Quilt Delights

There's nothing quite so delicious as spending a cold rainy day inside, toasty and warm, sewing quilts with good friends - and yesterday morning was a gourmet day for St Mark's Quilters.

We missed our other regulars, Liz (on a super-exciting holiday), Moo, Gail, Sophie, Susan, Helen and Cath, but those who braved the rain showers brought along finished Blankets of Love sweet enough to warm a grieving parent's heart.

Margaret has been making the most of a Peter Rabbit panel, combining fussy cuts with coordinating plain fabrics to make them go further. Those tiny tossed rainbow hearts around the border work a treat too.

Margaret's our queen of quilt-as-you-go. Tiny strips from bigger projects are never wasted in her hands, and this month she stitched them into another rhapsody in blue..

I can usually pick a quilt Gillian's made by the fancy serpentine stitched quilting she likes to use, as well as her favourite gelato pastels. Love this!

This next one, also by Gillian, gave me an 'ear worm' for the rest of the day. Remember Ernie singing 'Rubber Duckie' in the bath on Sesame Street? There's your ear worm (You're welcome!).

Barb had us in cuteness overload with these donkeys in gingham PJs smiling in their sleep. She's added a bunch of Peter Rabbits around the border as well, because too much cuteness is just never enough where baby quilts are concerned.

Di B has been spreading her wings and trying foundation paper piecing. Stunning work! The amazing circular geese at the centre of this block are from a pattern by Jeli Quilts (Kelly Liddle) available on Craftsy as a downloadable PDF.

Remember the workshop last month, when Di B showed us how to use foundation paper piecing to stitch a mini braid quilt? Well, four of us have finished, and here are our results.

This first one is by Di B in her trademark blue, white and yellow.

Di C preferred to tweak the basic pattern and use her mini braids to frame a flower fairy panel.

In a little surprise, her Blanket of Love is reversible, with a different flower fairy panel in the middle.

Rather than staggering her braid pieces, Barb chose to assemble hers in more of a chevron pattern, crisp and pretty. How about those panda bears!

Finally, here's my version, in rainbow ombré braids. Di B and I are in a little group on Instagram currently trying to sharpen our free motion quilting skills by doing 10 minutes' practice a day and posting a photo of our work, warts and all :-( So I decided to use this quilt as a practice piece for quilting feathers.

Of course there were plenty of other works-in-progress but I'll share these next month when, hopefully, they will be all finished. You have some treats in store!

Quilters!

There's no doubt about it, we quilters have a knack of finding each other, wherever in the world we might be.

I hadn't been at CARACAL more than half an hour on my first day before Trish called in to have her dog vaccinated. She had heard on the very efficient grapevine that I was a quilter, and asked me to her Friday morning quilting group.

What joy!

So I've spent the last two Friday mornings stitching, chatting, and swapping tips with Trish, her daughter Bronwen, and another friend Rentia on a cool tiled deck overlooking Trish's beautiful tropical garden.

Rentia started on this cushion cover, made from furnishing off cuts. It's going to look perfect on her couch.

Bronwen finished hand quilting and slip stitching the joining strips on this quilt-as-you-go baby quilt that she and Trish have been making together.

Trish patiently drew up a full size pattern for a block from a historical quilt she saw in a quilting magazine.

Then there was the "show and tell", including Bronwen's first quilt. 

An intricate puzzle quilt by Trish.

This purple beauty, also by Trish. Can you imagine piecing all those flowers?

And a warm, African toned Wedding Quilt Trish made for Bronwen, where every block has a special significance in their lives.

Just look at the rich colours in this colour wash quilt Trish is currently working on, made from thousands of batik scraps (some as small as an inch!) given to her by her friend Jenny from Kalahari Quilts. Trish prefers the quilt-as-you-go method for making her quilts and I'd love to see this one finished and bound.

I've already planned a visit to Kalahari Quilts when I'm in Gaborone next weekend. So what a bonus it was to find a shop selling traditional African Shweshwe cottons here in Kasane. Look at those colours!

And in case you're wondering, I've finally managed to complete a whole flower for Princess Plenty while I'm here!

Hands up if you love quilting!

It’s a bit of a no-brainer for St Mark’s Quilters who turned up for our monthly workshop laden, as usual, with colourful finished quilts as well as exciting works-in-progress.

Perdita brought along these two gorgeous Blankets of Love to add to our collection for sick bubs in RPA Newborn Care, or for the grieving parents of those who bub passes away during or soon after birth.

