's demonstration.  Wendy lay the blocks out in both  design options, using her digital camera she took pics of both and made her decision on the design she wanted to assemble her runner.  Great tip Wendy.

Shortbread and Ginger was all the go for a very yummy arvo tea, Shortbreads, Ginger Shortbreads, Ginger Cake and Chocolate Biccies.....

Floating Square Border Tutorial from Lorraine H.

We have another tutorial, offered to us from Lorraine H. Sadly this Tutorial just didn't want to play, let alone nicely.
The shared file would not co-operate at all, tried everything known to man - yep even the Darling couldn't work with it.
So after trying my hand at drawing up sketches, a very sad event (g), decided nothing for it but to make a unit and photograph the steps, easy....but not simple....the fabrics chosen are, believe it or not, tan homespun, dark green and light green, not as they show in the photographs as pink, blue and light green ...WHA??? How did that happen?
So sorry folks, as I am really time poor (destitute almost) at the moment, we are going with what there is, if nothing else you will get a laugh and even maybe perhaps be inspired to try the lovely border that Lorraine used in our 'Forest' raffle quilt.  It may look complicated but believe me, really simple sewing, lots of it is strip piecing and only two lots of seams to butt together in each unit.

So pop up to the 'Tutorials and Directions from Members' Tab under our banner for some inspiration and a laugh......why oh why didn't I check those piccies as I went....ahh well.

Fiona's Trunk Show

After the astounding success of Letitia's Trunk Show last month, the Thursday night girls have decided to make it a monthly affair, working through their gathering alphabetically.  Tonight it is Fiona's turn and just how, I hear you ask, is it possible that you can view Fiona's goodies almost at the same time as the group?. Well, Fiona being a lovely lass agreed to arrive early and give your humble blogger an opportunity to photograph her quilts using the flash.  Don't usually use a flash, it is rather disconcerting when one is presenting goodies to continually be flashed.
This sample quilt is Fiona's oldest intact quilt, she reckons on it being between 16 - 18 years old, and spends its life in the family caravan.  Fiona mentioned that she is planning on updating the Caravan quilts- yes plural -  as she needs to get rid of some scraps from her workroom.

A closer view of the hand quilting on the 3 hearts block, yep, done in the days before Fiona became a long arm quilter.

The Lone Star is one of the patterns that Fiona teaches, we previously saw an example of the class when Lorraine H bought her blue and white Lone Star along to Show and Tell.

Made from Jelly Rolls, this vibrant beauty is only short of a bit of binding to complete it, Fiona is deciding on how to treat the hexagon edges, bind those peaks or slice them straight!,

A lovely swirly floral pattern was Fiona's choice of quilting design.

Remember that 'Caravan' Quilt? and the desire to create new scrappy Caravan quilts?, well here is the first cab off the ranks, this scrappy quilt is soon to reside on Fiona's bed.

Fiona quilted around each hexagon with a curved design using a variegated thread, hard to see on the backing, which depending on your point of view is either the best backing or the worst!

Very hard to pick the quilting on the back.

And just to show us why it is a tad hard for a working Mum to finish her quilts (as if we didn't know -vbg)
Fiona also bought along this beauty that she has just finished quilting for a client.

Beautiful embroidered 'Dinner Plate' designs, with a trapunto effect behind the plates using pellon or thin wadding.  Fiona has quilted around each plate and then done some lovely hearts and swags in the setting triangles and the borders.

 Fiona's quilting business goes under the banner of 'Quilting Fairy' and she can be contacted on 0419713644 or via her Quilting Fairy blog.

 Fiona has just returned from doing some rather intricate classes with Sue Ross at Precious Time in Toowoomba. Sue travels to Toowoomba on a regular basis to teach.

Fiona has hand pieced 9 centers and 9 of the circle borders, and now just/only has to piece them together and attach the block backgrounds.  How neat are those seams?! Looking forward to seeing the completed quilt.
And so ends Trunk Show number 2, looking forward to next month already.

Pinched a pic of this beauty being sandwiched, couldn't resist, fell in love with the appliqued Kimono's in the border.  This is going to be another stunner!

Hope we get to see it in it's finished state.- gosh, is that another hint??