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!

Quilters' Circle - 26th August, 2013

Today was our last meeting in winter this year, and we could tell spring is around the corner as we didn't need any heating.

Today Glennys did some repair work on this very cute creature:

then started embroidering faces for a pair of Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls:

She also showed us the beginnings of a quilt for a baby boy. This block is not assembled yet, Glennys is still cutting out pieces. The whole quilt will consist of 9 of these square-in-a-square blocks:

We may see some more progress next time. All these fabrics are from Glennys' stash. They were purchased separately, and really go together well. Each fabric has the same pretty aqua-blue.

Marie showed us a project she has completed, but which we can't put on the blog just yet. Photos next time! She also brought along this pair of coasters she is making for some friends:

Sorry that photo is on its edge. Tilt your head to the left to see it properly!

We were all excited to see Marie's year quilt progress:

She has just completed week 27! We spent a lot of time looking at all the blocks and learning the significance of particular fabrics which caught our attention. It is hard to believe that it is more than half a year since Marie started this project.

Last time Vireya showed us a piece of African fabric she had to use for a challenge she is participating in, but we didn't photograph the fabric at the time. This is it:

As you can see, it was quite a challenging fabric. Today Vireya brought along the block she made from it:

She is looking forward to seeing what other people made of this fabric, when she attends the Seabreeze Quilters quilt-in next weekend.

Today Vireya was assembling parts to fill in an empty corner of her sunflowers wall-hanging:

It's getting there!

Our next meeting will be in two weeks, on 9th September. Hope we will see you again then!

Quilters' Circle - 12th August, 2013

A small number of quilters braved the horrible weather for today's meeting.

The main achievement for the afternoon was getting this quilt of Vireya's pin-basted:

With two people working on it, it was completely pinned in less than an hour. Vireya was very happy to see it get to this point, as it has been hanging around as just a top for several years. The quilt is a design by Bonnie Hunter called Leap Frog. The pattern doesn't seem to be on Bonnie's website, but is available as a pdf file here.

Once the basteing was done, Marie went back to appliquéing her dots:

She has only six more stems without their dots, and is happy to be so close to the end of this project. We may see the whole top all put together soon. As she was sewing, Marie told us about a recent trip she took with another quilting group. They visited the textile conservation area at the National Gallery of Victoria. Marie described some historic quilts she saw, and some patchwork garments which sounded amazing. The gallery have many textile treasures which are not on display.

Vireya brought along this cushion to show us:

You may remember seeing it as a half-made block at our last meeting. Since then it has been quilted with an all-over design. Here's a back view of the quilting:

This design is Dogwood created by Elizabeth Hartman. She has instructions on her website here.

Our next meeting will be in two weeks, on 26th August. See you again then!

Quilters' Circle - 29th July, 2013

Be prepared, we have lots of photos today!

First, here's a quilt Glennys is making for one of her grandsons:

The parts which look dark grey in the photo are actually black, as the quilt is in Essendon football club colours. Today Glennys worked some embroidery on this block:

Marie has been very busy making quilts for a children's charity. She had six completed today:

What an amazing collection!

We had a lovely surprise today when Marilyn joined us. She was in Melbourne and suddenly realised that it was the fifth Monday and we would be meeting, so she popped in to visit us. She brought this sample block to show us, which may get turned into a placemat:

We all admired the block. I think a few people want to try making one. Marilyn also showed us these very cute owls she is embroidering:

They will be combined with novelty-print squares to make a sweet baby quilt.

Vireya had lots of show-and-tell from the workshop with Jenny Bowker she did at Quilt @ The Winter School earlier this month. This marigold garland is a sample of painted fabric with raw-edge appliqué embellished with free-motion embroidery:

The interlocking plus-signs in this sample were constructed from pieced strips:

And this is a half-constructed block which will be square when it is complete:

It is constructed by chain-piecing in such a way that the whole piece is held together in a web by the chains of thread. Leigh had asked us some time ago about this technique, so Vireya brought this along to show her how it works. You can find good instructions on how to do this at Flourishing Palms here.

These three mini-quilts were sold as charity fund-raisers at the Winter School:

The top piece was made by Helen Godden who was a tutor at the school. The middle one is by textile artist Maria Cook, and the bottom one by a fellow student, Jeann Clark.

Between looking at all these goodies, we discussed the Vic Quilters Showcase which some of us attended over the weekend, as well as various TV shows, and life in general.

Our next meeting will be in two weeks, on 12th August. See you again then!

Quilters' Circle - 22nd July, 2013

You may have noticed that one meeting has gone by without a blog post. That's because the picture-taking, blog-writing person was away on the 7th July. Today she was back, and everyone else was away. That wasn't co-ordinated very well!

Vireya had lots of room to spread out. Unfortunately she had not brought the right glasses, so she couldn't sew anyway. She was about to pack up early and go home, when Leigh brought in this box of goodies which has been donated to the house:

It took quite a bit of time to go through all these bits and pieces. There are purse frames, all sorts of handbag catches, O-rings and D-rings, and hundreds of buckles, eyelets and grommets. Vireya took home a few things which she can use in bag and purse making, but the vast majority of stuff is still there. Tonight the sewing group will have their turn to find amazing treasures.

Our next meeting is only a week away, as there are five Mondays this month. See you on the 29th July.