In the Tree / Under the Tree

One of the challenges given to Flowerpatch Quilters members before lockdown, when we anticipated having our yearly exhibition in 2020, was to sew a 5" x 5" square with the title of either "In the Tree" or "Under the Tree". The only stipulations were that the "Ins" should have a blue background and the "Unders" should have a beige or brown background and they should not have a binding on the edge. The resulting squares were displayed at our recent exhibition.

Here are some pictures of those which have more detail.

In the Tree

Under the Tree

I loved doing this!!

Happy Stitching

Anita x

Quilts (3) - Flowerpatch Exhibition 2022

I'm really enjoying having a second look at my Flowerpatch friend's quilts which were in our recent exhibition. It's not the same as seeing them hanging, but in a photo you can sometimes notice things that you missed.

This is Annie's wall quilt - "Beeloved" and there is so much detail in this with lots of bee themed fabrics. Annie is a bee keeper and she loves her bees ....... most of the time!

Here is Liz's "365 Kathryn Kerr Challenge". Liz said that the 6" blocks were fine, but the 3" were certainly a challenge! A bed quilt beautifully quilted by Sandy Chandler.

and Liz's "Windy Day in the City". Another challenge, but this time set by her friends. A wall hanging with the two themes of Lowry and umbrellas.

This is Dawn's "Remember Paris" - Her interpretation of the rose window in Notre Dame Cathedral. She started making this after a surprise visit to Paris in 1994 and finished it during lockdown!!! Is this a record?? :)

This is a quilt made by Dawn, Phyll, Brenda, Ann, Sheila and me - "Ruby's Quilt". We named it after a dear quilting friend who we remember with great fondness. Many of the embroideries are adaptations of Lynette Anderson designs and Dawn designed the lovely embroidered border.

Iris M was another Flowerpatch member who decided that lockdown was a good time to finish off  her many sewing projects. These four wall quilts are months of the year with others to follow. From  left to right and top to bottom they are August - Sunshine & Rain, January - Frost, September - Apples and December - Christmas.

and Iris M's "Windmills" - a cot quilt

Lois made two child's quilts like this one. The first for her grandson Ezekiel who loves anything with wheels, and another to donate to the Linus Project. She backed them both with fleece for extra cosiness.

and this is Lois's wall hanging "The Curate's Garden".

Iris L had many lovely quilts in the exhibition and it was hard to pick just two to show you. These two are my favourites: "All at Sea" which is based on a Janet Clare block of the month, with applique sea birds in the border

and Iris L's "Housey Housey" based on her own house and some dream houses.

I haven't shown any of my own entries in the exhibition as they appear in previous posts in this blog ..... except for this little wall hanging which I finished sewing the evening before the day when quilts had to be hung! This is "Holiday 1959" and depicts my family at the caravan park in Walton-on-the-Naze, where we went most years in the 1950s. Happy memories.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed the walk through of our Flowerpatch exhibition 2022 in my last four posts.

We start our next quilting year very shortly on Thursday 8th September 2022 at Cowslip Workshops, nr Launceston. The meeting starts at 7.30pm. Please do come along if you think you might like to join us.

Happy Stitching

Anita x

Quilts (2) - Flowerpatch Exhibition 2022

More photos from our recent Flowerpatch Quilters exhibition.

This is Karen's "Wandering Ways" - a double bed quilt

and her "Squash Squad" - a Sue Spargo design

Two of Margaret's bed quilts made for her grandchildren. The first is "Butterflies"

and this one is "Daisies"

This wall quilt, called "All  Aboard", was made by Chris. She really enjoyed the challenge of sewing the different sized blocks together.

Here is Ellen's "Scrappy Flower" - a play mat for an expected baby girl. Ellen quilted the background before sewing the flower petals on.

Finally, two by Elizabeth - "Totally Scrappy Lockdown Busyness"

and "The End of the Lilac Road ". Elizabeth says that she has finally used up all the lilac fabric that she bought for her last two lilac coloured quilts!! Can she resist making another in this colour? :)

Yet more quilts in my next blog post.

Anita x

Quilts (1) - Flowerpatch Exhibition 2022

 Here are pics of some of the quilts in our recent Flowerpatch Quilters exhibition. I was a bit random in my photograph taking so this is by no means all of the entries.

This is Melody's "Estela"

and her "365" quilt designed by Katherine Kerr - each block is different. It was a one block a day for a whole year challenge!

both of these are bed-size quilts and were machine quilted by Sandy Chandler

This is Cherrie's "All the Colours of Life" made for her Mum's 90th birthday

and her "Stars for Auntie Muriel" - Cherrie says 'it is bright, colourful, fun and sparky, just like her personality'

Here is Anita H's "Painted Ladies". Anita has made two quilts for her daughter in law, in the same design, but with some differing fabrics.

and Anita's lap quilt - "Better than a Fur Coat"

This is Pippa's bed quilt  - a hand pieced sampler designed by Carolyn Forster

and another "Stars and Pinwheels Strawberry Thief" designed by Sally Ablett.

Anne's quilted throw is called "Crazy Seasons" and has lots of embroidery details.

Many more exhibition quilts to come in my next post.

Until then

Happy Stitching - Anita xx

Pics from Flowerpatch Exhibition 2022

What a super week last week when we held our Flowerpatch Quilters exhibition in the barn at Cowslip Workshops. Lots of visitors and so nice to see so many friendly familiar faces. The barn is a new venue for us so it was exciting, and a tad scary, for us.

