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We can hardly believe it’s already time for another meeting! This month we thought we’d try out a clever method of hand applique. It’s not quite needle-turned, but is easier and looks just as nicely finished.

(On the square, lightly mark with a pencil a 4.5″ square (you don’t need to mark all four sides of the square, just where the corners are). Then mark a little cross in the centre where the two diagonals from corner to corner meet. These marks will be the guides for placing the orange peels.)

• Thread – a neutral colour is best.

• Needles – we recommend size 9 or 10 applique needles (these are also known as straw needles) – available at Addicted to Fabric for around $5 a packet (see picture below – don’t worry if you don’t have any or don’t have time to find some, we’ll have some spare). By the way, these needles are also perfect for English paper piecing!

• A gluestick – a small kid’s gluestick is fine.

• Sharp small scissors for trimming the orange peels.

• Pins – short ones are better.

Looking forward to seeing you all on Thursday at 7.30 at the Civic Library. Don’t forget to bring some show and tell, and your raffle quilt blocks!

 

Hi All

Next Meeting:

Our next meeting has come upon us so very quickly (or so it seems to me!). We will be meeting on Thursday night at the Civic Library, 7:30pm and will continue same time, same place on the fourth Thursday of each month.

The lovely Clair from Bee and Lotus Textiles has offered to teach us a new skill this month. Clair is a printmaker by trade and designs her own lines of beautiful fabric. This month, she is going to be sharing her knowledge and experience by discussing Creating Your Own Quilt Labels and other custom prints. Some of the areas she will cover include:

• Methods
• Preparing your artwork
• Using Spoonflower
• Homemade Labels

You may like to bring along some of your own sketchbook/journal for taking notes as well as some of your own label examples and any artwork you have questions about.

Do also bring some show and tell, we all love a good nosey!

Membership:

Thank you for hanging in there while the Committee have been finalising membership details. All the information can be found on our new membership page. Head over and check it out!

As always, let me know if you’ve any questions, I look forward to seeing you on Thursday night.

Jules

Our next Canberra Modern Quilt Group meeting is on Thursday – again at the civic library from 7.30.

Once again, we’ll be going in through the library’s side door – it’s on the side nearest the Canberra museum.

Liz has collected the key and will be letting us in tonight. Her instructions are below:

Come to the library’s small side door near the Canberra Museum, it’s on the opposite side to the ACT legislative assembly and right near a flight of steps.

After much discussion, planning and designing behind the scenes, we are ready to begin the first Canberra Modern Quilt Guild raffle quilt. Many thanks to Crystal and Nicole for working on the design and getting everything organised. Below you will find the design brief as written by them.

If you would like to make blocks but are unable to attend the meeting tomorrow night, please email us and let us know how many blocks you would like to make so we can distribute the patterns to you.

Don’t forget to comment here or tweet us if you are coming along.

Lastly from me, we are awaiting instructions from Civic Library on how to access the building so will post a note here after lunchtime (hopefully by 3pm) with instructions for access. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow night! Jules

Now onto the raffle quilt, the rest of this post is from Crystal:

The aim of the raffle quilt is to raise funds for the Guild to bring in a guest speaker/tutor for the benefit of members.

Dear Canberra MQG 

It is with great sadness that we are posting this. We really have no idea where to start with this. Our Guild has lost one of it’s members this week with the sudden passing of Kathreen Ricketson and her beloved husband Rob Shugg. They drowned while swimming near Coral Bay Western Australia. Kathreen was a dear friend and a fellow founder of our Guild. 

Please forgive us if we have not responded to any comments on this blog over the past few days, we have been in in the process of setting up a trust fund for Kathreen and Rob’s children who are 13 and 10. More details can be found at Whip Up. If you have any questions, please contact us at canberramqg@gmail.com and we will do our best to get back to you in due course, email is the best form of correspondence for us right now.

The meeting will be going ahead on Thursday night. We had a question from somebody about coming as a new person. Yes, please. Do come along. Anyone and everyone is welcome, no matter your skill level. 

See you then.

Jules and Danielle. 

Hi there. How’s your creativity this month? What have you been working on? Who else is looking forward to show and tell next week? Don’t forget the change of venue, time and day: we will be at Civic Library, 7:30pm, Thursday 23 May. More details about access will be posted next week.

At our last meeting, we spent quite a bit of time discussing the options for our Guild raffle quilt. We are going to raffle a quilt with the theme “Centenary of Canberra” during the month that Floriade is on. The funds raised from the raffle will assist the Guild to bring in a guest teacher.

Nicole and Crystal volunteered to work together on the design to be ready for our next meeting.

Those present at the meeting decided:

• to make the colour scheme for the quilt based on Floriade;
• that members who wanted to contribute would bring some scrap fabrics along to the next meeting;
• those scraps will be divided between those wanting to make blocks in the following month, ready to be returned to the June meeting.

A colour palette based on Floriade can be interpreted in oh so many ways however, in order to get started, we need to decide which colours we will use. A few pictures from Floriade have been loaded into Kuler and here we have four palettes:

If you would like to vote on simply complete the survey below. Responses will be taken until midday Sunday 19 May 2013.

Make a note of the order of your preferences and then click here to take survey.

The results will be published here on Monday with details about the fabric requirements.

Thanks for taking the time to contribute.

It wasn’t all show-and-tell, meeting everyone and eating Anzac biscuits and chocolate on Thursday night.

We also want to know more – more about quilting that is.

We came up with a list of things we want to learn – and would love any more ideas:

■Mitred borders – Danielle brought in her applique quilt with freshly mitred borders – very inspiring
■Needle-turn applique
■Y seams
■English paper piecing
■Machine paper piecing, and
■Free motion quilting.

We’d love to hear your ideas…

Thanks so much to those who came along tonight. Some familiar faces and and a few new ones too! It’s always nice to meet more quilty peeps. There was a really positive vibe in the room tonight and many laughs along the way, so much P-fun with the P-faffs!

We had P-fabulous show and tell with loads of inspiring works – I only managed a few (out-of-focus) pictures so if you have any additional photos, do send them through.

In addition to our show and tell, we brainstormed ideas for our Guild raffle quilt. Thanks to Crystal and Nicole for volunteering their design services – we are looking forward to seeing your sketches when they become available.

The Members page has been updated with links to blogs, twitter and instagram – please check your information and let us know if any changes are needed.

Also added to the blog is the new “Useful links” page that was suggested tonight – if you have any sites you’d like to share, send us an email with the link.

Don’t forget that next meeting is at the Civic Library on Thursday 23 May, 7:30pm, see you there!