Quilters' Circle - 4th January, 2010

The neighbourhood house is closed for holidays at the moment, so an extraordinary meeting of the Quilters' Circle was held today at Joy's home.

Joy served a very elegant afternoon tea, which we enjoyed while looking out over her lovely back garden.


Those pretty cups were among Joy's 21st-birthday presents, and are still making the tea taste better a few years later!

Joy showed us a few of her projects which haven't been to the neighbourhood house. One of them is the centre block for her blue Baltimore Album quilt:

We've seen a few of the smaller blocks before, for example here and here. Won't it be fantastic when all complete?

Some years back, Joy's boys asked her to make a quilt they saw a picture of. Sadly, once it was complete, Joy and the boys were disappointed with the look of it. The boys had the idea to divide up the quilt and turn it into a set of placemats. They did the cutting and unpicking, and Joy added the binding. Thus was a disappointment turned into something well-loved:


Each placemat is for a particular person; the cute pigs (on the left) were for their father, and the cats in the foreground were for their mother.

Marie was quilting the cushion top she was working on late last year. Here's another quilt she completed in 2009, using a pattern known as Hidden, or Disappearing 9-Patch:


It's a very effective design which is quick to make, and is a good way to use novelty fabrics like these.

Vireya stitched down some pentagons which are part of her latest portable project:


This is inspired by a quilt in a recent issue of Down Under Quilts.

In between sewing, afternoon-tea-ing, watching birds visit flowers and the birdbath, and chatting, we looked at some books and magazines:

It was a wonderful afternoon. Thank you Joy, for your hospitality!

We will probably get together once more before the house re-opens for 2010. Come back in a couple of weeks to see what we get up to.