Hand Quilting....don't you just love it

Talking with quilters about the one thing they most love about quilting, the thing that captures the heart, is more often than not, hand quilting.  Those tiny little stitches, so uniform, creating such intricate designs.  Our group has many hand quilters of note but the one whom we all look up to is Gwen, who volunteered to quilt the central design on this beautiful W.I.P. for Dorothy.

 

There is quite a saga attached to this quilt, Dorothy began creating it with her son and his bride in mind, but life changes and for various reasons the quilt was packed away for a number of years, until chatting with the other gals she was encouraged to bring it along.

Helen, one of our long time members and a quiet achiever,got the ball rolling on this lovely by volunteering to do the remainder of the needle turn applique, which was promptly followed by Gwen volunteering to do the central medallion quilting, by this stage Dorothy was getting quite excited and wondering what exactly to do with the quilt, her Grandson promptly asked to be the recipient, so, a family heirloom, with a story, in the making.

More Charity quilts are being created and Beryl in the spirit of waste not, want not, decided to clip apart the trimmings from the string quilt blocks into crumbs and useable triangles.

Now that's the spirit!
Mind you, the guilt then hit and I popped my trimmings into a covering thinking the dog might like it for a bed, nope, he wanted the whole shebang...

30 seconds, I kid you not, between flinging the quilt over the couch, turning to pick up the camera and finding him scrunched up on that tiny little overhang - and no he's not asleep, he is just pretending! the big furry quilt snatcher!

Sue W. created this lovely hand quilted wall hanging for her friend of many years in memory of the times they traveled to Japan with their work.

And another lovely applique quilt from Sue W, inspired by Sue A's show quilt, which in turn was inspired by a quilt in a magazine Gwen was perusing, and so the creative juices flow.

A wedding quilt with a special story. 
Janice's long time friends were at one time Strawberry farmers - and Janice was one of those intrepid souls who helped out at Strawberry picking season, not a job for the faint hearted - said friends are now raspberry farmers. 
As soon as Janice spotted this black and white floral she thought of Raspberry flowers, disappearing 9-Patch and the upcoming wedding of her friends Son - Viola! Wedding Quilt inspiration!

Janice had the quilt machine quilted and added a striped binding for extra pazazz!

A big thank you came the way of Fae, Marlene, and Estelle.
Laurel from the Buderim Garden Club popped into last weeks meeting to thank them, return the quilts loaned and present the three with a lovely potted plant.

If you were one of the many visitors to the Garden Festival in the Memorial Hall you would have seen the quilts on display.  Made for quite the stunning entry.

Thursday night

Are numbers were a little down last night..................

Leanne is still busy, busy, busy with her 1" scrappy quilt.

 

Yola spent her evening pinning her quilt made in a class with Fiona.

 

Oh my gosh, will Debs 1/2" ever come to an end?????

Tisha decided to have a tidy up of her threads - winding them onto cards. She looked pretty relaxed ......................

Now this is interesting - Tina was making bunting for a Medieval re-enactment.

Binding her Christmas table runner was on Marlene's agenda for the evening.

Jackie's GTASB quilt - pretty colours.

Elaine's magnificent work.........

I think she said this one was "pulled work"

Sue is now a Nana - twin girls - Harriet and Georgia - so she was trying her hand at crochet bootees.

Black, white and red quilt by Elaine.

Crazy quilting by Jenny

Just a reminder that we are making this little bag next week.

 

Till next week...................................

A very special Big 'O' birthday and Charity Quilts

Won't be mentioning which one, but Betty recently celebrated a very special birthday, Marie W bought along a lovely bouquet of roses grown by her Darling, real roses, scented roses. Heavenly

We even had cake, with a candle and all.   Congratulations Betty

Double bed quilt using two jelly rolls and appliqué. Marie W was asked by a friend to make the quilt so she could give it as a birthday present for her friend, mind you there was a ridiculously short period of time involved, like - less than a week! non quilters, what can you do?, sew like crazy and get it done is what.  Great effort Marie and a beautiful quilt.
Marie named it Windmill and Roos

Marie also had another commission to share with us, these two quilts and Marie's story

The orange quilt is called Caravans abound. The fabric was chosen by the lady who wanted it made as they are her logo colours. It is going on her stand at a caravan convention in Melbourne later in the month. And the other one is for the same person and will be given away in a lucky draw for one of her customers. This one is called Camping and caravans. 

