Carrum Downs Scquilters

Photo diary of the monthly meetings of Carrum Downs Scquilters (at the Carrum Downs Library/Community Centre) on the first Wednesday of each month. We are all members of the Australasian Quilting group Southern Cross Quilters. The Library/Community Centre is located on Lyrebird Crescent - just near the corner of Hall Road - Melway page 100 ref: H3 (see L for library at location. If you need more information e-mail me helen.evans@nanderil.com.au or phone 0417263958.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Christmas Party Day

Well folks, here at long last is all the info from our wonderful Christmas Party – held way way back at the beginning of December. I apologise for the extreme delay, but as the month progressed, both my dodgy laptop and my mother deteriorated progressively. Fortunately my mother is on the mend, however, the laptop, not being covered by Medicare is hanging on by a thread – “as we speak” husband Merv is preparing my new one – so at least our February get together will be covered by not only new laptop, but (are you listening Ramona?) a new shite and briny camera – !

SN850674 Here is our table of wonderful Kris Kringle gifts.

SN850694Here, back at last from her epic overseas journey, is the lovely Narelle – working on her Dear Jane blocks – as ever!

SN850691  Here, Bar is working on, yet another hexagon quilt- looking gorgeous.

SN850693  Laurel is working on her shashiko blocks – looking very precise – the block, not Laurel – she is her usual lovely, imprecise self!

SN850692 Can’t quite see what Maggy is working on, but I hope it is for me!

SN850696 Wyn is her usual friendly, industrious self.

SN850695 Robyn, working on a tiny, but beautiful border. I am sure we will see the finished product in the new year.

SN850697 Ginny’s WIP – a lovely Christmas wall hanging.

SN850679 Sue’s exquisite WIP – coloured in (Derwents???) and ready to be painted with textile medium.

SN850680 I think these are Kate’s beautiful hand pieced star blocks. Am I right Kate?

SN850681 This lovely block is what Helen Yann has been working on – what can I say? It is superb.

SN850682 Ramona’s gorgeous Christmas elves.

SN850699 Just explaining – to my lovely Adelaide Angel – Ann Bennet that I (Helen E) have done more of this wonderful gift from her than it looks – I am stitching by colour and finished the tiny writing on ALL of the blocks and am now almost finished doing all the windows on all the blocks!

SN850684 Here we see Hermione re-sewing the bells on her beautiful Santa Sacks – pattern by our Ramona.

SN850700 Sandra just happened to have the full set of gorgeous hand made gifts from her Adelaide angel – love the fabrics, as well as the final products.

SN850701 Sally did a wonderful job of needle turn on this block for her Dear Jane quilt – she says needle turn is not her thing – but it looks pretty good to me.

SN850702 Laurel made this really sweet Christmas wall hanging – beautiful work.

SN850703 Pam has taken on the formidable task of making a quilt from Michelle Hill’s “William Morris” book – here are her first two blocks – magnificently appliquéd by hand.

 

SN850704 Yet another example of Jennifer’s magnificent machine quilting – she does it all QAYG – hope you can see it amongst the lovely Irises on her “Iris Exuberant” quilt

SN850706 Fran’s “Jester’s Bag” – a gorgeous Christmas basket made with the help of folded cardboard in the centre.

SN850678 Sue’s sister, who was visiting us for the day showed us a photo on her camera of her “Red Delicious” block – hard to see, but it is a marvellous example of this popular quilt.

SN850707 Another work from Fran – this wall hanging has a story to it. It is called “Emma’s Tree” after a young mother who sadly died of breast cancer. Her mother Miriam is more than happy for anyone to make this pattern up – as long as they tell the story of Emma on their quilt/wall hanging – I am about to try add the file to the Scquilters yahoo site, but if anyone cannot access it – just e-mail me and I can send it to you.

Helen.evans@nanderil.com.au

 

SN850708 Here is Sue once more, with a really pretty quilt bag in lovely rose fabric.

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SN850713 The above photos are all of yet another masterpiece from Sue – she tackled the “Brest of friends” quilt published this year in Homespun magazine and did a magnificent job – have a close look at all the photos, including the one where the skirt of the girl is full of French knots – how many hours Sue, or did you lose count after 3 million?

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SN850716 The above photos are all of Cynthia’s version of a BOM from Patchwork Pumpkin – for her niece’s 50th birthday. What a lovely job – I wish I was your niece Cynthia!!!

SN850717 Here we have the famous Hermione with just one of the Santa sacks she has ready for Christmas.  This is for her husband Douglas – how can you tell??

SN850718 And, from Ramona, our “international woman of mystery quilts”  this beautiful mystery quilt she has designed to teach at Foothills Fabric and Threads. Ab fab!

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SN850722 The above quilts resulted from last year’s “Christmas Star Block” competition – where the lucky winners have brought in their completed (or partially completed) quilt tops to show the rest of us . What a wonderful effort from our winners.