They show that a quilt doesn’t have to be complex to be beautiful. Half square triangles in rainbow colours (above) are just … happy! And the strippy quilt-as-you-go squares in her other quilt (below) created from scraps within a single colour family, have instant appeal.

Gillian made the most of a great find – dinosaur fabric! – for the quilts she made for little ones at the KU Marcia Burgess kindy for autistic children.

So many colours in the dinosaurs meant she could create two quite different  quilts. I like the way she’s picked up the reds, limes, oranges and blues for the quilt above, and then created a completely different look for the quilt below by choosing to emphasize the aqua and lime.

Just by using large strips from a Maisie Mouse panel, each with a pieced square at the end, and then reversing and staggering the strips, Barb has made a kindy quilt that a little person will treasure.

Even easier was this train panel that Barb’s finished off with overall stippling. For the border she sewed strips of blue, red and gold together then cross-cut to create the pieced border. It really zips up the quilt, doesn’t it.

Cath’s lucky enough to have a longarm quilting machine at home, so she used it to quilt this kindy quilt with a pattern resembling the wind blowing, just perfect for the sailing boats in the feature squares.

Margaret finished off the binding on this Blanket of Love, made from a pastel bunny panel, that someone had abandoned and left in the box. But that’s OK, we encourage tag-team quiltmaking here at St Mark’s Quilters.

Gail had a deep sea theme going on in this one.

Helen carried the seaside theme with her today too. Look at her sparkly earrings, necklaces and rings.

Helen doesn’t own a sewing machine so she makes her quilts by hand. Today she started a sweet Blanket of Love where she’s hand appliqueeing, in a freeform fashion,  some hexagon flowers that she’s made, onto soft white waffle weave fabric.

Amanda showed us her finished kindy quilt top that she was working on last time. The next step will be sandwiching and quilting it, once our order of batting arrives. That pink outer border looks delicious – a real gelato quilt!

You might also recognise this slow-burner that Sue’s been working on for some time now, a hand English paper pieced Baby’s Blocks Blanket of Love in pale blue and the softest buttery yellow. It’s been a real labour of love and today Sue finally sandwiched it ready for quilting.

So much creativity and fun!

…and a special visitor who I’ll tell you about next time

Di

Samplers that Sing

Every year I go to the Sydney Quilt Show I’m excited to see more and more quilts made by my friends. This year my talented quilting buddies, Di B and Sue Murtagh, entered sampler quilts that were the result of a happy, and often hilarious, collaboration over two years.

Di’s Singing the Blues (above) and Sue’s Learning Curve No 1 (below) are in different colourways and differ slightly in their selection of blocks, but these two friends spent many hours together comparing notes, techniques and fabric as each created her uniquely beautiful quilt.

Both Sue and Di machine quilted their quilts on a home machine using the quilt-as-you-go technique.

Several months ago Di let me take more detailed photos of her quilt, but I put off posting them until Singing the Blues had made her debut.

It wasn’t easy to keep it under wraps

 

I reckon a quilter’s entitled to be just a little excited at having her first quilt hung in an exhibition, especially when it’s turned out so well.

 Di

To Tasmania with love

The St Mark’s Quilters came together for our June workshop today under leaden skies and chilly air, thinking of our friends in even colder Dunalley (Tasmania). This town (population little more than 300) lost its school, police station and bakery, as well as  dozens of homes, in a devastating bushfire on 4th January this year.

Two weeks ago, with the assistance of Toll who gave their services for nothing, Di B and I were able to send them a box of 16 bright and cosy quilts made by our group. Here’s how our local newspaper reported our group’s gift.

 

Inside our church hall today we kept warm doing what we love best, monkeying around with fabric and making quilts.

Quilting team Susan and Sophie have been very busy since we last met, and arrived with three sweet little Blankets of Love for RPA Hospital’s Newborn Intensive Care Unit.

 

 

Margaret must have visions of hexagons dancing in front of her eyes after this lot! A pink and a blue Blanket of Love.

Inspired by Di B’s demonstration of the simple Shoo Fly block last month Margaret made all these from primary coloured fabrics in her scrap bins. How effective is that! This quilt, and those that follow, is going to an autistic preschooler at the KU Marcia Burgess Autism Specific and Early Learning Centre (otherwise known as “The Marcia” – for obvious reasons!).

Here’s another scrap quilt (below) from Margaret, using the quilt-as-you-go technique.

Barb’s enjoying having more time to make quilts in her retirement. She arrived with these beauties.

 

 

 

 There’s just too much for one blog post, so please pop on over to the next one.

Di