Patch Flora at Flowerpatch

How lucky we were to have Marilyn Hornby of Patch Flora as our speaker at Flowerpatch Quilters last Thursday evening. Marilyn is a very experienced quilter who has written many articles for national patchwork and quilting magazines. She showed us all her designs and very generously, included lots of tips on making them up. How lovely to be able to have a really close look at work you have seen, and admired, in magazines. Some of the Flowerpatch members were already great fans of her designs and had made their own versions in the past.

Marilyn has always been interested in sewing and other crafts, but her first foray into quilting was with applique of botanicals. Not finding any designs that she particularly liked because they weren't very realistic, she resorted to drawing her own and has proceeded in that fashion ever since.

I really liked this poppy:

Another great love of Marilyn's is redwork, in which she excels, and again always draws her own designs. She showed us wall quilts, cushions, bags, notebooks and even a hat.

This is just a small selection of Marilyn's redwork:

and I must have a go at this "Square Dance" patchwork pattern:

Marilyn also showed us some fused work and Hardanger embroidery, and finally finished with her larger quilts which included "Stack and Whack", Willow Pattern, Music - with the score of "London Bridge" around one of the borders, and a beautiful crazy patchwork medallion quilt with a crazy ninepatch centre.

There was so much to enjoy that this blog can never do it justice so please do click on Patch Flora to see more.

One thing in particular that Marilyn encouraged us to do was to practice and practice our free motion machine quilting until we can relax in the doing and are happy with the results. This would make so much difference to our quilting life. So guess what I've been doing this weekend!! Maybe I can show you some results later ............................much later!!

With the Flowerpatch Quilters annual exhibition less than two months away members are all sewing frantically to get their entries finished. Entry forms have to be at Dy's before 1st July. The exhibition runs from Tuesday 4th to Saturday 8th August and is held at Central Methodist in Launceston, Cornwall.
The next meeting is on 9th July and is an exhibition preview when we get to hear some of the stories behind member's quilts, etc.

Sewing frantically! - Anita