Cutting Squares...

...what a marathon effort.
Got an e-mail from Lainey last week, you know, one of those "gee look at all the fun I'm having..."

Lainey, who is lucky enought to have a quilt studio of sizeable proportions very kindly stores some of our groups extras, such was the case with the huge stash donated to us in 2014 by Derrick.

Lainey was looking around her studio for somewhere/something to store the Najidah toiletries and spotted these.

 Yep, storage bins with some of the last of Derrick's darlings stash. 
Lainey promptly went to work and started cutting, by last wednesday she had filled these boxes and was still on the go.

She spent all of last weeks meeting pressing and cutting fabric,

then stacking the squares for storage.  Yep, this is one of the larger sized bins, with the other boxes added it will be filled to the brim with nicely cut squares, just crying out to be used.

 Maybe she should have had one of these toys to play 'cut ups' with.

Yep, this not so little bundle of techno opens up into the Accuquilt electric fabric die cutter.

Mind you, after watching a video demo, I reckon we would have had less squares and much more of this.

However, if your wrists ache, your fingers go numb etc.etc..one of these suckers would be just the bees knees, mind you, they do have smaller models that you process the fabric by winding through with a handle, but what would the point of that be??  ..no, go big is my desire...ah yes, one of these darlings is definitely on my wish list!!

And if like me you don't didn't know too much about how these work, treat yourself to some internet time, and why the sudden interest I hear you ask, well that online font of info on all things quilting, scquilters (Souther Cross Quilters) has a thread running at the moment of gals who have or have wish listed various die cutters.

But, wish lists all to one side, thank you Lainey for  job well done, a marathon effort!

A new gadget

Di was beavering away at finishing the binding on this quilt at the beginning of the day, created using a layer cake and drunkards path template - yep we do have it in our library, Di had Fiona from the Quilting Fairy longarm a continuous design over her quilt.

 

To make the binding task a little easier, Di had lashed out on a Clover desk needle threader and was a bit dismayed to find that it didn't perform as promised.

Not to be defeated by a little thing like that, Di did a bit of research and found that Clover recommends you use Clover brand needles, (of course) something to do with the oval eye of the clover needles.  So, a dash into the store on her way to quilting and Di had her required needles but hadn't actually got to the stage of needing to re-thread her needle.  So, does it work or does it not? more on this cliff hanger next week.

Anike was setting up to continue 'free hand quilting' or as we would term it free motion quilting on half of her quilt.

Inspired by a quilt spotted in a magazine, this is Anike's own design, the reds in the layout form large hexagon shapes that will be quilted in an allover circular design with straight line quilting in the black background.  Anike opted to do the quilting in two pieces so as not to have too much bulk in the throat of her machine.

Debby was threading up her needle in preparation of button hole stitching around some really cute farm animals on a baby quilt for her God daughters new baby.

Janice is quite a prolific quilter and usually has her quilts quilted by a long arm quilter, or if her own quilting, has gone with the stitch in the ditch approach.  With the continued support of a friend who convinced her to give it a try she has been pleasantly surprised to find just how easy it is to get a great result using gentle curves and straight lines.

The above quilt and this one below are just two of the quilts that Janice will be offering for sale at the upcoming Easter Fair on Saturday March 26th.

As promised, Michelle bought along her lovely crazy patchwork squares, all framed up and looking beautiful.

some closer peeks at some of Michells blocks and yes, the background fabric is black, not blue as in some of these pics. 

Heather was inspired by Michells work and also joined the happy little gang of 'crazies' who gather at Patchwork Angel to be tutored by Jenny.

Although we have a copy of Jenny's book in our library, Heather chose to buy her own copy.  It's a great reference and inspirational book.

We had two gals visiting with us today with a view to joining our group, Karen and Carol.
Karen chose to bring a piece of Sashiko along to work on.

