Quilters' Circle - 30th September, 2013

The renovations are still happening. Parts of the House have new paint and carpet, and other parts are still to be done. So we met in the childcare centre again today, and admired this box of colourful spools for threading:

They looked like a bit of fun to play with!

Marie worked on her placemats. She is appliquéing the hexagons we saw last time to a very cheerful yellow background fabric:

The one at the bottom is nearly done.

Vireya joined two parts of her sunflower piece. Here's a shot from early in the process:

The pieces down the middle which still have paper in them are the edges of the two parts. Here's how they looked by the end of our session:

All joined together and the papers removed.

Vireya also brought along the completed trousers that she cut out in our meeting last week:

The weather was a bit cool for light-weight linen, so no action shot!

Our next meeting will be in two weeks, on 14th October. Our normal room should be ready by then, so we are looking forward to the transformation.

Quilters' Circle - 23rd September, 2013

Today's meeting was in the childcare centre, as painters and other handymen are busy working in our normal room, fixing up some of its defects. We are looking forward to seeing it when they finish!

Blogger is unhelpfully rotating 60% of today's photos, and Google will only let me edit them if I join Google+ which I'm not going to do. So I'm sorry but you will have to rotate your head to see all of today's photos correctly!

Marie is making some placemats out of hexagons. Here's the first one, which I carefully photographed the right way up:

However to see it right way up, you will need to rest your head on your right shoulder. Then you will see all the food-themed fabrics Marie has used. This piece will be appliquéd to a background fabric to be turned into a placemat.

Marie had laid out all the pieces for her second one, and brought them along in her block carrier:

If you want to see them the correct way up, just do that same neck-stretching exercise; rest your head on your right shoulder.

By the end of today's meeting, Marie had quite of few of the rows pieced together:

Nice of Blogger to give your neck a rest at this point by showing the photo the correct way up.

Vireya brought along something different today. First she cut out a pair of trousers:

Now the opposite side of your neck will be exercised, as you lay your head on your left shoulder to see this as it should be seen.

Once the trousers were cut out, Vireya moved on to a dress:

And Blogger lets you rest your neck again by displaying the photo the correct way up. Phew!

Hope your neck survived all that stretching. Our next meeting will be in one week, as there are five Mondays this month. Our old room will still be under renovation, so we will be in the childcare centre again. See you on the 30th!

Quilters' Circle - 9th September, 2013

Welcome to our first meeting for spring!

Marie has moved on to the next stage of the piece she has been appliquéing dots to:

As you can see, hexagons are involved. I did photograph the complete piece, but might wait to show it until all the hexagons are in place. So for now you can just see the close-up view of the part Marie was working on today.

Since our last meeting, Glennys has assembled the quilt she was cutting out:

Doesn't it look great? The pieced back features fabrics with more circus animals:

Perhaps clicking on the front and back photos to enlarge them will show what cute fabrics they are. All the fabrics came from Glennys' stash!

Today Glennys added some features to her Raggedy-Ann and Andy faces:

Vireya has finished quilting the quilt she and Marie basted two meetings ago. She has decided to finish it with a facing rather than a binding:

You can see the quilting patterns she chose; a dogwood-petal design through the body of the quilt and the first border, and a swirly-water design in the outer, frog border.
Here's the back view of the first corner of the facing, which she turned during our meeting:

That means she is about a quarter of the way round.

During the meeting we tried to avoid discussing the election too much, we compared various ways of binding quilts, and exchanged ideas about tools that may or may not help with free-motion work. We also looked at several possible ways of combining four-patch units with half-square triangle units.

The top two are designs by Bonnie Hunter, (available here) and the bottom one by Linda Hahn (available here). All are composed of blocks made of two 4-patch and two half-square units, but by orienting the parts in different directions, and changing the colour placement, each has a different look. The design at the very top can also vary in how you arrange the completed blocks, adding to the possibilities. It is amazing the variety possible from such basic shapes!

Our next meeting will be in two weeks, on 23rd September. We will have a slight change of venue, as our usual room is going to be painted and re-carpeted during the school holidays. We will instead meet in the childcare rooms at the western end of the building. Hope we see you then!