Weekly show and tell

Sue C's recent big tidy up of her sewing room has revealed
lot of lovely random fabrics for the 1 1/2" hexies she's making
into a quilt for her granddaughter.

Marilyn O bought a SewMiriam bag pattern last week and is
 already on her second one, because she knows her friend
would like one too! Beautiful fabrics.

Robyn L's original design embroidery on linen.

If you receive one of these table runners as a gift, the giver might
have been in one of Linda's classes - they are stitching up a storm.
When asked where she found the fabrics in her sample, Linda
loves to say she 'picked them up in London', as you do.

The last of Jill's list of nine wips to be finished in 2018 - started
in April 2016, finished last week. Slightly adapted from a quilt
posted on Bits and Bobbins, with Trish Royal's permission.

Blue hexagon flowers are still landing in the
blue hexagon box, for the Quilt NSW/Arterie at
Lifehouse project. We saw some of ours online
last week, making it into the next level of
construction. These will be sent off soon.

2019 events

Dates and details for 2019 quilting events are being released as 2018 draws to a close, so our 'Events' page has been relabelled as 2019 Events, to be added to throughout the year. These major events have already been announced. There is a permanent link to this page just under the banner.

Thursday 14 - Saturday 16 February 2019
Hall 5, Exhibition Centre, ICC, Darling Harbour
Hosted by IntoCraft Event page on Facebook

Australasian Quilt Convention

11 - 14 April 2019

Melbourne

Sydney Quilt Show

and

Craft and Quilt Fair Sydney

Wednesday 19 - Sunday 23 June 2019

Darling Harbour

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Last community sewing day for 2018

 Another year of community sewing days has come to an end, and a very productive year it has been. The final count is not yet in, but more than 50 quilts have been made for our community collection. We felt we were a bit slow to get sewing on this last day, but talking and planning for current and future projects are important parts of the process, as is that first coffee.  In march next year we will have been holding ten monthly sewing days a year for ten years, an initiative from Lynette who was our Convenor at the time. We might even talk her into a photo for the anniversary ... 

Meanwhile, we did get quite a bit of sewing done - these are just the ones that we took photos of:

Dawn had finished a top started at the jelly roll sewing day,
auditioned backing fabric and pin basted it.

Yvette made serious sashing and corner stones (tiny nine patches)
to join together the second set of donated barn blocks.
The blocks are pieced from beautiful Denyse Schmidt fabrics.

Daphne has renovated a donated mystery quilt top that the
original maker did not like (the other half has already been done
by Susan), into a lap sized quilt that she and Dawn pin basted.

Elaine W was stitching together gorgeous blocks made from
her own and community stash fabrics

Miriam hand sewed labels onto finished quilts.

Jill began sewing a stack of 5" squares from the
community stash ...

... into disappearing nine patch pieces ...

... that will become double disappearing nine patch blocks,
using the tutorial on A Few Scraps blog here.

AQC 2019: a textile art challenge

Here is another opportunity to enter a challenge for the Australasian Quilt Convention in April 2019 ...

'We invite you to depict yourself, in textiles ...' see how you can enter, how flexible the criteria are, and the timeline, on the AQC website, here.

Weekly show and tell

Yvette made this quilt several years ago, for her husband ...

... and he is happy that the fabrics are not too 'girly'. It was quilted
by someone else, long before Yvette had her long-arm machine.

Daphne foundation pieced this blocks from her impressive
stash of bright scraps and a little black and white. The setting
triangles are a fine purple and white stripe, also from the stash.

It's never too early to start stocking the craft stall for our
2020 Quilt Show - Dawn is making scissors keepers that
can also be used to keep a few pins at hand.

Elaine B has used triangles, squares and pentagons 
to construct a patchwork ball

Elaine brought her machine appliquéd and embroidered
fantasy quilt top in for some expert embroidery advice.
It’s coming along very nicely!

'Pickled Sharks'  is a variation on Chris Jurd's 'Pickled Fish' 
quilt, made by Jill at her son's request. The palette is drawn 
from NRL team colours.

Quilted by Yvette (Keepsake Quilts), the design is 
called 'Sails', but they could be fins ... the backing 
fabric is a Carolyn Friedlander wideback.