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SN850689 Obviously, stars are more popular than angels, as we had 81 star blocks last year, and only 9 angel blocks this year – or perhaps we were just all busy and tired, anyway, we hope to see three angel quilts next year at our Christmas party from the above gorgeous blocks.

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SN850726 These stitcheries were made by me as a result of a lovely day at “Glenharrow” in Belgrave with Rosalie Quinlan and Leanne Beasley – We all got these two beautiful kits – and I hope to bring the completed items along early in the New Year.

SN850729 And gosh! How did this get here – she will kill me if she finds out, but this is a photo of our daughter Elizabeth on Boxing Day – almost 18 now.

So, until our next get together on Wednesday 3rd February 2010, have a wonderful New Year.

Your roving reporter,

Helen Evans,

Devon Meadows, Vic.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Wednesday 4th November 2009

 

Now that I am a blogspert (well nearly, well almost, perhaps not quite yet…), I decided to write the details of today’s meeting up straight away – so I will not need to make up too many details about our fun and games today! Although the usual disclaimer that any actual representation of actual events is purely co-incidental.

Quilting

Following several reminders over the past few months, I have finally found the scanned copy of our “15 Minutes of Fame” starring Fran, Robyn and Jennifer – the bravest of us all, who didn’t run away from the Frankston newspaper photographer when he visited us to report on our community grant from the Carrum Downs branch of the Bendigo Bank  for the purchase of books for our very own library . A very exciting time for us.

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For months I have been reporting (and giving you tantalising glimpses) of Bar’s herculean hexagon effort. Well, today we saw her eagerly awaited quilt in all it’s glory. Bar used 1/2” hexagons in a pattern from “Quilts from Grandma’s Flower Garden”.

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Above are some close ups of the hexagon flowers as well as Bar’s brilliant machine quilting.

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Those of us following Esther Aliu’s BOM on the internet - “Red Delicious” got a preview of the final quilt via Marilyn – she made some small changes to Esther’s original designs and the result is stupendous. Marilyn did not buy any fabrics for this quilt – well, she did buy one red fabric, but she just “happened” to use some of it in the quilt. We believe you Marilyn. Anyway I am sure you will agree that it is a wonderful version of a gorgeous quilt. You can look forward to a lot more versions of this quilt on our blog in the coming months.

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Sue made this delightful mug bag – in lovely fabrics, with some beautifully stitcheries as well.

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Sue has also made this cute bag from a pattern on the internet. The black and white fabrics look wonderful. And wait, there’s more

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from the “leftovers” of the bag, Sue just had to make this spectacular quilt. But – I hear you say - “Where did the pink come from?”. Well, the pink was used to line the bag – a nice contrast.

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The lovely Jennifer R made this stable bag for the sole purpose of using up fabric for an Ugly fabric challenge – and what a beautiful result. Her appliqué is just superb. And, just in case you are wondering, the challenge fabric is used for the binding on the bag and the handles –magnifying glasses required! I have more of these challenge photos later in this blog…….

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More superb appliqué from Jennifer – this is her version of the centre block from the  BOM “Mrs Williams’ Quilt” from Corliss in Castlemaine.

 

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And from the equally lovely Jennifer W – I know you have seen it before, but Jennifer entered it in the Rowville “Stringybark Festival” and won 1st prize – we are not surprised – congratulations!

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and the above two photos are of Jennifer’s beautiful floral stitchery quilt – note the clever quilting.

 

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The above three photos are from me (Helen E) , but not made by me (this seems to be a habit of mine). We had a discussion about old fashioned “Chicken scratch” work – so I dug these out of my linen closet. These cloths were made almost 40 years ago, by our Grandmother. for mine and my sister’s 16th birthday’s.

 

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Laurel has made this beautiful quilt for her sister’s 60th birthday – what a wonderful present!

 

And now, as promised the other items made in the ugly fabric challenge, by members of the Bendigo Retreat Committee from 2005 – we still like to meet and drink gin. Obviously a tot or two was being drunk at the time some of these challenge items were made (well, that was just me! the others are brilliant!)

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Well, here we are in November - I am not sure what happened to January through to October, but our next get-together will be our giant Christmas partay extravaganza. We will each be bringing a plate of Christmas food. We will be dressing  in Christmas colours. We will be doing our usual Kris Kringle pressie  swap, and also a 12 1/2” (unfinished) block of an angel – stitchery or applique or pieced or a combination of  all three, or you can make an angel doll. I think that is right – if you are disqualified for angel abuse, blame moi! And, the lucky winners of last year’s sets of star blocks, don’t forget you need to have them made up into – at the very least – a quilt top – note to self – FIND YOUR BLOCKS!!!

So, until the same bat time next month, it’s your roving reporter

Helen Evans,

all blogged out for now.

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