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
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
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
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