Sit and Sew day 3

Liz's Trip Around the World quilt

At last I have dates for your diary! Our next Sit and Sew Day will be on Sunday June 16th at Clifford Village Hall, Albion Street, Clifford (view maps here: http://www.clifford-pc.org.uk/google-map12) from 10am to 4pm. As usual we'll have a show and tell and lots of lovely chat interspersed with a cuppa and plan to do lots of sewing!

Last time we met we decided to have a go at the 'Trip Around the World' which Liz had brought to show us. She promised us it is very quick and easy! The instructions are from Bonnie Hunter and you can read more on Quiltville's Quips and Snips. If you want to join in the project bring along strips 2.5" by at least 16" in light or dark fabrics and we can swap fabrics to have more variety.

There will have to be a limit on the number of quilters attending so it is essential that you book in advance. To do so please send  an email with your name and contact details by clicking here. We will charge approximately £7 on the day to cover the room hire costs and refreshments and a couple of draw prizes.

From the Autumn we plan to start meeting more frequently. Here are the dates for future reference: September 21st, October 19th and December 7th. These are all booked at Deepdale Community Centre in Boston Spa.

A Question for You

Hello again! I'm like buses - silent for ages then 3 posts in quick succession!

I have a question for our members following a mention of modern quilting and young adults taking up quilting on the Yahoo group for the Quilters Guild Contemporary Group. A newly elected Trustee of the Quilters Guild has emailed me to ask:

What you think The Guild might do to make itself more attractive to this age/interest group?

I'd really welcome your input on this so please  leave a comment below if you have any suggestions or comments or email me (quilthaze at gmail dot com).

Just to be clear - some of us in YMQG are members of the Quilters Guild but we don't mind at all if you're not . If you're not a member of the Guild you could take a look at their website to find out more: http://www.quiltersguild.org.uk/

Love Quilting

Here's a quick update on printing templates from the ipad version of Love Quilting Magazine. I got a quick and helpful reply to my email question from Jenny the editor of the magazine. Here's what she said:

Hi Hazel

Thanks so much for buying the mag. I've just been over to your MQG site - what a fantastic blog - you must be inspiring so many quilters!

The ipad printing IS a bit of an issue. As you noted on the blog, it only connects to an Air printer which so few of us have.

I don't have an online download for the templates in this issue (but I plan to include this for any future issues...)

However I did test the screen shot method myself here in the office and found it worked as follows:

1. Hold the ipad in the portrait position (ie with the home button at the bottom) so that only one single page at a time is visible.

2. Take a screen shot of the single page (hold down the power button and home button together). The image should automatically save to your image library.

3. Email the image to your desktop computer (are you still with me!?) and you can print it from there.

I tested the Marcelle Medallion templates in the office, and found that by enlarging the document I opened from my email by 132% before printing gave me the correct size (but do make use of the test square on the printout of any of the templates to ensure it is the correct size - I added them with this process in mind).

I do hope that helps - please do let me know.

Do also check out the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Lovequiltingandpatchwork as I'll be letting readers know if/when a next issue is confirmed (fingers crossed).

Thanks again for your and the Guild's interest in the mag, and keep in touch!

With warmest wishes

Jenny

Editor

So, thank you Jenny. I'll do a trial run later using Jenny's method and I'm pleased to hear of the plan to have the templates online in future. Let's hope the magazine will be published more frequently in future!

Have a great weekend!

Hazel

Catching Up

Well it's about time I posted some more news so here goes with a quick catch-up! Some of our members had a get-together at the International Quilting Day hosted by Janet's group in Barnsley and had a fantastic day with lots of other quilters. One activity was a Block Lotto with blocks in black, white and lime green. Quilters made blocks and were given a raffle ticket for each one donated then lucky winners were drawn out of the hat and each won enough blocks to make a quilt! The photo above shows just a small selection of the blocks which made a stunning display. Check out the Block Lotto website which organises monthly lottos -http://blocklotto.com/

Janet's button tree - one of the mini workshops

There were lots of great shopping opportunities with a bring and buy and silent auction plus a raffle and homemade cakes. There were also two mini workshops to take part in and all the profit went to Barnsley Hospice - a total of £1900 on the day! Well done to Janet and her group for an amazing total.

The Quilt Con exhibition in the US organised by the Modern Quilt Guild has produced Tons of inspiration on the internet. You can watch videos of the lectures on Craftsy - I've added the link on our sidebar and enthusiasts have been posting photos on their blogs and Flickr. Luana Rubin has over 200 photos to view here.