Carol bought along some 1/2" hexies that she will be using on a quilt for her bed using her own design of Cathederal Windows with a hexie in each window.
 Carol was originally enticed to start on the 'Insanity' quilt by this gift from a friend, a cute mini

sewing kit.  Val identified the fabric as being from one of Lynette Anderson's ranges.
'Insanity' is an award winning quilt by Australian quilter and tutor Rhonda Pearce and uses over 10,000 hexies.  After making a number of the hexies, Carol decided 10 thousand was just a few more than she wanted to create, hence the new design of a quilt for her bed.   The pattern for 'Insanity' was featured on the front cover of an old Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine, pictured below if you are interested in your own little piece of insanity


More on the quilt creations from the Jan Phillips workshop held recently.
Jackie, Denise and Val, carefully separating fabrics after one of those breath holding free form cuts.

Heather with her tablerunner, not quilted yet but in the works! - It's all that crazy stitching she is doing - only so many hours in a day!

Marlene's sweetie is at home on her 'design floor' but she did bring us a pic on her phone,
Dots and spots added, coming along nicely.

Marlene is also the first to bring along her finished Najidah toiletry bags, with a handy pocket front for added colour.

New member Karen D. was also working on Shashiko.                         
 

While Lorraine L. was sitting back, taking a break from her hand pieced stars.

 Sandy has almost completed another embroidered block.

and Val has selected just a few fabrics from Derricks donated stash to help in the creation of more charity quilts.

Karen is also working on little hexies that she will be turning into a pretty little make-up bag for herself.

Marcia was given a fat quarter pack and a commission to create 'a rug for the floor for her grandson in law to watch t.v.'

She opted for a pattern sourced from Moda Bake Shop, not unlike this pattern here. to create a very masculine quilt, just perfect to roll around and wrap yourself in for a tellie marathon.

Marcia had her quilt longarm quilted by local lass Carmen, who, whould you believe, only had the quilt for 2 days before returning it to Marcia, talk about speedy.  We will be able to share Carmen's contact details with you in the near future - (it's a holiday thing!)
Update:  just to hand, Carmen's new e-mail contact
 carmensquilting@gmail.com.
So, if you are interested in having Carmen quilt your latest lovely, shoot her off an email, she will contact you and soon you will have a snuggly lovely!

A W.I.P. of a different kind

A different take on that old quilters saying, er..that quilt saying that's been around for awhile, W.I.P.'s It's not only for work in progress but today it was a workshop in progress.

Lorraine was the mistress of controll, making sure that the bags are all of a uniform size and construction, well not so much size, Sue and her electric scissors had alread cut out dozens of them, thanks Sue.  More on the workshop with a few pointers on the bag construction at the end of the blog.

Courtney has decided to take a break from stitching with a needle and is giving her machine a run by creating a table runner, and just because she could, Lorraine was also helping Courtney out with some basic lessons, starting off with 'Thou shalt never cut crinkly fabric', yep Courtney was give an iron and told to go for it.

Stella bought her flimsey along to get some advice on what fabric to use for the binding.  Dunno what the joke was but boy those gals had the giggles up.

One of our library books, 'Black and White & Pieced all Over' was the inspiration for Stella's pattern, with the addition of corner stones in the sashing as a variation.

Fae was busily pinning her binding to yet another of her charity quilts.  Didn't want to share, well truth is, we have had some heavy rains over the last couple of days and last night was a cracker of a downpour, so of course the humidity today took us up to sauna like conditions and really... all that unfolding, holding and re-folding... she has promised us a 'look see' next week.

Some of the gals who did the Jan Phillips workshop a couple of weeks back bought their W.I.P's to date along to share, everyone seems to have a different layout design and quilt size.
Beryl was sharing her lovely when we almost got run over by Jackie...oops.

Grabbed a pic of the back of Beryl's for a peek at the seam construction, mind you, Beryl wasn't fussed on sharing, "It hasn't been pressed yet, ran out of time"!

Jackie's work to date was in two strips, so she used her verandah to help showcase her work, almost as good as another hand she reckons, others just reckoned she was doing a bit of skiting!

