Quilters' Circle - 25th July, 2011

It's the 4th Monday of July, which means the Quilters' Circle met again. We missed a few people. Carol, we especially hope all is well with you!

Richard and Ching Ching didn't forget the date this time. They both brought along their latest projects, and took the chance to spread out and fuse some larger sections. Richard machined some pieces into place on his latest project. The stitching will be covered later with thin bias strips, to give a stained-glass effect.

His machine is so quiet that his slow-and-steady free-motion work was a soothing background noise.

Ching Ching cut out some intricate pieces for her latest project:

Then she contemplated using this lovely batik from Malaysia, which she has had for a while but hasn't wanted to cut in to:

Will she cut it up? Will she put it away again? We'll have to wait and see...

Marie finished hand-quilting her autumn leaves piece, then started pulling out all the basting threads:

And here's how it looked when they were all gone:

Hooray! Now for the binding...

We had a bit of a discussion about thimbles at one stage, so here are some heirlooms and some newer thimbles owned and/or used by some of us:

Joy worked on this lovely appliqué panel:

We welcomed Julie, who came along for the first time. But what was she doing?

Sshh! Don't tell the knitters!

Marie found this wonderful book at the Darebin library.  It was the companion volume to a special exhibition of quilts at the Victoria and Albert Museum last year.

The book is full of information and superb pictures. A quick flick through didn't do it justice.

Next weekend is the Melbourne Craft and Quilt Fair, so a few of us will be going along to be inspired and look for supplies. But the next time we will be back at the Neighbourhood House will be the 8th August. Happy sewing until then!

Quilters' Circle - 11th July, 2011

It was cold outside, and only a small number of quilters braved the conditions to meet today. Inside, the air near the ceiling was hot but lower down it was a little cool. We discovered that the ceiling fans have a switch to change direction based on the season. Once we set this one to "winter" we had warm air circulating around the room:

In fact it got so warm that people started complaining.

Joy and Glennys worked on their appliqué projects, and Marie quilted, and in between we looked through these books and brochures:

Joy showed us this shopping bag her family bought for her in Thailand because they thought it looked like patchwork fabric:

Here's how it looks unzipped:

Very handy!

Glennys showed us this top she has pieced from the cute train fabrics she showed us back in May:

Joy's son saw a picture of a quilt in one of her magazines, then went home a drew up templates for her to make the design. Joy used his templates, and her hand-dyed fabrics, to make this top which looks just like the picture in the magazine:

Ching Ching popped in to say hello. She and Richard were at the house for something else, because they had forgotten that today was quilting day. So a little reminder for everyone, the meetings are on the 2nd, 4th, and 5th Monday of each month. That means that our next meeting is on 25th July, at 1:00pm.  See you then!