Events: November 2018

Embroiderers Guild of NSW

'Thread Stitch Cloth'

- an international juried exhibition focusing on the use of machine stitch. 

Selected works will be exhibited at the new 76 Queen St Galleries, Concord West 

Open now until 6 November 2018

 A Festival of Contemporary Machine Stitch event.
Note: visitors are advised to check with Gallery 76 about opening, as the gallery has sustained storm damage and is closed for several days during October.
Or see the Embroiderers' Guild Facebook page for updates.

2018 Seed Stitch Contemporary Textile Awards and Exhibition

Open now until Wednesday 14 November 2018

Australian Design Centre

101-115 William Street (corner of William and Palmer Streets)

Darlinghurst NSW 2010

Novacastrian Quilters 2018 Quilt Exhibition

3 - 4 November 2018

PCYC, Cnr Young and Melbourne Rds

Broadmeadow 2292

Enquiries: 0418 250 211 or 0412 844 348

Gerringong Children's Medical Research Institute

Enquiries and entry forms: 0429 951 452

Braidwood Quilt Event 

23 - 25 November 2018

Braidwood, NSW

Entries are now open for both:

Airing of the Quilts and the Indoor Exhibition

A Festival of Braidwood event

Bungendore Quilters

Community quilts

We were too busy (or perhaps forgetful, or talking too much) to take photos at our October community sewing day, but we have been making good progress on our community quilt collection, with lots of team work ...

These many hundreds of little squares were sewn into 100 blocks, 
acquired as part of a community stash donation. Dawn has 
re-engineered sixty of them into a single bed quilt for one of the 
aged care facilities we make quilts for. 
Lisa is making a smaller quilt with the remaining forty blocks.

Sue H thought she had divested her stash of many green fabrics
to a friend, but found herself with a lot of greens still. She
thought her bento box quilt top might have been 'too green',
but it looks like just the right amount of green to us.
Sue has made many gorgeous community quilts for us, and we
will miss her when she moves a long way away from Sydney
next month! 

Lynette made this bright, pretty quilt from a different set of
donated blocks, adding borders from the stash, and quilting it
in a diagonal grid, and added a jaunty diagonal striped binding.

Lynette quilted this one too, that was made by Margaret K,
after someone sent her several meters of motorbike print fabric.
Orange highlights in the sashing and binding set it off nicely.

These blocks were also donated as a loose collection. Marg
K joined them together with the blue sashing and border,
Jill quilted it and added the binding. We can imagine a child
loving the 'I Spy' block centres.

Show and tell

When you're four and your Grandma makes a beautifully crisp
navy, white and red hexagon quilt for your cousin, and your
response is 'Does it come in pink ballerinas?' ...
If Helen is your Grandma, it does!

Lisa is relatively new to quilting, but she didm't hesitate
to take a zip-top bag class with Miriam when the opportunity
arose - she's well on the way to a very nice finish.

Lyn is renowned in her family for her beautiful quilts
- these wonderfully coloured pieced dinosaurs are for a young
relative. Batiks make great dinosaur skin!

Marilyn O is not new to quilting, but she is fairly new to
our group, so we are enjoying looking through her masterpieces.
This large (85" square) quilt is Cherry Pie Designs 'Charlotte'.
Marilyn machine quilted it on her domestic machine
- it is brilliantly done.

Miriam has finished her 2018 stitched Christmas decoration,
made in a program with The Crewel Gobelin in Killara.

Susan is appliqueing large flowers over a iced background
- she says there are many more to go!

PINK quilts for McGrath Foundation

Susan, Pat and Jill enjoyed a festive morning in Oatley yesterday, visiting the PINK quilt exhibition organised by Oatley Cottage, as part of the Oatley Lions Festival, and in support of the McGrath Foundation. We entered two quilts, to be displayed and then donated to the McGrath Foundation for fundraising for breast care nurses.

64 quilts were displayed on the walls and pews of the Oatley Uniting Church, lending the space a definite pink glow - so many wonderful variations on pink! All of the quilts were donated for fundraising by the Foundation.

Congratulations to the award winners, to Oatley Cottage on a beautiful exhibition and a great fundraiser, and to Oatley Lions for a lovely festival day. Thanks for allowing us to take part.

Our two quilts hanging in the PINK exhibition

Tracey Bevan spoke about the work of the McGrath Foundation,
 the awards were presented and a few of the quilts were auctioned,
with proceeds going to the McGrath Foundation.
And yes, we were invited to sit on the quilts during the proceedings.

