Christmas in July!

There were lots of projects on show at this week's meeting of twenty members, and Jill managed to make us feel cooler by thinking of December with her finished Christmas Tree quilt.

And Ann has caught the out-of-season bug too, and is busy making a table runner for her Christmas table using up lots of scraps of seasonal-themed fabrics.

Christine is making great progress with her three grandchildren's quilts, for which the deadline is looming very quickly!  Christine is enjoying machine quilting these quilts with her new Bernina sewing machine, with it's larger throat space and special quilting attachment enabling Christine's free motion stitches to be very even.

This smart indigo and shades of blue quilt is for Christine's grandson

and this pretty apricot and pink quilt above, is for one of her granddaughters.  I hope Christine will bring the other one in for us to see before she hands them over next month.

After many, many hours of lovingly working on this surprise quilt for her granddaughter to take with her to university soon, Carole was hiding her disappointment at learning that her visiting granddaughter doesn't like the colours of the heavily machine-quilted lap quilt!  But I'm sure Carole will find a new home for it very quickly.

Pam brought in a quilt top she worked on some time ago, but didn't like the layout at the time so set it aside while working on other projects.  After showing it to group members and listening to favourable comments, she has decided that she will add an accent strip of white before adding a narrow strippy border using up the left over fabrics from the main quilt.

Pam spent this week's session working on an idea for an interwoven celtic-knotwork applique motif which she would like to use in a new project.  After tracing off the design onto fusible paper-backed webbing, Pam worked the design in two contrasting fabrics and fused them to a cream background, before machine appliqueing them down. 

 Pam was pleased with the effect so is ready to start her next project.  Never one to be content working on just one project at a time, Pam showed us a folded patchwork block she is working on, as part of a project she is taking part in alongside Christine, Cath, and Jan.  

Pam's folded star

Cath's folded star

Jan, who spent most of her time last week helping the other girls make their stars, hadn't quite caught up, so spent some of this week's session folding her star, shown roughly laid out below.  

This folded-patchwork technique seems to have caught quite a few member's eyes and several more girls decided they'd like to  take part in the project after the summer break.  The intention is to make several different blocks using various patterns from books Jan has, then put them all together into a project such as a wall hanging at the end.  Members can chose which designs they work on and what their final project will be.  It will be interesting to see all the different variations and colours at the end of the project, so watch this space!

I have to apologize to Louise for not taking very flattering photos of her crochet blanket.  Hopefully she will bring it back next week so I can do better!!  Approximately three hundred squares went into the blanket, and it was Louise's project during the winter months, keeping her warm as she stitched it all together

Cath helping Louise (right) show us her crochet blanket

Merlynne brought in a black-work sampler to show us.  She tells us  tells us that the names and date are missing from the heart, as the couple it was to be a present for, are no longer getting married, so she didn't finish the piece off.  Oh dear!

Ann brought along a cardigan she has finished for herself.... well almost finished.  What can't be seen from this photo is that one of the buttons has a broken shank, which is a slight problem as a long day trip will be needed if Ann can't find a similar button locally.  Ann bought the buttons in a shop on a day trip to Gibraltar a couple of weeks ago!

It was good to see Sandy and Maureen  back after a family wedding in Italy and  very interesting listening to their account of the wedding of Sandy's son to his Italian bride.  It sounds as though a really good time was had by all.

Also knitting this week, was Louise who is making a baby shawl with an intricate patterned border

Eloise is putting the binding on her Mystery Quilt project, and will bring it in to show us completed next week.

And Vanessa was thrilled to be able to use her new sewing machine after Jan spent a couple of hours showing her the basics of what it can do.  Vanessa has had the Quilting Edition Janome sewing machine for a while, but was not confident of  using it, so when she heard that Jan runs a "getting to know your machine" class, asked for her help.  Jan was happy to oblige and gave Vanessa a one-on-one session during our meeting this week.  I wonder what Vanessa's first project on it will be.

Michele called in this week and showed us her latest project, which is a round-robin  project with her internet friends in Australia.  Each member taking part makes a landscape style background and passes that on to the next participant, who hand embellishes a set part of the background in any way they like.  The piece then gets passed on again and again to other participating members, until it is finished and makes it way finally back to the original owner who will finish the piece off  in any way they want and can add more embellishment if desired.  There is some amazing embroidery on this piece of Michele's, check out the daisy necklace on the cows!  See how many other little bits and pieces you can find on this work.  Each time I looked at it I found more amazingly detailed tiny pieces of workmanship to admire, hence so many photos! Unfortunately my photo of the whole piece was too blurred to show, but I hope you enjoy looking at the detailed ones to follow.  I apologise for the poor quality of the pictures, hopefully Michele can bring it in again.  The whole piece is approximately the size of an A4 piece of paper. 

Realistic embroidered flowers and daisies adorn the cows and their field

Tiny fish beads swim among the corals

Butterfly wings are embellished with tiny stitches 

Two bee beads fly among tiny silk-ribbon flowers

more details of the daisies, and the clever embroidery which carries the butterfly wings over the seam line into the panel above

This cow has a gold "bell" on her collar

It's difficult to see but the red flowers have been stitched along their inner edge to give relief, and the orange flowers have been continued into the panel above by cleverly embroidering them over the seam line

Birds fly in the sky

and an egret takes a ride while looking for insects on the cow's back!  Well done ladies, whoever you are!

The last, but by no means least, note this week, is big hello to Helen from all of us, who I know will be reading this when she feels like a breather, "hang in there girl, we are all sending you our warmest thoughts".

See you next time, 

                             Rachel

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