Quilters' Circle - 26th April, 2010

Today is the public holiday for ANZAC Day (although the actual day was yesterday), so the members of the Quilters' Circle met at Marie's home.

Joy brought along this doll's quilt which she made in 1990:


It has faded a little over time, because it lives in her sun-room. It is placed on an antique cot which once belonged to the tennis champion Sir Norman Brookes, and in which Joy slept as a baby.

When Joy picked up the doll's quilt to bring it along, she discovered lying underneath it this quilt top depicting irises which she made in the early 1990s. Joy described it in rather disparaging terms, using words like "ugly" and "horrendous", but we didn't agree. What do you think?

I think it has a certain naive charm. The quilt was made in a class at a patchwork shop. We all remarked on the change in fabric availability in the last 20 years; notice how nearly all these fabrics are solid colours. Originally there were various embellishments on the top, such as an embroidered spider-web and sparkly beetles, but Joy removed them.

Since our last meeting Marie made a doll's quilt, and here it is in action:

Notice that the doll even has his own tiny teddy!

Vireya made cherries today for the last block of her Red Delicious quilt. Here are some at each stage of the production process (except being sewn on to the quilt):


The talented designer of Red Delicious, Esther Aliu, has just launched a new free Block-of-the-Month project, called "In the Pink". You can see it and get the details on her blog here. Vireya isn't planning to do this one, though, because she has quite a few unfinished projects she wants to complete. But it is lovely, and very tempting...

Marilyn today finished binding her quilt. Hooray! She also brought along her completed triangle block from the "Working with Triangles" class:

Congratulations on getting all those flying geese done! The finished block is lovely - the light-green colour doesn't show up well in this photograph, but in real life the colours are beautiful.

Thanks Marie for opening your home to us. We all had a lovely afternoon.

The next Quilters' Circle meeting at the Neighbourhood House will be on the 10th May, at 1pm.

Australasian Quilt Convention

The Australasian Quilt Convention is on next weekend. You can follow the link for details. There should be lots of great quilts to admire, and lots of shopping too. Is anyone planning to go? What about coordinating a visit?

Quilters' Circle - 12th April, 2010

Today is the second Monday in April, so the Quilters' Circle met at the Neighbourhood House again.

First we had to get past the foot-path works which had some of the road blocked:


Marie brought along her latest bag to show us:


That shark is scary! While we were admiring the bag, Marie was hand-quilting her cushion covers.

Joy had some show-and-tell too:

These rolls of fabric strips were in a package she found on her doorstep one day. The package had come from Express Publications, who publish a couple of patchwork and quilting magazines, but Joy doesn't know why they sent her these. I'm sure she will find a use for them, though.

Here's what Joy worked on today:

We have seen part of this panel before. In this section the small pieces have been fused to the background using Vliesofix, ready for Joy to stitch them down.

Vireya worked on this bow, which is part of the final Red Delicious block.

When the bow is complete she has 34 (or was it 35?) cherries to appliqué. That should keep her going for a while.

If you read quilting blogs, there was an article in the Guardian over the weekend which you might enjoy. The article was written to complement Quilts 1700-2010, an exhibition currently at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. We all wish we could go and see that! However, some of us did get to visit the Essendon Quilters exhibition over the weekend, which was inspirational enough and gave us lots to talk about today.

The fourth Monday of April is a public holiday (ANZAC Day), so our next meeting at the house will be on the 10th May. Hope to see you then!