There was a huge amount of work on display from our talented members, ten of whom had been meeting up all summer while the rest of us took a break. Pam and Ann have been working tirelessly on small projects ranging from bookmarks to swimming bags, which are being sent to England for sale at a charity event in the Autumn, at Pam's daughter´s place of work, in aid of raising funds for the Adult Social Care organisation she works for. I will post more about this on the Group website in the near future. Here is a sample of some of the things they've been making.
Christine Speller, who has also attended most of the summer, has been busy preparing for her forthcoming workshop. This will be a Row-by-Row project, which is flexible enough for participants to make any size from a small lap quilt or wall hanging, to a larger bed quilt. This workshop is expected to begin towards the end of October and will run monthly. Here is part of one of the panels members will be making, and includes various patchwork techniques so the project is suitable for both beginners, who will learn new skills, and more accomplished members who can adapt the design to their own requirements.
Jan has been busy over the past few weeks and brought in a couple of the quilts she has made and finished to show us. Jan has always been interested in digitized-embroidery and quilting patterns, and has a super Janome sewing/embroidery machine which she treated herself to not long after coming to Spain. Jan says " I'm really into scrap quilts at the moment, using up my fabric stash to make way for new fabrics" and uses these digitized designs to embellish her quilt tops in place of regular hand or machine quilting. Here are the quilts she recently completed.
This green and pink quilt features flower and butterfly motifs
Jan's scrappy brown and cream quilt features feathers and heart digitized quilting designs
and Jan's blue and white quilt features butterfly and flower digitized quilting designs
Kath is relieved to have put her larger than king size bed quilt together, which took three people standing on chairs with their arms stretched out to display! The quilt features various Celtic knot shapes which have been appliqued on to the background using fancy embroidery stitches in gold thread. The quilt was made in the quilt-as you-go method, so that Kath was able to manoeuvre it under her sewing machine to work on it more easily. She says it was getting very warm stitching it over the summer months so she's pleased to see it at last on her bed!
Margaret Doyle, who also went to meetings all through the summer, has been working on a piece of fabric which has been languishing in a cupboard for a few decades! Margaret taught embroidery at a girls school and made the batik sample to show the girls how it was done. She found it recently and decided to finish the piece by adding stitch and embellishments, but before doing this she had to deal with the wax which was still on the fabric from the batik technique. After so many years of neglect, the wax was well and truly stuck in the fabric and it took very many different, unconventional products before Margaret finally tried a Spanish kitchen cleaning product, Mercadona's Quita Grasas, in desperation. To her amazement it removed the wax and there doesn't appear to have been any loss of colour or deterioration in the cotton fabric, actually leaving it with a lovely soft feel to it!
Here is the painted and stitched panel almost completed
Cath was inspired by a circles quilt design on a quilt made by fellow member Christine for her grandson, and decided to make her own version in different colours. Cath too has been attending meetings during the summer, in between family visits.
With Cath's developing skills in free machine quilting, I'm keenly waiting to see the finished project!
I hope you've enjoyed catching up with some of what's been going on over the last few weeks. I intend posting again in a day or so with other photos and news from this meeting, so do come back again in a day or so to see more.
Rachel
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