For those involved in the conversation a few weeks back, Blue Banded Bees or more accurately Amegilla, yes they do exist! Pic on left was my first encounter with a blue banded bee, photo taken in 2009

Pic on right, taken in 2012, is one of the many lost photos, but the Darling has it as a screen saver on his phone, not a good angle to capture the iridescence of the blue stripes, but you get the idea.

Marcia really started something big with her string quilt, everyone seems to have made one or is making one, such a great way to use up all your scraps.  Val in her new role as Patchwork Group charity quilt co-ordinator has us all organised to make a few for Najidah, hopefully for Christmas.
We all pitched in over the last couple of weeks with workshops at the cottage,
Beryl made a lap quilt  to inspire us..

Strips were cut, organised into colour groups and stitched by many hands

Nothing finished yet but coming together nicely and I'm sure there will be quilts for Christmas.

And in her spare time, Val ran up another two charity quilts, along with these cuties, a mug bag, tissue holder and coin purse, oh and of course, a lovely worded label for the quilts. 

Judy bought us some lovely goodies to show and tell, this Rosella wall-hanging was done in a workshop with talented local Textile Artist, Bernadine Hine.

 
In fact, pop over here to see Judy and the other ladies at Bernadine's class with their beautiful birds and of course to see some of Bernadine's wonderful work, including a new quilt made for her daughter, stunning!.
Judy also bought along a table runner done at the Angel using some lovely fabrics

Some time ago a friend of Judy's traveled to Alaska and bought home little collections of fabric featuring Alaskan wildflowers.  Judy knew she wanted to make something special, but what?.  Inspired by a pic in a magazine Judy just couldn't wait to get home and create this lovely table mat. Works brilliantly!

Using a printed panel, Louise is working on a Christmas Wall-hanging for the Fair,  Can't wait to see the finished hanging.

Those Scrappy Quilts are getting smaller...

well, not the quilts so much as the bits, I mean, really, just look at these tiny pieces,

 

Pat 'woman's' the sales desk in our Atrium a couple of times a month and of course wants a quilting project to work on in the down time.  She has set herself a project, a quilt to hopefully be completed by our next quilt show. stitched from the tiniest pieces to form these little block parts.

Now just let your mind run wild with what this full size quilt is going to be.  Yep I've seen the pattern, and its mind blowing! but Pat is keeping it a secret just for now, will try to bring you more snippets as the quilt unfolds.

And just before we leave Pat beavering away, how cute is this...

 

was so taken with the tinsy little pieces I totally missed this mini pin cushion in a cotton reel.

Lorraine is also going for the scrappy ideas, she has joined the Thursday night gals in the creation of the 'Green Tea and Sweet Beans' quilt and was working busily away on hexies this arvo

Lorraine reckons getting the harder blocks out of the way first is the way to go, then its a downhill run.

The almost completed block of hexies.

The front cover of Jen Kingwell's book Green Tea and Sweet Beans.  Lorraine just had to have this book after seeing some of the work done by the Thur Gals.  Can you see the Hexies Block hiding in there?

And now a Christmas mystery story

At one of our recent Christmas Fetes, Patricia's Darling spotted a lovely Christmas Wall Hanging and bought it.  

A regular visitor to Patricia's home greatly admired said Wall Hanging, 

Patricia decided to do some sleuthing through the fair records and found that her much loved hanging was created by Marie, who then chased down a Christmas Panel and created this lovely just in time for Patricia's friend to hand on her wall for Christmas

Gotta love a happy ending.

Gwen has also been bitten by the scrappy bug, so badly that she has vowed that she is only going to create from her scrap bag for the next year!
This is #1, and Gwen tells us there is another not too far away.

Kinda wondering if Gwen's scrap bag is pretty close to other peoples 'Stash", just kinda a little more, well, scrappy.

Oh my gosh - Thursday night

The people gathered...................thanks to the organizational skills of Marlene!!!!

to see all Gwen's beautiful quilts that she so generously displayed as a last fundraiser for the Weekend to End Women's Cancers.

Gwen had so many stunning quilts and interesting stories to share.............

Enjoy her quilts...............

A big thank you to all who supported this cause....................

A close up of Gwen's beautiful hand quilting....................

.......................it's not often that we get to see hand quilting now a days........................

Thanks Gwen!!!!

Debs with the raffle winners - 3rd prize Inge and 2nd prize Jackie. The first prize winner was telephoned with the good news and she was delighted....................
 A total of $262.00 was raised on the night.