Friday 17 March 2017

A fabulous evening

Our March meeting wasn't quite as busy as the February one but the room was still buzzing.  We were all eager to hear Gilli Theokritoff's talk, as she had been originally booked for last year, but life had overwhelmed her, and she forgot to come!  


Here she is with her 'David' quilt.  A lovely lady and a masterpiece! 


She brought lots of quilts, which ranged from the 'that's a good idea' to 'wow!'  Lots of people were keen to get a closer look at her work.


The raffle was a bumper one, with fabric and cutting boards.  Unfortunately I wasn't one of the lucky winners. 


Show and tell was a bumper one!  I think the winter weather has encouraged people to stay in the warm and sew.  This is one Sian made of her GCSE students' exam pieces.  Very colourful. 


This is a treasured old quilt from the 1950s.  It has all kinds of fabrics in it, old dresses, curtaining, the obligatory Crimplene and even wool pieces.  The wool has shrunk slightly, giving an interesting irregular look to it.  Not the most beautiful of quilts, but certainly one to treasure. 


Ar Rocheberie Schoolhouse Quilters in Rugby, they had a competition, to be decided by viewers' choice.  The three prizes were taken by Piecemakers' members.  This is Liz's quilt with a sea theme. 


This gorgeous butterfly quilt used up scraps, apparently.  What lovely scraps! 


Not a very good photo of this one, but it was very big.  It's the first prize winner at Rocheberie, made by Gaynor for her Golden wedding.  She says it was a bit like Topsy, and grew and grew! 


Here is Sue's fabulous 365 Challenge quilt.  The challenge was to make a block a day for a whole year!  I started it but didn't get past January!  



Here is one of my Mile a Minute quilts.  Bright and cheerful for Project Linus. 


This is mine too, the other prize winner at Rocheberie.  It was a BOM and I put all my blocks on point.  


Chris was asked by her grandson if she could 'knit' a Star Wars Lego quilt.  She could do that, and here it is.  Perfect. 


Here is Di's Rocheberie BOM quilt.  Her colours are so pretty. 


This is Jan's BOM.  I bet she used up some of her scraps on this! 


Jan also set herself an extra challenge.  Every time she chose one of the blocks and made enough of that block to make a small quilt.  Isn't that clever?  I love how different each quilt looks.  It's hard to pick out the original block. 


To help in identification, Jan pinned the block pattern to each quilt. 


They are all lovely.  Well done, Jan. 


Denise made this quilt for her daughter's wedding.  (The wedding was 18 months ago, but hey ho!) it's all silk, beautifully quilted and Denise says she never wants to work in silk again!  It was worth it though, to produce such a precious gift. 


This is one of the brown bag challenge quilts from last year.  The owner added another row of hearts and is thrilled with it.  Quite rightly. 


This quilt is for a very musical grandson.  I'm sure he will treasure it. 


This is a Linus quilt made from leftover ballet fabric.  Perfect for young dancers. 


By this time, Gill and Denise (who were holding up the quilts) had got serious arm ache, as you can imagine.  Denise was heard to mutter, isn't that it yet, and are people adding more when I'm not looking, but I was able to reassure her that there was only one more left. This one is a quilt as you go made at last month's Carolyn Forster workshop.  


And here is the last piece of show and tell, another brown bag quilt.  Again the owner was thrilled with it.  I would be too! 

2017 Challenge
Just to be clear, thus year we are challenging people to make 4 small quilts/blocks on the theme of the seasons.  These will be kept by you, to make into a wall hanging, placemats, small quilt or whatever you like.  We suggest fir each one a size of about A4 or if you like to work with squares, about 12.5". The idea is that they can be displayed at the exhibition in October.  The first challenge is Winter, and everyone taking part has had (or will receive if you haven't managed to sign up yet) an embellishment, which is snowflakes. 
Hope that makes sense.