Quilters' Circle - 28th February, 2011

The last day of summer - and it was cool and rainy outside, making it a good day to be inside quilting.

Unfortunately Joy couldn't be here today. Doubly unfortunate for her, because we had a surprise afternoon tea to celebrate her birthday!

We hope you have a lovely birthday next week, Joy, and that we will see you back again soon! I'd like to say that we will save some of that fruitcake for you, but I don't think it will last, sorry...

Today a bit of appliqué was going on. Carol worked on the tulips in the border of this beautiful quilt:

Vireya did some work on the centre of another project:

This is the first block of Esther Aliu's new Block-of-the-Month project, Hearts Desire, although Vireya is not planning to make another whole appliqué quilt.

Jenny is appliquéing thirteen greyhounds for a quilt she is making. Here are four of them:

Aren't they great?

Glennys cut the pieces for this Jacob's Ladder block, which will be a cushion cover for a football fan.

No prizes for guessing the team!

Marie worked on her hexagon project, and delivered even more blocks for the Oz Comfort Quilts appeal:

They are so bright and happy!

There are quite a pile of blocks in the office now. Thanks everyone for your contributions! We are planning to send them off on Thursday this week, so if you have some finished it would be great if you could get them to the office by Thursday lunchtime, please.

So that's it for another Quilters' Circle meeting. They go by so quickly. Our next meeting won't be for a month, because the second Monday in March is Labour Day, and the house will be closed. So we will see you again on 28th March.

Quilters' Circle - 14th February, 2011

Welcome to the meeting!

I'll be your guide today. Jenny brought me along to show everyone, and I enjoyed keeping an eye on the proceedings.

Joy couldn't make it along today, and we all hope she'll be feeling better soon! It was great to see Marilyn. We won't see her at every meeting, as she has sold her house and is moving to Bendigo. We hope she finds some nice quilters up there to meet with regularly, but we also hope she can come back and visit us because we will miss her. We also heard that Dorothy is in hospital, so we hope she is on the mend soon.

It seems today was a day for sewing down binding. Marilyn, Marie, Carol and Vireya were all doing that.

Here's Marie's triangles QAYG project that she was assembling last time. The pieced binding is the perfect finishing touch!

Vireya finished the binding on her quilt for the Oz Comfort Quilts drive, so here it is all done:

And here's the back view:

Carol was sewing the binding on this striking black and white quilt which we saw when she was making blocks back in August:

Can you guess which football team the recipient barracks for? Did someone say Collingwood?

Glennys has decided how to assemble the mystery squares she showed us last time, and today she brought her machine along to sew some of them together.

Later she did some appliqué, which is what Jenny was working on, too.

Mary joined us with her knitting, as the rest of the knitters couldn't attend today.  Mary has made quilts, and she owned up to having an unfinished one tucked away somewhere, so we decided that she really is a quilter.

Since our last meeting, people have been busy sewing blocks to donate for the flood victims. Here's some Carol made:

And some from Marie:

Marie also made more blocks like those she showed us at the last meeting, and today she delivered a complete set of 35 (the number required for a single-bed quilt).

As well as all that sewing, there was lots of conversation about topics which were over the head of a small needle-felted dog. Just what are planning regulations? And electricity companies? And then there were discussions about books. Dogs can't read, so I went to sleep through that.

And although I am fuzzy, I'm not really blurry. I think the camera operator should wear glasses.

The next Quilters' Circle meeting will be on 28th February, at 1:00pm.  Hope you can make it along!

Oz Comfort Quilts Working Bee

On Tuesday night a few people gathered to get stuck into making some blocks using all the strips, backings and waddings which were prepared at the previous working bee.

A couple of wonderful women who had many years of experience with industrial sewing machines, gave their domestic machines quite a work-out. They set a cracking pace the rest of us couldn't keep up with!

The iron was kept busy:

The rotary cutter was flying:

The pile of offcuts grew and grew:

The larger pieces went back onto the pile to be sewn into other blocks.

Meanwhile more sets of backings, waddings and strips were prepared for people who couldn't attend the working bee to make up at home. And if you want more fabric, just let us know - there's a basket of strips you can use in the office at the house, and more can be added if it starts to run low!

And here are the results on the night!

Actually that's not all of them, but you can see that it was a fantastic result.

When we add in all the blocks people are making at home, it will be quite a pile to send to Jan Mac.  A couple of people have asked about the deadline for the blocks.  We will send whatever is ready off later this month - but that doesn't mean that work has to stop.  We can send more later - Jan will be busy sewing them together for quite a while