Jelly roll progress

Progress following our jelly roll sewing day in October is barrelling along ...

Yvette's quilt, made with a jelly roll plus background
fabric is already finsished ...

 ... and beautifully quilted on her long arm machine.

Sue C is considering borders for her quilt top that was
very nearly finished at the sewing day.

Susan opted for a hexagon design made with triangles
cut from sets of three fabric strips, and was pleased to
cut into her blue stash.

Pat the same design as Susan, using a very different
palette, and a floral border to tie it all together.

Louise enjoyed making her quilt at the sewing day so much,
that when she went on a quilting retreat a few weeks later she
packed a jelly roll of green fabrics, cream background fabric
and a pattern and came home with this one!

Show and tell

Janet is building a village - the pattern is 'Winter Village'
by Laundry Basket Quilts

Elaine W loves William Morris fabric and designs - she has 
quite a collection - her beautifully executed machine applique 
is Michele Hill's design 'Floral Sampler', with substituted
 motifs around the edges of the centre.

And at almost the same time, Elaine has made a second quilt top
using older William Morris style fabrics from her stash in a
geometric design - she really does love them.

Lyn recently found a collection of 'one fabric' blocks in a drawer
and settled on a layout - one top ready to wing its way to a friend
in the UK who will quilt it and donate it to a foster child there.
International collaborative community quilting for the win.

Blue hexagons and fussy cutting - irresistable! Robin made these
ones into a tiny zippered pouch. Below is the reverse side.

Slow stitching saw this quilt finished over 11 years. Jill kept
the corner offcuts from the large flying geese used in a quilt
she made in 2007, sewed them together with the left over
geese and fabric scraps from the original quilt, finished
with hand quilting and a bargain-buy Kaffe Fasset backing.

The featured floral fabric caught Susan's eye in a shop, and when
she returned a second time it was still there beckoning her. She
hesitated about the white fabric, but it has turned out to be an
excellent foil for the brighter colours in a quilt that says 'spring'.

Blankets of Love donation - thank you

Chris is a generous quilter and friend of one of our members who has donated many quilts through our community program. This week she gave us ten beautifully made, soft little quilts to pass onto Blankets of Love, through Quilt NSW.  We didn't know she was making them. Such incredible generosity - they will be so valued.

The fabrics are beautiful, the backing is the softest flannelette.

2018 International Quilt Festival in Houston - award winners

The very large International Quilt Festival is on in Houston, Texas, this week. The full list of award winners in the 'World of Beauty' competition, with photos, has been posted here, among them, several Australian quilters, including

• Jenny Bowker
• Rachael Daisy
• Beth Miller
• Mandy Murray
• Neroli Henderson
• Jenny Bowker
• Susan de Vanny

Congratulations to the makers of all the spectacular award winning quilts, and to all of those whose quilts ere juried in to this prestigious exhibition and competition.

Sit back and enjoy!

PINK quilts - photos and videos

Photos of the PINK quilts on exhibition last month, and videos of the awards presentation have been posted on the Oatley Cottage Facebook page.

More than $7000 has already been raised by the auction of a few of the quilts at the exhibition. It was a great quilt community fund-raiser to be involved in.

Community quilts

 We do generally work to size guidelines, but community quilts come in all sizes and shapes, and we find a use for them all ...

Lynette finished sewing down the binding on this bright and cheerful
quilt for a child, generously made and donated by her friend Chris. 

Left over strips from the quilt below (made a couple of years
ago) made another modern graphic quilt - Lynette can nearly
always find a use for scraps.

Sue H's very last community quilt before packing her sewing 
room for a big move - yellows from chrome to palest lemon 
and soft grey green strings, made quilt-as-you-go.

Dawn found the iris print and complimentary fabrics very
appealing when they appeared as a donation (organised by
Sue H). Yvette has quilted the large quilt Dawn made from them.

Daphne and Sue H volunteered to remake
together some donated large pieced hexagons
for our 2017 end-of-year challenge - this
large table runner is the result, and it will
be on sale at our next craft stall (at our
2020 Quilt Show). The remaining fabric
is being made into something else
- no waste here!

Helen made a pretty blue pinwheel quilt for our community
collection, and finished it with a border of cute cats.