Group Quilt.......

Many, many apologies for the delay in this posting.  Many of you know I am in the UK now and just didn't find the time to write this before leaving.  I'm trying to make amends now.
Last week's meeting saw group members make a start on the group charity quilt, to be raffled later this year at our bi-annual exhibition.
We started off by having a general overview of how we would approach this new challenge, and members eagerly awaited their first glimpses of the the sixteen designs Group member Helen Bush has drawn for the quilt blocks.  This year's theme is butterflies with a few flowers sprinkled in.
In advance of the meeting, the blocks had been assembled into kits, which included the block drawing and background fabric along with applique fabrics and other materials needed to complete the block.  These were soon distributed to the more experienced patchworkers who were then allocated a team mate who would help with tracing and cutting of the applique shapes.

Gwen, Margaret and Rozanne working on their blocks

Yvonne

Louise, Jenny and Katherine

Jenny watching Gladys and Pam

Helen above and Jill below, tracing their designs

Gladys tracing on the lightbox

Margaret's block ready for the machine applique stitching

Cath encouraging a terrified looking Margeret

Christine and Jenny attaching the applique to their backgrounds

The beginnings of Pam and Glady's block

Rozanne painstakingly adding the applique pieces to her butterfly

Jenny and her team  with Jan searching through for just the right fabric to complement the wings on her butterfly

Gwen's design above, and Christine's below, ready for the applique machine stitching 

I can't wait to see the other blocks as they are made, and at the end of this session we all agreed that this quilt will be stunning when it's finished with one member asking if she could keep the quilt if her raffle ticket was pulled out at the draw as the winner!!

Pam brought in her finished denim and flannel quilt to show us, made from recycled jeans and shirts.  She has made this for her son-in-law, who's initials Pam has embroidered in the centre, and says it was quite hard work making it because as it got bigger it became very heavy.  All the seams have been snipped individually with small scissors too, so this project was a real  labour or love!

Christine has finished this lovely quilt above, all hand needle-turned applique and hand quilted, and just has the binding to add to her class sample Row-by-row quilt below.

Pam and Jill also showed us their finished bags.  Pam's bag above and below has a posh pocket inside and motifs front and back

while Jill used more of the same fabric for her motif and added button details to her bag above.   

We welcomed Jenny back to the group after a long absence this week.  Jenny spent the session working  on a new top canopy for her garden swing bed.

As this blog is so late being posted, I already have photos from Linda from the meeting this week but I'll stop here, and I'll post those in a day or two.  Don't forget to check out our website to see more of the work made by our talented group members.  Have fun stitching, see you all next time and thanks for stopping by.                                                                            Rachel