New quilt shop opened in Mona Vale

It's always good to know where the new shops are.  Here's a new one on the Northern Beaches.

Patchwork on Pittwater at Mona Vale was officially opened with a cocktail party last week:

Suite 28, 4th Floor 1 Mona Vale Road, Mona Vale 2103

Tue - Sat: 10:00 am - 2:00 pm

Quilting and general sewing classes
Fabrics including Moda, Kaffe Fassett, Saffron Craig, Amy Butler Michael Miller
Distributor for Aurifil Threads

Email: robyn@quilts.net.au  
Phone 02 9999 6159

www.patchworkonpittwater.com.au

Also on Facebook - just search for 'patchwork on Pittwater'

Fabric sales next week (month)

Did you notice this on Quiltsmith's blog?

As ... Melinda is in Houston for about 4 weeks, with her blessing, we have put our 'Value Fabrics' on sale. For those of you who don't know, they are all the bolts of fabric in the cardboard boxes in our second room. The bolts are all unpinned and marked with a star sticker. Normally $13.50 per metre, starting today they are $8.00 per metre !!!!   For two weeks only, ending on Saturday 5th November. Minimum cut 0.5m (same as usual) and the sale is IN-STORE ONLY.

Come and pay us a visit and grab a bargain while you're at it. Go on ...you know you want to.

And of course Tuesday is 1st November, so not only is it Melbourne Cup Day, but Craft Depot usually has a sale for all of November ...

Laments from a Quilter's Husband

You might (or might not) want to pass on this tongue-in-cheek (isn't it?) perspective ... 

There Will Be Pins: How to be a Quilter's Husband
Patrick Cook
So your wife is a quilter. That doesn't seem so bad, does it? It's a nice quiet hobby, conjuring up images of our sturdy pioneer mothers, keeping their families warm and creating beauty out of old shirts and printed feedbags. You think of plump grannies in rocking chairs, piecing a Log Cabin block by firelight, cat asleep at her feet. An idyllic picture, right?

... read the whole article from Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting

A Disappearing 4 Patch demonstration

Speaking of the Disappearing 4 patch ... Lynette produced this top from a selection of donated fabric in the Community Quilts stash in quick time, and is now in the process of quilting it. She started with 6 1/2 inch squares, that readily produced a lap sized quilt. The background is actually a dark green, and the prints are range of greens, bluish greens and blues.  The overall effect is of mellow, quiet comfort.

Potato chip quilt (try to stop at one ...)

Other quilt designs are also sometimes called 'Potato Chip' (for the same reason), but this one seems to be the most common around the internet. Break out a jelly roll, or those 'spare' strips that have accumulated, choose a contrast fabric, and you'll have this quilt top ready in an afternoon.

Kay Sorenson of Quilts + Color shows a number of examples, and provides a tutorial here, under the title Sunrise-Sunset Quilt Tutorial.

Kay Sorenson's Sunrise-Sunset quilt top from her tutorial

(used with her kind permission - thanks Kay)

Disappearing 4 patch

Yes, you read that right, Disappearing 4 patch - different from a Disappearing 9 patch, but just as quick and interesting, and it gives a different block to work with.  Also called 4-to-9 patch.  Sally, at SewWonderful provides an excellent tutorial, and Joe Tulips has some nice blocks on display in this post. 

Sample of the finished block from Sally's online tutorial

And the size of both the starting squares and the distance from the middle seams for the cross cuts can be varied for different effects, and to finish with different sized blocks, just like the Disappearing 9 patch. You'll find lots of examples if you just Google "disappearing 4 patch".

Eastwood Patchwork Quilters

Annual Show and Tell

7.30 pm, Wednesday 26th October 2011

Baptist Church Hall
First Ave, Eastwood

Admission: $2 donation to the Cancer Council

Enquiries:  9874 6749

Members' show and tell

Louise designed and made a bright and beautiful wall hanging for a departing colleague - the border was cut with a wavy ruler and needle turn appliqued to the background.

Some of the flowers have embroidered detail

 

Jo made roll-up blackboard quilts for two colleagues' little girls - she even provided big chalk sticks in the pockets on the left, and a felt eraser on the right.  The blackboad section is fabric.

Dina's rich chocelate brown and cream is all pieced from half-square triangles - the interlinks are all in the placement and tonal value.

The border fabric gives the appearance of suede (it isn't!), and the quilting adds subtle texture.

For a complete change, Dina put her yo-yo maker to good use for this appealing doll for her little granddaughter who has been in hospital.

More from Tuesday nighters

Marijke's niece is expecting boy-girl twins in a couple of weeks - their quilts are ready, made to Robyn's pineapple log cabin pattern.  Machine quilted by Marijke.

And in her spare time, Marijke whipped up this elegant bag (If you look very closely you will see that the centres of some of the flowers are beaded).

Jill bought the green-with-black dots fabric about four years ago ... bit of a slow burner, machine quilted by Christy Wang, Quilting Treasures at Pymble.

Dina pieced the top of this very large quilt (the large compass like centres of the blocks are a print), took it the US on her recent holiday, where it was custom quilted (detail below). It is for her own bed.

After looking at all those quilts, we helped Dina decide on a quilting strategy for her next top, which has to be ready for her grandson's birthday very soon ...

Sydney Modern Quilt Guild

A new blog has recently been established as the home base of the new Sydney chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild.

It is the very early stages of its development, but if you are interested in the modern quilting movement, this could be a good way of getting more involved.  A face-to-face meeting is planned for later this month, date and venue to be confirmed.

Here is an example of a Modern Quilt Guild challenge (from Ann Arbor, Michigan), using solid coloured fabrics only.

Two quilt shows next weekend

Template Free, the Quilters Guild of NSW blog has information about two quilt shows next weekend 7th - 9th October, one in Newcastle, and one in the Sutherland Shire. 

Click here for details of the shows.

Free clip art from: http://dlstewart.com/clipart.htm

 

Tuesday night group show and tell, from September

Pam is just finishing the binding on a quilt with lots of 'boy appeal' for her grandson.  She used fabrics from her stash that were all sorts of sizes and convinced them to play nicely together with a rich blue sashing. lots of fabrics for little boys to like, including a fabulous backing that didn't get itself in the photos!

Dina's recent trip to the US to visit her quilting sister Cindy involved lots of quilting activity.  She actually took the fabrics for this quilt with her! She had it quilted there, with a dragonfly design in places to echo the fabrics.