Tuesday's photos

Judy's sister's quilt - great job.

Marigold's pretty squares

Belinda's pretty squares



Belinda's bunting

Belinda's Kaffe Fassett workshop quilt set up ready to sew

Belinda's broken dishes

Maggie's marvellous squares and oblongs - top done

Spectacular Stars



1. Drawn shape including seam allowances on right side of fabric.
First frame strip placed against drawn line, sewn and flipped.
Repeat for second strip.
 

2, Start adding strips to either side, sewing, flipping and pressing.

Once the star fabric square is completely covered, trim and combine sets of four
to form a spectacular star.

My first project was making up the rest of the U3A spectacular stars originating from Judi and Marion and a very successful technique.

Quilt Retreat

The Usual Suspects have been looking forward to this for months and here we are at last. We met up for lunch en route and on arrival set up our rooms and workspace. I brought my ladybird quilt to sleep under. I am working on the U3A strippy stars sewing them so that the U3A group can practise the later stages of quiltmaking.

Lunching en route

My room

Our work "room".

Guest Speaker at Quay Quilters

Margaret my U3A friend and co conspirator came to show her lovely work at Quay Quilters. She attracted a warm response and I just include a couple of pictures here.

Margaret's wedding ring quilt which employs a decorative lacing technique between sections.

Oast Day

Oast raffle quilt

Two raffle quilts

Detail of machine embroidery
 

Paula Doyle was the speaker at Oast Quilters today and her quilts traced the "herstory" of quilting. This one was her quilt made to perameters drawn by her quilting group each month.
There were three raffle quilts on display, houses for the Oast Showcase, the lovely blue one with machine embroidery donated to the Stitches and Stems exhibition by my U3A friend, Margaret. I spent part of the time manning the Quay Quilters' table selling tickets for our tulip quilt. It was much admired.

Lunch date

The 1st May has been circled for quite some time as the day of the pre-retreat lunch. Having boned and stuffed two chickens probably for the last time I have to include a photograph. Lunch was followed by a massive Show & Tell.

A page from Margaret's City & Guilds embroidery design work book.

And an amazing paper wreath made by Margaret

Belinda's quilt made with Sweetwater fabrics



Detail of Maggie's quilt

Another trip

This is the second Trip Around the World which will be used to demonstrate sandwiching techniques.
And I'm all packed up ready to lead a strips and strings session.

Lesley's top finished by me - didn't have any more rust squares for border.

detail

All packed up

Still busy

Bonnie Quilters yesterday and Trish has finished her applique border. I've finished mine too but hadn't taken it. The next round is Churn Dashes, 36 of them plus four corner Ohio Stars. My Churn Dashes are all cut out and we started to sew them. We have to have got that border on for next time which is a long way off because of holidays etc.

Trish's quilt top so far

At home I've been moving along a  couple of Trip Around the World quilts started for charity by U3A students. This one will remain like this with one mitre done as a class teaching sample for our finishing quilts session next month.

Trip Around the World top with mitres

Usual Suspects get together

Great day today - we laughed a lot and admired each others work though I didn't take pictures of everything. It's a time for finishing up as the Oast Quilters' Showcase is looming. Anyway Judi showed us some free pieced pieces, a patriotic quilt for a US veterans' hospice and her sister's  first quilt, a fantastic technically accomplished piece for a beginner. Belinda's lovely Quilt Show BOM has been magnificently longarm quilted by Maggie K., a tour de force.

Judi's still in the making.

Judi's for a veteran.

Joy's super first quilt.

Belinda's Batik Stars

Detail

Crab & Winkle Sewing Day

Maggie's African quilt quilted on her longarm

Half of Marion's stack'n'whackery blocks

The other half of Marion's stack'n'whackery blocks

Pam's hexagon blocks coming together

Yesterday morning on TV

This morning I surveyed a scene of chaos in my sewing room but out of this chaos order is materialising in sets of compatible strips for various sections of the U3A workshop day coming up. The stars with strips featured mainly blue strips with orange stars and the string pieced squares have a mainly autumn theme with a bright yellow diagonal strip. I have a feeling all this will provide me  with hours of pretty mindless sewing for a long time.

What a mess!

Setting all in order.

Last night it was Quay Quilters and a member who does professional photography work brought in her partner to take a good picture of the group tulip raffle quilt. I took a less good one too. Show and Tell brought forth a double sided quilt-as-you-go from Vanessa. How did she do that?? Another quilt of hers displayed phenomenal machine quilting, white thread on navy, free motion on a domestic machine with nary a wiggle. It's a BIG quilt too and not QAYG. How did she do that? Valerie brought a needle  worked cushion which matched her clothes and Margaret had made the sewing tidy from Trish's demonstration earlier.

Tiptoe through the tulips

Needlepoint cushion

Check out this quilting.

Margaret's sewing tidy

Reversible QAYG

And here's the other side.

And I demonstrated Judy Johnson's way of layering and cutting fabric to create stacks of identical squares. Group members are combining these to make a quilt for charity, our task for the first meeting of every term.

Fishy

Hard at work