A charity quilt of all time, an amazing Art Quilt ...

...and beautiful hand quilting, just some of the eye candy for you this week, oh, and, a sneak peek of something special.
Firstly, Sue W shared another of her Geisha Girl Wall Hangings, Sue loves to hand piece and quilt and is just one of our 'Mistresses of the tiny stitch'

Sue also had a H.S.T. charity quilt to share, Looking for a point of difference in the layout, Sue popped a floral square in the center of the quilt, she then had it professionally machine quilted with a floral design.

Barbara was rummaging around in a cupboard and spotted something that bought back some memories.  Created at the beginning of the century, (Gosh, I've always wanted to say that - sounds really awesome, and old, but mainly awesome) One of the blocks was from a 2006 Challenge, so yeah, the beginning of the century...sorta.
Barbara is fond of 3 dimensional quilting, and included some great 3-D blocks in her quilt. All hand pieced, hand cut and hand quilted, says so in the bottom left block! right next to the 'Pop Art' square.

Lots of memory fabrics from favourite clothing, along with their designer labels, pockets and plackets are included in the sashing, there is even some tinsy little cotton embroidered flowers and  part of the skirt they adorned.  Some of the blocks were done in a Dianne Johnston workshop and one even has a 'Star of the Month' button which Barbara was awarded for her work running our Groups Library.

Everything in this quilt has a story to tell, hope it gets to live out of the cupboard for a bit and share it's stories.

Val assembled another of the Q.A.Y.G strip pieced squares into this charity quilt.

To give the reverse of the quilt a spot of interest the backing squares have had an 'I Spy' square appliqued on to them.

Another charity quilt from Val, this one all her own work, an 'I Spy'  hexie quilt, all hand pieced and hand quilted.  Yes, I did say charity quilt!

Each hexie is backed with a solid which then wraps to the front form the binding.

Derrick, who was visiting with us, immediately chose the old Holden as his favourite block, someone else, a little bit fond of blue, went for the mermaid.

Val also had a flimsey to inspire the charity quilt makers, spotted in a magazine some years back and filed away in the memory banks as 'make that one day'.  Val thinks the original pattern used 2" squares but opted to create this quilt using 3" squares, again, a simple construction creating an effective design, by using the solid sashing there are very few points to be matched.

Bit of 'busy, busy' going on out the back, what are they all doing?
well under the guise of snaping a pic of gals sandwiching a quilt, guess what?

got a tinsy sneak peek of one of the raffle quilts for our upcoming Quilt Show....hope I don't get a smack!  Gotta tell ya, it is beyond beautiful and the work is....oh yeah, sorry, supposed to be all under wraps for a bit longer.

Stella and Wendy gave us a smashing arvo tea. That fruit cake? yummo.

Lotsa Goss, chit chat, and generally what we have been up to...

A wee tad back, few weeks at least, there was a bit of a conversation on, would you believe it...hair.  How long between haircuts.....the law as laid down by cutters on how long/short the time between visits etc. etc.....
Fran mentioned how many moons ago, she used to have very long hair, swept up in a bun....in fact, she had that hair style when she launched a ship!!!!!!!!!!!!!!            
Well, we all wanted to see a piccie, and today was our lucky day.
Fran bought along a couple of pics from her past, an official  pic  photo by Roland Bryant of the 'Latrobe' in the shipbuilding yards and a pic of Fran, sporting beautiful upswept golden locks when she launched the 'Latrobe', in the pic she is with the Shipbuilder (middle)  and the c.e.o of the shipping company that commissioned the ship, sorry, forgotten the name...ooops.

Now I had to apply a wee tad of pressure to our Star Hostess with the Mostest to capture this pic, but what the heck!!, happy to pay the price.....(Hope you all appreciate the sacrifice....)

Before the meeting began, some of us were out the front enjoying our lunches when along came a couple of lovely 'new to the area' ladies,  looking for info on the Cottage, we convinced Sue to stay and sample one of our meetings, her DDIL had to pop off and attend to other things, but was happy to scoot back to collect Sue at end of day.
Now Wendy, being a bit of a fast thinker, was more than happy to take Sue under her wing, and soon we discovered why, see all those little hexies Wendy is working on???

