Plenty

Whenever St Mark's Quilters come together for a workshop you can always count on plenty of laughter, tasty treats and beautiful quilts for RPA Hospital's Newborn Intensive Care Unit and the KU Marcia Burgess Autism Specific Early Learning and Care Centre at Liverpool.

Yesterday Margaret spent her time stitching down the binding on her latest hexie quilt. She's been carefully piecing it together by the fire throughout the winter months in Sydney, and now it's almost finished and ready for its long journey across the world to Holland where it will wrap her ninth great grand baby (due in just a couple of weeks) with her love.

Clever Susie's been flying high making this fun kindy quilt from a panel. Super fast, and so easy to quilt around those planes and clouds.

This sweet little Blanket of Love, however, would have required rather more planning and concentration. Susie used the Li'l Twister tool to achieve this beautiful result.

We love to see our quilters stretch themselves and try out a new technique or skill, so we were super excited when Susie attached her machine's quilting foot, donned her rubber quilting gloves and spent a couple of hours becoming more and more comfortable free motion quilting a practice piece. Woohoo!

I can't wait to see how she quilts this latest little Blanket of Love. 

The "S Team" (Sophie and Susan) have been busy collaborating on this cheerful kindy quilt.

They added this quirky row of rabbits to enlarge the strippy flower garden quilt they started a couple of months ago.

And they added a checkered border to this cute panel. Love the blue sneakers too!

Perdita, one of our pastel loving quilters, added these Blankets of Love, one in pink and green with a kiss of lemon, and the other in crisp blue and white.

Then she wasted no time in planning and cutting her next one, in her signature colour of pink of course.

Gail also leans towards pastels, and here's her latest finish.

One of the things about getting together is that we can always get help with layouts and colour choices. Sometimes it's hard to make a decision alone, and it helps to stand back and get another opinion, something both Gail and Michelle found helpful yesterday as they were laying out their fabrics.

This one is Gail's...

...and this is Michelle's. These are going to become snowball blocks, and Michelle's chosen her colours to co-ordinate with that cute bird feature fabric.

Gillian was as quiet as the colours in her soft pink quilt as she sat patiently hand appliquéing all these scrappy hearts. She always approaches her quilting imaginatively so I can't wait to see how she quilts this one.

For this one Barb was inspired by a huge Hunter's Star quilt she saw recently on a friend's bed.

You'll have to wait till next time to see this quilt Barb spent her time binding yesterday. Love the cute Winnie the Pooh backing!

If I had to pick a signature colour for Di C it would be yellow, in all its variations from old gold through to lemon. When we were given some pieces of mellow country-themed fabrics a couple of months ago Di knew that yellow was exactly what was needed to make these fabrics shine. 

A little person is going to just love looking at those sheep, pigs, horses and ducks. What a warm, golden glow this lovely quilt has! 

Here's another of Di C's yellow quilts, a sunny Blanket of Love.

And keeping right on with the sunny theme, here's her latest quilt in progress, featuring yellow ducklings. 

There's something special and warming about yellow, and these days I find I can rarely stop myself including yellow somewhere in the design.

Here's another stunner, this time from Di B.  She's used the Quick Curve Ruler to cut these fabrics, and her colour combination is spot-on!

Martians on the front and back, and a rainbow binding make this kindy quilt a sure winner.

Di B also brought along two smaller masterpieces, this from Jaybird Quilts' Candy Dish pattern, using the rich orange colour way fabrics from Emma Jean Jansen's Terra Australis range...

...and this Emma Jean Jansen Flower Power pattern using fabrics from Emma Jean's The Linen Cupboard range. Just look at that quilting. Mmmmm... feathers!

After such an amazing effort it wasn't surprising that Di spent a relatively relaxed day binding her latest Blanket of Love.

The next, and final, three are my contributions. I finished this one a little while ago, but loved it so much that I've only now felt ready to add it to our St Mark's Quilters' collection. Do you ever feel like that about a quilt? 

I used my Quick Curve Ruler to cut the pieces, and the Quick Curve Sidekick Ruler to guide my free motion quilting on my domestic machine.

I started this Economy Block quilt last year, and somehow it languished without a binding until recently. I like the bright colours and fussy cut framed squares and I hope they appeal to a little person.

These are the beginnings of my next Blanket of Love. More to come next month.

So, a dozen women spent the day cutting up fabric and sewing it back together again.

Are we nuts?

Not when I see photos like these, sent to us by the staff of "The Marcia", showing some of our darling little quilt recipients and their families. 

The smiles on those faces make it all worthwhile. 

Besides, the world's a safer place for everyone when we quilt! ;-)

St Mark's Quilters - July Jollies

Outside was very bleak and grey.

But inside was bright with quilts, large and small, as our colourful ladies met for our July workshop on Saturday. 

So many of our friends who had to miss the June get together were back in the fold again, notably Di B who was savagely attacked by a dog and hospitalized with deep cuts to her right hand and arm just before our last stitching day.

