Stars

Come along, let me show you what we got up to at St Mark's Quilters today!

Di C started to quilt this amazing dinosaur kindy quilt.

Barb helped Susie to decide how to quilt this little Blanket of Love.

Sue M, Margaret and Sue W kept it simple today and left their sewing machines at home, preferring to relax with some hand stitched bindings.

Liz brought along her magnificent Japanese-style quilt, just back from longarmer Sue Rowles, and with a little help from Gail, Perdita and Gillian she squared it up and machined the binding on, all ready for some long sessions of hand stitching. 

Shhh! It's a special gift for someone.

As usual Di C earned the gold star for Best Use of Colour. Look at those glorious floral pants and co-ordinating lime green tee!

With so much creativity buzzing around the hall we soon needed a little break and some refreshments.

There were pink cup cakes!

And chocolates, a gift from the lovely staff at The Marcia.

This month it was my turn to share a new technique, and with the aid of these quilts - two of them works in progress - and the tutorial here on my blog, a couple of quilters were well on the way to completing their first Modern Hexagon Stars quilts.

Gillian spent a great deal of time carefully considering a suitable arrangement for her hexies, and you'd be amazed how many variations on a theme we came up with over the course of the day!

Di B and Gail had made a start at home. They were both up to the stage of rolling those hexie edges and stitching them down to create star shapes.

But there was one special 'star' who stole the show today.

Di B's mum, Margaret, turned 90 this week, and we celebrated with HAPPY BIRTHDAY candles and a magnificent carrot cake baked by Sue M.

Margaret has only missed one monthly workshop with St Mark's Quilters since we started 5 years ago. She brings elegance, wisdom and a wicked sense of humour to our gatherings, and she stitches a whole bunch of love into her beautiful quilts.

Take a look at the Blankets of Love photo gallery here to see the latest finishes by our other clever quilters.

And now, after that big day, I'm off to bed!

Simon's Quilt

Just a short and sweet post today to share photos of a little quilt I made late last year for a friend's baby, born at Christmas time.

Circumstances prevented me giving it to them until recently.

This was very much a practice piece for my free motion quilting on a domestic machine.

Someone commented that my feathers look like fluffy clouds

Quite appropriate, really, since the colours, to me, suggest sunshine , sea and sky.

I'm happy with that, and I think little Simon and his Mummy and Daddy might be too.

Twisting

It's always fun to try something new, so there was plenty of interest at our first St Mark's Quilters Workshop for 2015 when Di B demonstrated how to make some fun pinwheel variations using the nifty Li'l Twister ruler.

She made it look so easy.

Just a few hours of machining later she had a finished quilt top - Voila!

Gillian, another fan of the ruler, made this variation.

And here are some more she prepared earlier :-)

                                        

Others, like Perdita, chose to work on their own designs. I'm in love with the gelato colours she's using in these half square triangles :-)

 

Sophie and Susan have been away for a little while, but they've still kept busy making these kindy quilts in bright, happy fabrics.

Gail's favourite soft shades are easy to recognise in these two Blankets of Love.

We all enjoy seeing some Show and Tell from our quilters, and Gillian brought in this Advent Calendar, one of several she made for her grandchildren, complete with numbered tiny stockings into which she popped treats for each day in the lead up to Christmas.

I've already written about our latest delivery of Blankets of Love to Dahlia Brigham at the RPA Newborn Intensive Care Unit in January.

Also in January Di B also handed over a huge bundle of kindy quilts to Margie Flint from the KU Marcia Burgess kindy for autistic children, just in time for each of the new children starting at the centre to be given their own quilt to keep.

All our quilters agree that the making of these quilts is a reward in itself, so it was such a beautiful surprise when Margie gave us this pretty double package, wrapped in a silver ribbon, from the staff.

The first surprise was a metal heart decorated with a "Thank you" message to our ladies, and Susie hung it on the wall with our other treasured messages.

The second package contained a huge box of chocolates, and we're looking forward to a chocolate-sustained stitching day this month!