 Now here is Sue beavering away on Wendy's hexies

heck, if you're committed to a hexie project, wouldn't you want a little help along?  Sue, a real trooper, was more that happy to help out with those little Hexies.
And the flowers that Catti is working on?, more of those sitting by her side, she has ruched flowers and suffolk puff flowers, from Janice's in-house demonstrations.  Wonder what these will turn into?

Sheila bought along some mending, a request from her DDIL. When DIL was just a youngster, she made a dolls quilt from any scraps she could find, pieces from her sisters fave skirt, some P.J. fabric, velvets etc, all which now evoke lots of memories.  The quilt was later extend into a lap quilt, again using more scraps, but over time some of the fabrics have just plain worn out, hence the mending request.  As we all know, Sheila is not a fan of hand stitching, so this is truly a labour of love to hand piece those replacement squares.

The quilt is a two layer quilt, top and a lovely soft lambswool fleece backing.  Sheila has folded back the top  to show the lambswool.

Barbara has been working on this 3-D cat for a few weeks, not being happy with the original layout of the faux fur fabric, she disassembled poor pus and re-assembled him back to this proud creature, with his cross stitched green eyes and gold thread whiskers.  Puss will be making his home with Barbara.

Fae has turned a UFO into a finished item.  She saw this book panel a couple of years ago, and decided to make it up for her Grandson,

He will be turning 22 next week!!, we all think she should give him the book for his birthday,after all it was bought for him, he can give it to his first born.......or it may make it to the sales table for the Christmas Fair. 

Val was commissioned to make a lap quilt, and made up this beauty using directions from one of our Library books, "Kaleidoscope ABC's by Marti Michelle, all straight seam sewing but giving an illusion of circles.

A Kaleido Ruler is needed to construct the quilt, and yes, we do have that ruler in our Library.

Wendy has finished her quilt from Val's tessellation workshop, the pattern is in the Christine Porter book 'Tessellation Quilts'

Sorry I had to cut you in half Wendy, there was such a glare on the glass of the pic behind you it was just too yuck to fix.

Catti was just packing up to go home when Wendy spied this really lovely bag, beautiful silk roses,

'oh', says Catti in a very off hand manner, 'that was just a cushion I found'..........WHAA!, a cushion.  We all scrabbled around for a look and Catti showed us the inside of the bag and sure enough, there was the back zip!

Who would guess, this lovely bag is a cushion cover?

Catti then pulled another bag out from under and showed us this one, she got the fabric from our 'Bring and Buy' table for $2, and the lining for .50cents

A very swish bag for $2.50, well not the handles of course, but you can see the clever way that Catti has attached the handles, they can be interchangeable!
And so as the early birds pack up to leave, our hard working leader is just settling down to put a few stitches into her mending project, and no doubt wondering why Catti didn't have those bags out on the Show and Tell table, as did the rest of us.

Oh, almost forgot, Arvo tea was delish....again....Fran's ginger shortbread bikkies, ginger cake, other biscuits and a plate of lovely fresh rockmelon slices.

How old are these beautiful table cloths?

the work is exquisite, bought in by Gwen for Chantell (Show and Tell), they were made by her Grandmother, and as Gwen's Mum would have been 110 yrs old this year these beautiful cloths could be into the latter half of 100 years old.
The cloths were worked by Gwen's much loved Grandmother, to match various tea and dinner sets that she had in her home 'Inverness House' in Bexley.

One cloth was made to match part of a dinner set that was made for a visit by Prince George, Duke of Kent, who unfortunately died in a plane crash in 1942 which of course cancelled the visit. As it does.

This is just the cutest, a pillow cushion made by Sheila for the Easter Fair, she's so busy with group business that she stitched half of one eye last week and the other half this week, , as Ailsa pointed out, so far puss doesn't drink and doesn't smell, sounds like a perfect pet to me!

