Friday, June 21, 2013

June 2013

Winter has settled in Adelaide in the last few weeks.  There was a pile of quilts in my sewing room already as the seven quilts we had set aside for NSW bush fire families were never sent - mainly because we had no way of getting them up there (for free) but also because they said that they had sufficient for their cause and to hold onto them if we had another charitable cause.  We regularly give quilts to the Migrant Resource Centre, because they help refugee families fresh off the plane from foreign lands who have very little possessions, let alone enough bedding to keep warm.   So the seven quilts were included in this delivery of 16 quilts this week...I tried to not include the pictures of those original seven but my math isn't adding up, so there must be one repeat picture in here!











Happy quilting, Sue SA on behalf of the Quilts from the Heart group, Westbourne Park.

Friday, March 22, 2013

March 2013

Wow not sure what happened to the last couple of months, but they really flew! In that time we have had our usual six week Christmas/summer break and now back stitching quilts.
 
With the weather just starting to cool down and the pile sufficiently large enough we decided to allocate and distribute the quilts. The quilts are not in any order, but we gave 10 to the Migrant Resource Centre for refugees, 11 to St Johns who visit elderly people isolated in their own homes, 10 to a centre that accommodate young mothers and their children, 7 we hope to transport to the CWA in NSW for families who lost homes in the fires this summer and 1 to a lady who is having treatment for cancer = 39 quilts!

 This one has a small pretty floral print you cannot appreciate from this picture!
 One of our volunteers enjoys making single patch quilts, the effect is usually great for "bloke" eg no fuss masculine coloured quilts, something we don't make enough of, even though we have a male quilter helping us!


 From time to time we get donated somebodies UFO hexagons, usually from the 1980's or 1970's.  Bev is one who has put her hand up to deal with them!  Don't worry she machine stitches them down onto a background and we use bits n pieces in the same colours to make up a quilt.
 You can nearly see Annie...she is a Teddy Bear lady, not in our group, but sits at the next table.  Annie started by hand stitching bindings down for us at home (and still does) and now is a fully fledged quilter, who whips up quilt tops regularly for us....thanks Annie!
 Insufficient pink squares in one fabric, don't worry we will find a way to use it up and make a quilt out of it!

 The quilting shows up really well on this one as the wadding was very lofty...it was donated wool wadding and wasn't the best to work with, but Elaine used it all up and it made WARM quilts!
 A stunning quilt made from a donated top.  Its hard to believe what some people don't want! But we were very pleased to receive it!
 Collection of squares in bloke themes....except after it had been stitched I realised that one of the patterns had angels in it, no matter, it will still be warm, just with extra blessings!
 Yes we do bright quilts as well!
 And florals!
 And pretend we are Amish in a bright colour way!
 One of our volunteers Alan made this quilt top.  It least now he lets me give him fabric from our cupboard... he does such great work!
 The little wool blanket was given to us to donate.  With lots of other crafters in the hall, sometimes people produce items for the sake of learning a new technique but don't wish to keep them.  Others are just simply very generous.
 I had to make this quilt large, so you could see that it does have a pattern, single patch again but a beautiful pale floral print.
 These blocks came from Alan, I think his daughter made them (if I remember correctly) and they sat in my sewing room for a long time til I got a chance to sash and border them.  Not all our volunteers are quilters, so they tend to look at you blankly when you ask if they have a quarter inch foot!  I have been educating them along the way and converted many to being quilters...but we don't have quarter inch feet on the machines we use each week..., so when it matters, I take it home and work on it.
 These satin stitched ladies (grown up Sunbonnet Sue's?) were somebodies UFO and one of our volunteers from last year kindly put them together for me....we really were not sure what to do with them, but they look pretty in floral!
 An Alan masterpiece!
 Too large a piece of fabric and too manly to muck around with it, so stitched on a border and quilted it!  We dont have a pre determined size to make the quilts to.  But its good to have some larger ones.  I guess you could call this a whole cloth...it has a mate further down the show and tell.

 Yes Alan works hard!  A change in border colour leaves the quilt looking so different, yet they are the same pattern.
 A beautiful green quilt, really love that border fabric.  I think Ann made this, she likes to string piece.


 Its hard to see but the brown fabric had the cutest orange house on a hill print on it. 


 I think this one was donated also.


 The best use of a piece of cheater cloth....very pink!
 All these fabrics are Japanese prints.
 A donated top, very pretty pink and green with pinwheels, love it!
 Another great piece of fabric too good to cut up, so border and quilt!
Hope you enjoyed the show and tell, happy quilting,
Sue SA on behalf of the Quilts from Heart group.