Pincushion Mania

Our Christmas Dinner was a perfect celebration of the friendship and shared interests of our members. Most people participated in the Pincushion exchange and there was certainly a lot of variety on show.  The next post will detail the amazing challenge our new elves have presented us with.  Creativity will rule!

UFOs

How many do you have?

I've been forced to write this confession blog post by someone who will remain nameless, Glo.  I haven't decided if she wanted me to write it to encourage me to work on my projects, shame me or make everyone else in the group feel better about their unfinished projects.  I suspect it's actually her revenge for my constant "Haven't you finished that yet???" queries.

I have just spent a week organising my studio space and I found 86, yes EIGHTY SIX, unfinished projects.  Before the clean up, if anyone had asked, I'd have told them that I had about 30 UFOS.  During the clean up after finding 43 I was feeling a bit sheepish.  After the clean up I'm somewhat ridiculously proud of my 86 projects!  Remember, this doesn't include projects I've bought the pattern or the fabric for.  I stopped counting those at 17.

Baby quilt

To be fair, most of my UFOS are the teensy baby quilts we're making for stillborn babies at Sunshine Hospital and therefore shouldn't take a lot of time to finish.  It has been suggested that I practice my FMQ on them but I think these babies deserve more than my laughable attempts at that.  Pebbles?  Try jagged rocks!  Do you remember doing this bird appliqué class at the Patchwork Teahouse?  No?  Me neither...it was THAT long ago.  If you look you'll see I only have about 20 embroidery stitches left to do on this block.  Oh, and an eye.  Mustn't forget the eye.

Christmas block swap

Who's bright idea was it to swap 12 inch Christmas blocks as Christmas gifts???  And then to do it again another two years in a row?

Elf Challenge

This Elf challenge was in the "I'm going to hand quilt this" pile.  Or is that the "I'm never ever going to finish this because I don't hand quilt" pile?  Don't laugh, but I had 4 quilts in that pile!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!  Sorry, got a bit carried away there for a second.  Although I do suspect my hand quilting would be marginally better than my free motion quilting!

I've spared you pictures of the other 83 projects.  There's not enough room in cyberspace for them! 

So...how many UFOS do you have?

Workshop frolics

It is hard to believe that nearly a week has gone by since we had our productive and fun day with two marvellous and inspirational teachers at our groups's workshop.

Both Zoe Clifton and Michelle deGroot presented a wealth of ideas and helped us produce some fantastic results as you will see in the attached photos.

Michelle had a wonderful relaxed and encouraging approach to helping us with free motion quilting. 

It can be very frustrating to learn this new skill!

Some examples of Michelle's's own work.

Zoe's class was cathedral window and some happy people achieved great results.  Sometimes the points were not quite right but then life is like that!  Put a button on it!

Thanks to the tutors and thanks to Evelyn and Deb for organising such a wonderful day.   

More Tuesday Treasures

Sheila has completed her Emma Mary with 5 rounds making it a lovely big quilt, plus she has quilted it by hand.  Wow!

Karen has helped a friend finish a quilt in beautiful shades of pink and green.




We all loved Barb's beautiful version of a dresden plate.  Are we talking French General fabrics again? Check the backing fabric.

Evelyn is continuing the theme for her daughter with the bright colours,  Did I hear her say that is a 'dog quilt'?

And who is hiding behind these gorgeous projects?  It's Janice!

Washable pen experiment

I decided to experiment with washable pens after reading about a blogger who marks all her quilts for quilting with Crayola washable pens.  The pens cost about $10 for 20 so I thought that if it worked it would be a bargain considering a lot of decent marking pens are $6 each.

Click each picture if you want to see it enlarged.

I drew a table with permanent ink so that when washed I could see which colours, if any, were stubbornly still there.

After washing I was pretty disappointed with the result.  As you can see, the fabric is still pretty colourful.

Not to be beaten, I soaked the fabric in powdered stain removal for 10 minutes.  The blue pens have pretty much disappeared as have some of the others but the reds and browns are still showing.

So in conclusion, while some colours disappeared, who wants to be soaking their quilts in stain remover?  The pens may be good for marking seam allowances or embroidery lines which will be covered by stitching but I personally wouldn't use them to mark a quilt top.

The Crayola pens draw beautifully on paper however and there's a lovely selection of colours!

Yesterday I read about a blogger who bastes her quilts with washable school glue.  Stay tuned for that experiment!

What we got up to last saturday!

It is a very different Saturday this week as we (most of us) hold our breath waiting to see how the football unfolds.   The following photos will refresh your memory of the fun we had and the delicious food we experienced!
Thanks to Evelyn and Deb for their organisation.  It all ran very smoothly.  Special thanks to Sue's husband Mike who once again delivered us there and home again with little fuss and bother!

Who do you think bought the most fabric?