Hands up if you love quilting!

It’s a bit of a no-brainer for St Mark’s Quilters who turned up for our monthly workshop laden, as usual, with colourful finished quilts as well as exciting works-in-progress.

Perdita brought along these two gorgeous Blankets of Love to add to our collection for sick bubs in RPA Newborn Care, or for the grieving parents of those who bub passes away during or soon after birth.

They show that a quilt doesn’t have to be complex to be beautiful. Half square triangles in rainbow colours (above) are just … happy! And the strippy quilt-as-you-go squares in her other quilt (below) created from scraps within a single colour family, have instant appeal.

Gillian made the most of a great find – dinosaur fabric! – for the quilts she made for little ones at the KU Marcia Burgess kindy for autistic children.

So many colours in the dinosaurs meant she could create two quite different  quilts. I like the way she’s picked up the reds, limes, oranges and blues for the quilt above, and then created a completely different look for the quilt below by choosing to emphasize the aqua and lime.

Just by using large strips from a Maisie Mouse panel, each with a pieced square at the end, and then reversing and staggering the strips, Barb has made a kindy quilt that a little person will treasure.

Even easier was this train panel that Barb’s finished off with overall stippling. For the border she sewed strips of blue, red and gold together then cross-cut to create the pieced border. It really zips up the quilt, doesn’t it.

Cath’s lucky enough to have a longarm quilting machine at home, so she used it to quilt this kindy quilt with a pattern resembling the wind blowing, just perfect for the sailing boats in the feature squares.

Margaret finished off the binding on this Blanket of Love, made from a pastel bunny panel, that someone had abandoned and left in the box. But that’s OK, we encourage tag-team quiltmaking here at St Mark’s Quilters.

Gail had a deep sea theme going on in this one.

Helen carried the seaside theme with her today too. Look at her sparkly earrings, necklaces and rings.

Helen doesn’t own a sewing machine so she makes her quilts by hand. Today she started a sweet Blanket of Love where she’s hand appliqueeing, in a freeform fashion,  some hexagon flowers that she’s made, onto soft white waffle weave fabric.

Amanda showed us her finished kindy quilt top that she was working on last time. The next step will be sandwiching and quilting it, once our order of batting arrives. That pink outer border looks delicious – a real gelato quilt!

You might also recognise this slow-burner that Sue’s been working on for some time now, a hand English paper pieced Baby’s Blocks Blanket of Love in pale blue and the softest buttery yellow. It’s been a real labour of love and today Sue finally sandwiched it ready for quilting.

So much creativity and fun!

…and a special visitor who I’ll tell you about next time

Di