Miraculously, just a month later, there were smiles all round as Di was back at St Mark's Quilters, managing to do some machine sewing and keeping not just her quilts, but all of us in stitches! 

She has even started work on another Blanket of Love using some of her beloved Linen Cupboard fabrics by Emma Jean Jansen. Isn't this gorgeous?

 

With Di C back from her travels, Michelle recovered from her surgery, and Cath finding time to visit from afar there was much to be thankful for.

Look at our latest finishes, a double dose this month because the wheels fell off for me in June, life was crazy busy, and I missed posting. The names of the quilters are beneath their quilts.

Perdita

Perdita

Gail

Gillian

Di B

Barb

Gillian

Barb

Margaret

Cath

Cath

Perdita

Barb

After finishing her cute little Winnie the Pooh quilt Margaret couldn't wait to start another, this one Dalmatian puppy themed! 

 

And Di C showed that a little imagination and colour sense can transform some country-themed scrappy strips in quite muted tones into a bright and fun kindy quilt.

Goodness, it's half way through July already and I still haven't caught up with sharing all that happened in June!

But first I think I need a little lie down..... 

Ellie's Quilt

My friends, Vanessa and Darren, recently welcomed a sweet little baby daughter, Ellie, into the world, and I'm so excited, and happy that I can finally reveal the quilt I made for her. 

Ellie's early arrival meant the baby shower had to be cancelled at the last minute, and this, along with her needing to stay a little longer in hospital, has meant that I've had to keep this finished quilt under wraps until now - and you can imagine how difficult that was for me!

I designed and made her a cot-sized quilt using some of my prettiest, girly fabrics featuring raw edge appliqué bunting.

And since Barney the dachshund is already part of Ellie's family I included him too. Quilting that green 'grass' on my domestic sewing machine was great fun as I love the texture that machine quilting creates.

The swirls of quilting on the rest of the quilt are meant to suggest breezy eddies among the bunting flags.

Come over here where it's shadier.

Ah, that's better. Sunshine is wonderful for showing up quilting lines, but a tad too bright to look at for long.

For my photo shoot in the local park I took Ellie's quilt to a shady glade of trees.

A great advantage of using the 'no tails' binding method is that I can use multiple fabrics in my binding because it's easy to stop and start with precision wherever I want, changing the binding fabric to match the quilt top fabric, or the changing colours in the bunting. Neat, eh?

Finally, I created a label in Word and printed it onto a Printed Treasures fabric sheet. Lately I've been attaching a fabric frame to my labels too, before slip stitching them onto the quilt back.

Sometimes I have a little trouble pushing my needle through the Printed Treasures sheets, so machining the fabric frame on first gives me a softer edge to hand stitch through. 

I also love the look!

It's a wrap - finally!

What? No pink?

Yellow and grey are not colours you've come to expect in quilts made by me. 

Pink, yes. Lots of pink. But hardly ever grey and yellow. In fact my journey of making this precious gift was very much the road less travelled. I'm excited to finally reveal it here, though it has been a rather poorly-kept secret for the last few weeks. 

This quilt is for a young friend of mine expecting her first baby next month, but of course Eeyore and I couldn't resist sharing the odd sneaky peek on the 'inter web' now and then.

A thoroughly modern young mummy, my friend and her husband have decorated their house in a sophisticated palette of black and yellow, so I went with a toned down colour scheme of yellow, grey and white. All of these fabrics, bar the daisies, came from Spotlight.

For those who've asked me, most of the grey and yellow fabrics belonged to this range.

That cute Winnie the Pooh print (also used as the backing) sadly doesn't have a maker on its selvage.

Once I had sewn the strips, alternated with fresh white, into three columns, it was time for the real fun to begin, the machine quilting! 

The obvious choice would have been something geometric, possibly parallel lines, but these days I like to surprise (even myself sometimes!). I quilted giant cross-hatched bubbles, and gave the parallel lines a supporting role as fillers.

I quilted in the daytime...

... I quilted in the night, when the artificial light showed up the texture of the quilting.

And, as the sun set slowly in the west, on the last afternoon before the baby shower, I photographed my finished quilt in my very favourite location, at Di B's home beside our magnificent Sydney Harbour. 

So blessed to have such a generous friend who will let me drape my quilts all over her sea wall, garden seat and lawn.

The late autumn sunshine and shadows seem an entirely appropriate setting for this little quilt.

I backed the quilt with the Winnie the Pooh fabric, and added a label with my prayer for this little bub. 

It looks a tad sparse since I had to leave off two important details - the date of his birth (still to come), and his name, which I didn't know at the time. But I do now.

It's Atticus! And I love it.

{I want it known that the random seagull in the pic below was not photoshopped in, nor did I even see him at the time. It was entirely accidental, and it makes me smile, both as a quilter and a photographer :-)}