Val chose some lovely desert colours to go with her aboriginal design fabric, along with yet another layout.

Now as we know, Marlene doesn't do small, and this is definitely no table runner.  While stepping outside her box, Marlene went for sashed large cuts to create these blocks and using yet another layout has created this full sized quilt, along with an innovative use of two of the quilt fabrics she has created an unusual mitred border for her quilt.

We have promises of more quilts next week, looking forward to them.
AND.....
Talking of promises, there is a jolly good chance we will see Michells beautiful crazy all finished and framed next week as well.  A real treat to be looking forward to.

Now we all know how prolific Val is, so if you are wondering why she hasn't finished her quilt, perhaps this will shed some light.
Yep, another two charity quilts, assembled and quilted.
Val unearthed this beautiful needleturn block from the stash donated to us by Derrick back in 2014, she attached several borders, sandwiched, quilted and bound it for another charity quilt.

Her friend made 13 of these 'Shadow Star' blocks and then lost interest, (how often does that happen?!) she found the perfect recycle answer by passing them on to Val, who promptly assembled, sandwiched, quilted and bound them for one more charity quilt.

Of course, block no. 13 has found itself in the orphan drawer!
There is a link to the Karen Combs pattern Shadow Star here
or a variation named Star Shadows on Punch with Judy's site, here 

Irene, who hails from London, is visiting the Sunshine Coast to visit family and will be joining us for a number of weeks,  she was spotted working on this lovely fairy quilt, which coincidentally she purchased some years back here on the Sunny Coast.

Irene also shared this quilt she made for her sister using the 'Lovers Knot' block.

Inspired by Irene's claim that it is a simple block, a net search turned up a you tube tutorial by that wonderful quilter Elenor Burns from Quilt in a Day fame.
If the link fails, just open youtube and search for 'Elenor Burns', there is a squillion of her informative videos to be had.

Lorraine's instructions on assembling Najidah toiletry bags.
For uniformity of size, Sue has cut dozens of bags in the correct size for us, just take what you need from the stash.

For the cord casings you will need 2 strips of fabric, one front and one back,  the width of the unseamed bag fabric and 3" deep.
Janice demonstrates just how exact these measurements have to be. No rotary and rulers needed here!

1.  Take one casing strip and double fold the ends in by 1/4" each fold.  Stitch ends closed.
2.   Fold casing strip in half lengthwise, raw edges even.

3.   Lay the casing raw edges along the top front edge of the bag, equidistant from the side edges.
4.   Stitch casing to bag using a 1/2" seam.  Fold casing up and press seam down towards the bag body.  Topstitch a 1/4" down from casing seam, catching the seam allowance to the bag body to form a flat seam.
Repeat for the second casing on the back of the bag.

If you want to decorate your bag with a bit of tizz, an orphan block or pocket, now is the time to do it.


5.   Turn the bag fabric inside out and with top edges level, stitch both of the bag sides together, making sure not to catch the casing into the side seams.  Double stitch the top edges for strength.
6.   Box the bottom corners of you toiletry bag.
There is a corner boxing tutorial from Lazy Girl designs here
or a youtube video tutorial here
 

 There will be a working bee at the cottage to insert the cords in the near future.

Job well done, thank you.  Now sit back and feel good about being a part of this worthy enterprise.

While all this hard work was happening, Sheila, Loraine, and Pat were spotted doing a spot of sandwiching, or as one lass piped up, she was more into a spot of slacking....

Nothing wrong with takin' a break girl, nothing at all.

Geese, what's not to love

Just a tiny blog today, only one pic of a really cute quilt, but what a beauty.
And what a story.
 "Where's Me Mother'  is a Dawn Parker design, sewn by Ann Marsh of Buderim from a pattern donated to our group.

Organised by Marlene and bought along by her to share with us.  There is now a queue forming to make more of these delightful raw edge applique quilts.

Apparently there are 3 designs in this series, Chickens, Geese, and Penguins.