Here are just a few views of the exhibition layout to whet your appetite, with pics of some individual quilts to follow in my next posts.

We were thrilled to have so many large quilts to show

and smaller ones, too

We had a "Living in the Country" corner where we could hang past work as well as some new

and a cushion area

Finally Jane and Barbara did some wonderful flower arrangements to compliment the quilts, on a very busy / frantic Monday set-up day.

More pics next time - Anita x

Flowerpatch Quilters Exhibition 2022

It's been so long since I wrote a blog post about my local quilting group that you must all think that we're no longer meeting. Not so! We started our meetings again in September 2021 when  we felt it was safe to do so after the worst of the Covid pandemic, and when most of us had our full quota of jabs.

Flowerpatch Quilters are busy planning our next exhibition which  runs from Tuesday 2nd August to Saturday 6th August, 2022; 10 am to 4 pm each day. Our venue has changed and we will be in the barn at Cowslip Workshops, nr Launceston, PL15 8JX - this is where we have our monthly meetings now, too. This year we are raising money for Cornwall Wildlife Trust with a sales table of fabric, books and sundries, and by raffling our Wildlife Meadow double quilt.

 At the same time as our exhibition the local Launceston embroidery group - "Creative Stitchers" will be showing their work at Cowslip. All in all the exhibitions should be well worth a look - everyone loves to visit Cowslip Workshops anyway!.

We started fairly tentatively with our meetings, not being too sure how many members would feel safe enough to come along, and September was just a get together and chat - we had a lot of catching up to do!

For October Jo, very appropriately, had us appliqueing bright orange pumpkins onto patterned beige backgrounds. 

November was an evening of Sashiko and Boro stitching.

TIPS FOR SASHIKO

Fabric – a fairly heavyweight fabric, or back thinner fabric with a thicker piece or some wadding.

Thread – sashiko, perle, thin string or similar, without too much twist.

Stitch – roughly the size of a grain of basmati rice, a tacking type stitch with the stitch on top about twice as long as the stitch on the reverse.

Gaps – where more than two lines of stitching meet there should be a gap with the stitch on the back.

Points – where just two lines meet stitch into or out of the corner to make a sharp point.

Marking – a simple way to mark the design on dark fabric is to trace a printout using white graphite paper and a blunt pencil.

And this is a small Boro sample that I made

December we sewed mini folded Christmas trees. 

January was a Linus Quilt evening - Dawn had appliqued a pyramid of sheep and we all sewed more sheep to go all the way around, making a child's quilt. I had two sheep on my block

For February we continued the Linus theme again and this time Dawn had us sewing hearts made from quarter circles which we sewed over papers - English paper piecing, and then appliqued to a square of calico.

 Dawn had made a lovely small quilt with hearts a couple of years ago.

March was great fun with a "Quiz the Quilters" evening. Sue, Melody and Ellen were the lovely ladies who answered questions put by chairman Liz. They had all seen the questions beforehand so were well prepared with their answers and brought along samples to illustrate. Other members chimed in with comments and it was most amusing ..... and informative, too. Two gems from our panel were "Finished is better than perfect" and "Make something of your mistake" (such as Melody's scissor nick that turned into a lovely bee!)

April was sadly cancelled, and in May we viewed the contents of a suitcase provided by the Quilters Guild UK. This comprised antique patchwork, much of it well over 100 years old. Many pieces were quilt tops sewn by English paper piecing and still having the original papers on the back - fascinating. There were also some wonderful wholecloth quilts. We marvelled at the tiny neat stitches.

Next month, June, we have been invited to spend the evening with our friends in Bude - Parkhouse Quilters, when we will be showing them some of our quilts etc.

It was so good to get back to meeting up with like minded stitching friends instead of just making contact by email, and we're all looking forward to seeing some familiar faces, and new ones, at the exhibition.

Happy Sewing - Anita x

Mystery to Me - finished

Well, it's been a long time in the making, but I've finally finished my Mystery to Me quilt. I think I must have started sewing this at the beginning of 2021 when we were in lockdown and I felt I needed a long term project to get my teeth into. I found piecing the blocks easy to keep on with as everyone is slightly different and it was always exciting to see how they would turn out. Things did slow down rather once I got to the machine quilting which was a tad boring as I didn't dare try anything clever in case I messed up, so it's all straight (straight-ish) lines.

I actually made up and quilted the quilt in nine sections. Each section contains more or less the same blocks but in different positions. I separated the nine sections with a row / column of 3" blocks. I thought I would sew these on after the quilting, but as I flunked to straight lines I ended up sewing these on before quilting. You may be able to pick out the two 3" wide rows and two columns in the pic above.

These are the 4 corner sections, where you can see the 3" wide strips on two of the sides.

Each section is a mirror image in the positioning of the blocks, or supposed to be - you might spot a mistake in the left bottom section!!

These two sections go either side of the middle.

Can you see that the position of the blocks is the same if you rotate one section through 180 degrees?

These go above and below the middle

Similarly, rotate one of these sections through 180 degrees and the blocks are in the same positions.

And finally this is the centre section

Well, with so many different blocks and fabrics I don't think I shall ever tire of looking at this quilt on my bed. Many of the fabrics are scraps left over from other projects, some being quilts made with friends, so it holds a lot of happy memories too.

Happy Stitching - Anita xx