Workshop day with Anne Sommerlad

Seventeen quilters booked into our first workshop for the year, with teacher and designer Anne Sommerlad, on Saturday - five of Anne's designs were on the go between them!

Hishigata requires strip pieced diamonds, and a contrasting setting fabric.  these are early progress shots ...

Hanover Blues  involves some tiny pieces, so there is some further work to be done on these, with several borders to go ... 

Catherine Wheel was an opportunity to master foundation piecing. Some were completely new to it, others quite experienced ...

Indigo Op-Art was popular, using Japanese indigos as suggested in the pattern, or branching out with bright batiks ...

Asian Affair was an opportunity for some fussy cutting of a pretty teacup print ...

These quilts will possibly not be finished in time for this year's show, but we hope to see them finished well before the next one! We will have a small display of workshop quilts from the past two years in the April 2014 show.

Thank you Anne, for keeping all those balls in the air, and to Georgie for organising the day. 

Community quilts sewing, February 2014

While our attention is firmly on putting our exhibition together, we enjoyed our first community sewing day for the year last Thursday. And while there was lots to see, photos are in very short supply.

We had a lovely time organising a very welcome stack of more than 40 colour slab challenge blocks made by Fairholme members, into three quilt top layouts, with Georgie sewing the pink/purple/orange top completely together on the day. The other two are all trimmed and ready for stitching together by Helen and Susan. These quilts are made in the style of Cheryl Arkison's Sunday Morning Quilts design, Missing U - see how she used it for a flood recovery project last year, here. One of them will be on display at the show in April, and we might be able to get the other two finished in time to donate to the Springwood-Winmalee bushfire appeal. The blocks were fun to put together, and we think you'll like the finished quilts. We have two blocks left over that are the beginning of the next quilt. It could become a low-key on-going project, as some people have said how much they like making the blocks ... more later. Photos will be taken before they go to their new owners.

We also caught up with sewing labels onto the quilts finished by a number of people over the summer 'break', and had a glimpse of some that are nearing completion.

Elizabeth made this bright, appealing top incorporating fabric
donated to the Quilters Guild of NSW, and passed onto us to
make quilts for children which the Guild will then distribute.
Lynette (who is one of our very best 'finishers') quilted and
bound it. All it needed this week was a label.

Detail of some of the fun fabrics - note the very useful
backing fabric, on the left from the bargain bin at our
local large quilt shop.

Thank you to all for your work before and during last Thursday ... and to Helen, who on the very first day she has been able to attend a community sewing day, dealt with the 'Fridge Incident'.

You can preview the Community Quilts poster for our show here.

Avalon Quilters 2014 Show

Fairholme Quit Show 2014 flyer

Postponement

Patchwork on Pittwater has had to postpone their event with Kathy Doughty and Wendy Williams planned for 26th February - it will be re-scheduled as soon as possible.

Here they are - Fairholme raffle quilts 2014, tickets on sale now

Fairholme Quilters have made two quilts to be raffled at our 2014 Quilt Show, on 4th - 5th April. Tickets can be purchased from now and at the Show, with the draw taking place at the close on Saturday 5th April.

Proceeds from the raffle will be donated to the Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Association Action for Mental Health, which supports people with mental health problems and their carers in our local area.

The Kensington Quilt - designed by Val Nadin. Pieced 
by Val Nadin, and Fairholme Quilters members. 
Custom machine quilted by JoAnn Phillips (Quiltwise).
227 cm x 270 cm (91" x 108")

The centre panel and border fabrics are reproductions of John Hewson's designs, from the John Hewson Winterthur Museum collection, produced by Andover Fabrics in 2011. John Hewson was a renowned calico printer living and working in Kensington, Philadelphia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds this bedcover made by his wife, Zibiah, using John Hewson’s woodblock printed fabric.

Centre medallion detail of The Kensington Quilt. 

Marmalade - designed by Elizabeth Hartman 

(Oh Fransson!), machine pieced by 

Fairholme Quilters Tuesday Night Group. 

Machine quilted by Christy Wang (Quilting Treasures), 
who generously donated the wool batting.
180 cm x 230 cm (72" x 92")

Elizabeth designed and made Marmalade as a raffle quilt for the first national QuiltCon, held in Austin, Texas in February 2013, by the Modern Quilt Guild, of which she was a founding member. The pattern was included as a gift in the delegates registration, and was released  for sale immediately following this highly successful event.

The back of Marmalade incorporates a pieced panel,
echoing the pieced shapes on the front.

Tickets are $2 each.
Fairholme members each have raffle tickets to sell now. They will, of course, be on sale during the show or you can order tickets by mailing this form with your cheque or money order to

Fairholme Quilters Inc
PO Box 942
Pennant Hills NSW 2120

by Monday 31st March 2014.

Please note that ticket orders can only be accepted from within Australia.

Other quilts from the Fairholme Quilters 2014 Quilt Show are posted here.

This week at Fairholme ...

Jill's cute little cars, buses, trucks quilt, with equally
bright and cheerful graphic prints

Louise C has decided on all her centre surrounds, and have them
labelled ready for sewing.  She is then joining them with
a very elegant tiny dot print.  Only a few to go.