PINK exhibition: Oatley, 20 October

63 PINK quilts will be on exhibition in Oatley (in Sydney's southern suburbs) on Saturday 20 October, including the two that we delivered to Oatley Cottage on Friday:

The awards presentation will be at 10am. Parking advice from Oatley Cottage:

Oatley Uniting Church is on the corner of Frederick and Letitia Streets. Oatley Festival involves road blockages and parking is a premium. We suggest you enter Oatley via Rosa St and park in the streets on the eastern side. There is no parking in the church car park as there is a Lego display in the Church hall with stalls in the car park.

The venue is a short walk from Oatley railway station.

Show and tell

In addition to our sewcial day sewing results, we had a wonderfully varied week of show and tell ...

Marg K is a prolific maker of quilts for our community collection,
mostly designed to appeal to children. The Australian fauna print
was donated, the  quilt top made by Marg and quilted by Janet.

Daphne wasn't able to come to our sewcial day on
Saturday, so she brought in 'jelly roll' quilt top that she
had made earlier with strips from her stash

Marilyn also found a jelly roll quilt made earlier, at home
- more complex than most of our  Saturday efforts ...

Marilyn used an actual jelly roll, and
added some additional white strips.

Elaine G found the stripe fabric in the community stash and 
has made two clever quilts with it - this one is the leftovers, 
made up in a pattern she recently used for a large quilt. 
She has extracted great value from that one fabric.

We don't often show our undies, but Hilary's soft  rabbit
Lunar does have gorgeous French knickers, made from a
lace trimmed handkerchief sourced from an op-shop!

And she looks so demure in her Per Pan collar ...
Hilary has also knitted her a fetching off-the-shoulder 
sweater in an ombre yarn.

We have loved watching Nerida make and hand quilt 'Sweet
Sunday' ...

... incorporating vintage embroideries into the patchwork

The complete set of these barn blocks was donated anonymously
to our community quilt collection - Marg K put them together,
and Yvette has quilted it beautifully. A second set of blocks
made to the same design, using similar fabrics was also included
and is currently being out together - a very generous and
unexpected gift.

We know Yvette is multi talented - she has added sock-knitting
to her repertoire this winter. And yes, she does have another
pair the same.

AQC 2019: tutors announced

2019 Australasian Quilt Convention (AQC) tutors have been announced by Intocraft:

Announcing the 2019 AQC tutors... it's a stellar lineup - put April 11 to 14, 2019 in your diary now for four days of quilty pleasures.

Classes will be announced shortly.

Tutors are Susan Carlson, Joe Cunningham, Julie Haddrick, Heather Hopkins, Katherine Jones, Emiko Toda Loeb, Deborah Louie, Rachael Porter, Rachaeldaisy, Jane Tenorio-Coscarelli, Gillian Travis and Jessica Wheelahan.

Jelly roll sewcial day

Nerida organised a sewcial day last weekend, with the only 'rules' being that we were to start with a Jelly Roll, or a set of strips from our own or the community stash, and make something, either for ourselves or for community quilts. It was a lovely, relaxed day resulting in a variety of quilt tops, at different stages of finishing, great company and food, and quite a bit of chatting.

We didn;t race each other or the clock, but as the wrappers 
came off jelly rolls and we started to sew our strips together, 
some of us made fabric puddles, that eventually turned
 into cool quilt tops ...

Helen cut strips from her stash, including a fabulous car print ...

Louise used a half jelly roll of batik fabrics in cool, cool blues ...

Elaine B opened her jelly roll and sewed the strips
together as they came ...

... as did Elaine W.

Nerida decided to do a little renovation homework to
spread the colours out a bit ...

Sharron's 'Beach Road' jelly roll designed by
Jen Kingwell might have been made for this construction.

Marilyn's strips alternated to give a clear graphic design ...

Jill cut strips from solid fat quarters, but didn't measure their entire length, so she added a contrasting border ...

Some people were more ordered, and are making fancier, block based quilts ...

Hilary is using French General fabric to make pieced hexagons ...

... like these beauties made by Pat

By Monday's meeting Susan had several blue and white
hexagon blocks made.

Roslyn came armed with a pattern from  a book and
several prepped pieced strips ...

... to make these pretty blocks that require careful
arrangement of the pieces.

Yvette brought an elegant jelly roll from which she
pieced some stunning star blocks

We're looking forward to seeing all the finished variations!