Recently I've been investigating digital versions of quilt magazines for the iPad and discovered many of the American magazines are much cheaper to subscribe to this way than buying the printed versions. e.g McCalls Quilting cost only $1.99 and issue through the ipad app instead of £4.99 at my local newsagent! I am a fan of Fat Quarterly which can be downloaded as a PDF for tablets and is great value. I also came across a new UK title Love Quilting and Patchwork from the publishers of Molly Makes and Inside Crochet which contains some lovely modern quilts and small projects:

I can't find any information about how often this will be published. If anyone knows more please  leave a comment below.

I've been busy with classes and workshops and have managed to finish a couple of small projects! 

This is a close-up of my staggered Flying Geese table runner which includes some of the fabrics from Riley Blake's 'Hello Sunshine range and I made with freezer paper foundation piecing. Here's a photo of the whole thing - sorry about the photo quality.

I recently found some lovely grey chambray which I intend to use to make a shirt but in the meantime made my driver instructor hubby a tablet cover:

What are you working on at the moment? Why not send me a photo and I can share them on the blog or upload them to our Flickr site.

I'll be back very soon with news of our next SASD.

Happy Stitching!

Hazel

SASD 2

Our second sit and sew day was great fun! There were lots of quilts for show and tell, some had risen to the challenge and produced pieced letters, while others sewed some on the day like Davina's 'cat quilt' shown above.

Here are a couple more - no prizes for guessing who made these!

Sorry for the blurry photo Jackie - I haven't got the hang of taking photos on the iPad yet. Liz had made a badge with tiny paper pieced letters as well as the bigger version. She also brought delicious cakes for us to scoff- thank you Liz.

These are inspired by the book 'Word Play Quilts'

Here are more fantastic quilts from our show and tell

 

This stunning VW pillow was made from a Tula Pink free pattern. Download your copy here.

Sorry if I didn't get a photo of every one but they were all fab - u - lous! After seeing Liz's wonderful quilts we decided we want to make our next get-together a scrappy trip around the world day so we're going to collect 16 by 2.5 inch strips and follow Bonnie Hunter's instructions on the day, the date of which is still to be decided.

I will be uploading more photos to our Flickr group. Why not join it and upload your photos too?

Please leave a comment if you have any news or useful links to share.

Hazel

Sit and Sew Day is Nearly Here!

One week to go! I can't wait! We meet next Saturday 16th February at Clifford Village Hall, Albion Street, Clifford LS23 from 10am to 4pm.

I set about making an iPad sleeve last week and decided to add my initial so I would have something for our challenge theme of pieced letters. This makes me smile as it reminds me of Rimmer in Red Dwarf! On the reverse I made a panel inspired by the place mats Janet showed us last time but I used wedges cut with a dresden plate template rather than straight strips.

If you have made some pieced letters please bring them along as well as any other quilts for show and tell. Most of the day will be for you to work on your own project but I'll be demonstrating free motion quilting for those who are interested. If you fancy having a go yourself bring a free motion or darning foot for your sewing machine and a quilt 'sandwich' - good quality wadding sandwich between two pieces of plain-ish cotton fabric at least 14" square plus some plain paper and a pen for doodling designs. I'll bring a selection of threads to play with.

If you'd like to join us for the SASD and haven't already contacted me please email me: quilthaze at gmail dot com

Happy Stitching!

Hazel

 

 

 

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New Projects and Challenges

Hello Hazel here! Are you ready for our challenge? We're asking you to make a quilt which includes pieced letters. It can be any size you choose so you have plenty of freedom in the design and it can include other blocks too. I gave some links to useful websites in a previous post here.

Today I've been playing in Electric Quilt (EQ7) software to make a banner design for YMQG - what do you think?  Electic quilt has  classic pieced alphabets and a foundation pieced lower and upper case alphabet which I used for this design. There are even Greek and Hebrew alphabets if you want something a bit different! I can't live without EQ7 because I use it to design and adapt quilt patterns for my classes and it really is brilliant! You can create your own block designs or use hundreds of pre-drawn ones on a choice of quilt layouts. There are a multitude of possibilities to choose fabrics, colours and sizes of blocks and borders too but it's very easy to use. I can also export pictures of the blocks or quilts to illustrate my instruction sheets. I don't have any affiliation to Electric Quilt but if you're interested check out the Electric Quilt Blog to see some projects designed in EQ7.

With the New Year there are many new projects and challenges out there in blogland. I came across a link to a new 'Skill Builder' Block of the Month on our new member Sarah's blog Duck Egg Threads, which looks fantastic. Sarah's also taking part in the new Craftsy 2013 Block of the Month. Both of these are free so well worth a look!

If you fancy a different challenge how about a Mug Rug swap? Michelle at Quilting Gallery is hosting one. It costs $5 to join but you get two lovely free mug rug patterns included. Visit Quilting Gallery regularly to find a weekly coupon for fabric and pattern discounts and enter the weekly show and tell to be in with a chance to win a prize. 

Have you set yourself new challenges this month? Leave a comment below to share your favourite new projects, swaps and blog hops!