Peggy has worked on and off on this appliqued quilt for two years
for her grandson.  She says she is slow - but it is very detailed and 
whimsical. You wouldn't want to let it go too soon.

Just two of the quirky figures from Peggy's quilt -
and check out her brilliant binding stripe.

Next week is our first monthly community quilting day ... we're looking forward to getting off to a good start for the year, with a very healthy stack of challenge blocks donated by members around Christmas time.

A machine binding technique

Jill, from Modern Quilt Relish (where most of the quilts have food-related names), shares a way to apply the binding to a large quilt requiring only one pass through the machine.

Would you give it a try?

Patchwork on Pittwater event and sale

Patchwork on Pittwater,  at Mona Vale, where we visited during our annual bus trip last October, is marking Kaffe Fassett's current antipodean visit with a fabric sale - they have 250 individual designs for sale at $20 per m.

Wendy Williams and Kathy Doughty, each with a new book and a collection of quilts, will be visiting Patchwork on Pittwater on Wednesday 26th February for a Show 'n' Tell at 11am. Morning Tea will be provided - please call to let them know you are coming: ph. 9999 6159

First 'show and tell' for 2014 (3)

 

This sweet little blanket-of-love began as a challenge quilt 
made by a former member, and became surplus to her needs .... 
so Lynette has upcycled it with appliqued hexagons, 
and a pretty fairy-frost binding.

Louise has been making and appliquing these gorgeous pentagons 
for some time, designing each border as she goes. 
She is happy that it is now finished ... and she will spend some time 
thinking about the quilting. 

Robin W has a particular liking for Kaffe Fasset and other fabrics
 in saturated colours, such as these. She made this vibrant tumbling
blocks design using both triangles and diamonds.
 Robin has kindly donated the top to our community
collection, and Lynette has quilted and bound it

Lynette has worked on a number of donated fabric panels over the break - here are the latest two, with bright borders and binding, and quilted with a diagonal grid that yields diamonds here and there. They too are now in our community quilts collection:

Not quite the run-of-the-mill carousel horses ... great binding.

The cute dragons are unlikely to scare the children they will go to live with.

Springwood Winmalee Bushfire Quilt Appeal - a chance to see the quilts, online and 'in the cloth'

Tracey Greenaway is documenting the progress of the Springwood Winmalee Quilt Appeal online, and has scheduled an open day for a quilt display in Faulconbridge on Friday 21st March, after which the quilts will be distributed to people affected by the fires in October 2013.  More than 600 quilts have been received already!

Fairholme Quilters has delivered six quilts to the appeal, and we hope to have more completed through our community project before the distribution date. Some members have also made individual donations.

• Details for the Open Day are here.
• Follow the appeal on Facebook here.

First 'show and tell' for 2014 (2): progress on our Margaret Sampson George hexagons ...

Elsa has used different motifs from a single toile fabric for her centres,
and has made the first ring of hexagons for each of the seven centre
blocks, that she is now hand-sewing in place.

Susan has joined her seven block centre, and is adding the first border
of hexagons - there are more planned.

Louise enlarged her centre to nine hexagon rings
- larger quilt, different shaped centre ...

... close up of Louise's corner hexies
- several more borders are planned, including many more hexies.

First 'show and tell' for 2014 (1)

It was nearly a full house on Monday morning, and again on tuesday evening for the first official gatherings of Fairholme Quilters for 2014.  The coming year will be busy, with our two-yearly Quilt Show scheduled for April, so some of our work will not appear here before the exhibition. But there is still plenty to see. People have been working away during the break, and it was lovely to see some of the results.

JoAnn has finished her quilt top from our Power Stripping workshop in 2012.

Helen has made a set of six placements, using a single fabric cut cleverly
to look different from each other.
(And they are a perfect rectangle - the apparent distortion is down to the very amateur photographer.)

Miriam made a bright and beautiful purse ...

 ... and a bright and beautiful sofa quilt, using some furnishing 
fabrics for extra durability.

Pam is hand-quilting this very large beauty - it might not be ready
in time for this year's exhibition.  The fabrics are mostly 
African Shweshwe cottons - lovely prints that we don't often see.

Pat used a jelly roll for these pretty blocks, and then took herself off
for a lesson on a long arm quilting machine before she hired it to 
do the quilting herself. 

Sue Ross at Kim Bradley Creations, Saturday 8th February

From Kim Bradley Creations' newsletter:

We will have the very talented Sue Ross in store on Saturday 8th February from 11am - 1pm. Sue will be doing a show and tell of her quilts, her design process and how you can learn to make these beautiful quilts using your own style!

Any customer coming to hear our show and tell on Saturday from 11am will receive 15% off their fabric purchases made on the day.

Kim Bradley Creations | Unit 7/9 Packard Ave, Castle Hill 2154  Ph: 02 9659 2912

New website for Sarah Fielke

Sarah Fielke has launched her website makeover:  www.sarahfielke.com

She includes pages about her quilts, her books, her fabric collections, her teaching schedule, her Craftsy classes, and of course, a link to her blog. Sarah is a popular and busy quilter, so there is lots to see and do.