Monday, June 29, 2009

2009 Annual General Meeting

The Annual General Meeting of the members of Fairholme Quilters Inc. will be held on

Monday 27th July, 2009 at 10.30 a.m.

at the Uniting Church Hall, Cnr. Bellamy Street and Boundary Road, Pennant Hills

The agenda and minutes of the previous AGM have been circulated to members.

Review of Thimblelady's book and DVD

There was a little discussion about the new Thimblelady shop (at Thornleigh) her classes, books and DVD last Tuesday night, so this review by Paul Storm seemed timely.

Aren't we lucky to have the shop and classes available locally?

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Stitches Through Time - a talk by Dr Annette Gero

See details about this talk, hosted by The Friends of the Hawkesbury Art Community & Regional Gallery to be held at Windsor on 19th July on the Quilter's Guild of NSW blog, Template Free.

Location map for the venue, the Deerubbin Centre.



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
From 71 Reasons To Buy Fabric .....
40. They get angry when you steal it.

Wrinkle-free pin-basting tutorial

Keryn at Quilting Twin is a well known quilting pattern designer, quilt maker and long arm quilter, who lives in South Australia. Some time ago she posted on her blog a very useful photos + text tutorial on her method for pin basting a quilt on a table that is considerably smaller than the quilt to achieve a wrinkle-free result without having to crawl around the floor. Handy for those times when you just have to baste a quilt between Fairholme meetings.

Click here for the tutorial.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Another Tuesday night - more quilts

Sharyn and Janet forgot to bring their quilting tonight. Sharyn is home for a couple of weeks from her six month adventure travelling around Australia - she and Ken are having a wonderful time.


A close-up of the quilted daisies on Elle and Louise's quilt (see this post) ....


..... and the very complementary backing and binding

Jo is adventurous and has mastered a wide variety of patchwork and quilting techniques. She decided to "have a go" at foundation (paper) piecing, and started with this quilt - no-one else would consider it a "beginner" pattern!


Backing and quilting detail:
Dina has had another busy week - these tessellated pinwheels in bubblegum colours were ready for pinning tonight ....



And she is working her way around the considerable length of the black binding of this very large wedding quilt, with the black background throwing the gold and black feature fabric into sumptuous relief (the quilt is perfectly straight - it is being held up by two people standing on chairs!) ...



The centre is ingeniously pieced from a single fabric, with clever cutting yielding the complex pattern .....



Monday, June 22, 2009

Quilt surfing

Here's a weekend treat for anyone who hasn't seen Fraser Smith's quilts and other work.

SEWN is a new website belonging to Sarah Fielke, formerly of Material Obsession. It is described as "a quilters and sewers playground for fabrics, patterns, colours, and everything creative!"

If you like Jenny Bowker's work you have probably already found her website - if her name is new to you, enjoy browsing.

Most of us know Maree Gebhardt and her wonderful "shop in a suitcase" - here is the Threads and Things website.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Tuesday Night Show and Tell


Jane's latest spectacular quilt - the stunning black and white is highlighted by a touch of jewel-bright purple. It was commercially machine quilted (by Ellie Harrison from “Stitched & Bound”) with a very effective geometric curved design.



Dina's granddaughter will love her Hungry Caterpillar quilt!






Dina's top from Jane's workshop used a range of blue and white Japanese fabrics on a white background.




Marijke has two new grandchildren due to arrive in August - this lovely Disappearing Nine-Patch is for one of them. It started with 3 1/2 " squares. Doesn't the lime binding work well with the perfectly mitred striped border?




Louise had just one stitchery left over from a larger wall hanging, so she whipped up this little beauty from a few scraps ....



Would Monday quilters like some blog-based show and tell? Just email the photos and a few words about the quilt - please leave the photo at a reasonably high resolution, and we'll edit the file at this end.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Gloria Hansen, Paula Nadelstern and free bag patterns

Tuesday nighters might recall that when Helen was in New York recently she saw the Paula Nadelstern exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, and brought back lots of goodies for show and tell, including some wonderful Paula Nadelstern fabrics.

Gloria Hansen's blog entry about her visit to the same exhibition includes two 5 minute videos of Paula Nadelstern talking about her quilts in the exhibition. From the photo, the exhibition banner does its job well - who could resist going in?

Gloria Hansen is a graphic artist, a photographer, an author and an award winning quilt maker - her blog is very interesting, with varied and excellent content. A few weeks ago (13th May) she provided a link to a free e-book of quilted bag patterns from Quilting Arts.

Well worth checking into regularly.

Community quilts

Lynette's latest count is 12 completed quilts, 8 in progress, and 3 tops recently donated. These two are among the 8:

Another Disappearing Nine Patch nears completion - just a few stitches in the binding to go. Many hands have contributed to this one. Thanks to Janet for quilting it.

Louise's 13 yr old daughter Elle made this gorgeous, funky bright quilt, quilted by Jo. Thanks Elle !

As our fearless leader said: Thank you to the small group of girls who have been coming to the Thursday Sew Ins to make the charity quilts and also to everyone who have made the extra blocks when I have asked and for all the donated fabric.

The next Sew-In is tomorrow, Thursday 18th.

(Click on the photos for a cloer-up view).

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Easier reading

The change of background and text colours should make it easier to read posts in programs such as Google Reader which use white backgrounds. The blog template will change from time to time because we can ..... and suggestions for a wittier blog title are welcome!

Such as these quilting relating businesses with clever, memorable names:

Apatchy and Accessories

United Notions

Dyed and Gone to Heaven

Can you add to the list?

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Sydney Quilt Show 2009

The 2009 Sydney Quilt Show opened today (and is opened until Sunday). It seems to get bigger and bigger every year .... the catalogue goes up to 390 quilts, but with the various exhibitions, there are many more. That is a lot of quilts to look at!

The prizewinners are listed
here, with photos, and as usual there are many stunning quilts made by very, very talented people.

Our 2010 raffle quilt didn't win a prize, but looked wonderful.

And then there are the aisles, and aisles of merchandise in the Craft Fair section. Lots of quilting and fabric businesses, lots of gorgeous yarn for those who knit, various other crafts, and beads, beads, and many more beads .....

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Winners of the 2009 American Quilters Society Quilt Contest at Paducah 2009

Click here for photos of the 2009 AQS Paducah winners.

More than 30,000 quilters attended the 25th Anniversary AQS Quilt Show, April 22 – 25. Quilters attended from 47 states and 11 countries.

Best of Show was Renaissance Revival, by Mariya Waters, from Melbourne. Lisa Walton (Sydney) and Nic Bridges (Wollongong) took out a third prize, and Mariya Waters was awarded a third for a miniature.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Many hands ....

A lovely scrappy jewel box quilt in a trip around the world layout, pieced by Monday and Tuesday members, constructed, quilted and bound by Lynette:


This one is to go to Victoria. The Disappearing 9 Patch tops are coming along well too.

Tuesday nighters play well together - having quilts pinned by group members is a great boon:


This is Noelle's quilt, made with fabric acquired on the May 2 bus trip - very stylish! Jane was the colour consultant, and she brought the piecing technique to the group. Several other quilts, in very different fabric choices and varying layouts of the same basic block are in progress from Jane's workshop.