Working away in the background on a beautiful piece of silk fabric with appliqued vibrant silk patches is Meg.
Meg will be turning this created fabric into a bag, hope it makes it to the Easter Fair, I'm starting work early .... (very big evil grin).
Meg told us the story of this fabric, quite a number of years ago, at a store that Meg frequented someone came into the store with a cup of coffee and managed to spill the coffee over the roll of silk fabric, after dry cleaning there was apparently still a little shadow of coffee, so Meg scored about 10 - 12 meters of beautiful silk. Lucky Girl Meg.

Last week we saw Sadie and Maureen sandwiching a quilt for one of Sadies Grandies, here is the proud Grandma and the finished quilt.
Well done Sadie!
And what's this I here you say, some of last weeks piccies? no no no, this is Sadie and Maureen sandwiching a second quilt this afternoon. Yep, it's for another of Sadies Grandies.
A long table view and no doubt we will see the finished quilt next week.

Janette will be off having fun at a family re-union at Easter and so has donated this lovely wall hanging of a Japanese Geisha for our Easter Fair.
Janet took the sandwich with her to while away the wait time for a recent day surgery procedure, the wait was a whole lot longer than Janette was banking on so most of the quilting was done in hospital.
The Geisha doesn't show up too well in the top pic, so a little faffing around with Picasa and presto, a much better view - Don't you just love Picasa!

How stunning is this, Barbara (of the nine patch r x r - for those of you who read my blog) saw this great idea in a patchwork magazine, they are her mothers doilies, all worked by Mum about 80 years ago.
Barbara plans on giving this to her daughter, no special occasion, as Barbara says, 'out of my cupboards to hers.'
This stunning quilt, another of Barbara's, started off as stitcheries done with a friend some years back, in fact Barbara remembers that it was a pattern but cannot remember who's or even just how long ago.
A close up of the 'girl sleeping' block
The central panel of park gates
This block is named the 'bird watching chair'.

There are more pics of wonderful quilts, but the Darling is making tummy rumbling noises, so off to feed my Hero. Will post the remainder tomorrow and believe me they are worth waiting for. Stunning purple quilt and the cutest softest little baby quilt

Beautiful Quilts on Display

Wednesday's Meetings got off to a great start, Wendy displayed her Christmas Wishes Quilt at Needlework Group in the morning.Wendy with her beautiful red and white 'Family Christmas Wishes' quilt, she made this quilt and embroidered all the family names on it in time for last Christmas in honour of 'Pop' who is no longer with them.
What a lovely idea, to be able to find your name, remember Pop and make a wish on a beautiful quilt.

A very Handy Hint

The back of 'Family Wishes'. How clever is this! not wanting to put more holes in her wall, Wendy made the rod pocket to the size of her existing wall hangers and then using velcro on the corners made a removable extension for the rod! quilt hangs beautifully and no extra holes in walls.

Denise with one of two Christmas Tree wall hangings that she has made for her sons, she will be taking this one with her when she goes to visit her youngest son in Birmingham.
The other quilt is for her eldest son in Townsville.

Helen with a lovely softly coloured quilt that she has made for her Grand daughter's birthday. Helen will deliver it in person when she visits her Grand daughter in Tassie.
Julie with her 'end of projects' quilt ( I really don't like the term scrap quilt). Julie has made this for the Spinal Muscular Atrophy group for them to raise funds either by raffle or auction at a fundraising day 'Art Affair in the Garden' being organised by the Nambour Garden Organisation. We will be hearing more of this as the time draws closer.

Another quilt from Julie, this one is for her nephew's baby that is due soon, lovely tropical colours for a Cairns baby.

Ladies and Wips!

Barbara working on place mats for the Easter Fair.
Maureen showing one of her beautiful japanese fan blocks,
Winifred with some english paper piecing, the girls tell me they have named it 'Winifred's Octopus' because it keeps curling around her arm as she stitches.

Janet working on her 'bring along' handwork, a Sue Daley 'playing with paper' design.