Quilters' Circle - 7th December, 2009

Today was our last meeting at the neighbourhood house for the year. There are lots of pictures to show you!

Joy got into the mood by wearing her Christmas apron:


Joy once won a "best dressed" competition wearing this apron, and she was definitely best dressed today. Unfortunately the flash has not picked up Santa's face - he isn't really faceless. Joy brought along this Scottish-themed cloth to brighten our table:


All the embroidery, and the crocheted trim, were done by Joy. She is multi-talented! As you can see, we had a range of yummy goodies for afternoon tea.

For show-and-tell, Marilyn brought the first quilt she made. She started it about 6 or 7 years ago, after being inspired by our own Textile Tragic, who was a fellow student in a sewing class at the neighbourhood house.


The colours in the quilt all come from the Japanese floral print in the four-patches. This is a great way to create a colour scheme - choose a print you love, then look at the colour dots printed in the selvedge. Choose other fabrics that match those dots, and you are guaranteed that they will all work together.

The top languished for a few years, because Marilyn found it difficult to quilt such a large project. Her sister in Bendigo came to the rescue, and machine-quilted it for her, in time for Marilyn to give the quilt to her mother for her 80th birthday. Since then Marilyn has used the quilt-as-you-go method, which she finds much easier as it doesn't involve manoeuvring the whole quilt through the machine.

Vireya brought her Christmas-wreath wall-hanging:


It is made using an uneven log-cabin block. The pattern was originally from a Burda Moden magazine in the 1990s some time. Vireya saw a photograph of this wall-hanging on the internet, and worked out the design from the photo. Only after completing the quilt did she discover that she actually had the magazine with the pattern in it.

Joy showed us a Christmas angel she has appliquéd:


It looks like the flash has bleached out the angel's face as well, which is a shame because he/she has a very delicate face.

Here's Joy's cute little pumpkin bag:


And here is the amazing "New York Beauty" quilt top Joy has made from all the clothes her daughter left at home:

Sorry about the strange angle, but it is too large to get a good shot of the whole thing. Here it is being held by three people and a table. Notice the amazing range of fabrics, including fine Indian cottons, lamés, velvets, and satins. Ricrac and other braids are applied as embellishments. All the fabric came from Joy's daughter's clothing, except for one which was from the dress Joy wore to her daughter's engagement party, so there are lots of memories stitched into this quilt.

We didn't get much sewing done today - but we did do some textile craft. Marilyn brought along this origami star ornament she made at another patchwork group:


The pattern is from here , but instead of using paper, two layers of fabric are fused together. Marie had prepared enough fabric triangles for us and the office staff to all have a go. Here's an example that isn't quite sitting properly, but will look better once it has been pressed:

Thanks, Marie! We all had fun with that activity. Once you have done it once, it is much easier, so I think I'll be making a few more.

Here's a gift that the teacher of that other patchwork class made for each of the students. It is a cute little holder for needles and a spool of thread.

Closed:

Open:
Isn't that great?

A few cards and gifts were exchanged today:






We had a wonderful afternoon, celebrating a great year of the Quilters' Circle. Although the house will be closed for about five weeks over the Christmas/New Year period, it is likely we will get together in homes during that time, so stay tuned because this may not be the last blog post until February.

To all our regular readers, we wish you a very happy Christmas and a fantastic 2010!