Christmas meeting

On 26 November we had our Christmas party. As usual, the hall looked lovely with all the Christmas quilts hanging around the walls.

This year we were entertained by the Hutt Valley Community Choir. They sang some lovely Christmas songs and invited us to join in too.

We also enjoyed a shard lunch and some show and tell.

Our next meeting will be a sit and sew meeting on 28 January 2017.  Until then, enjoy the break and make sure to make time for quilting - Merry Christmas.

Juliet van der Heijden

Our August guest speaker was Juliet van der Heijden from Christchurch.  Juliet has made a name for herself as a creater of fabulour foundation paper piecing patterns.  You might know her through her blog Tartan Kiwi. The name came about because she's a Scot, now living in New Zealand.

Juliet talked about her work as an archeologist, and then as a radiographer in the Netherlands.

She showed us lots of photos of her quilts, and bought some along for us to look at closely.

Fourteen of our guild members took a full day class with Juliet on the Sunday after the guild meeting, and made the 20" zebra pattern.  Here's some photos from the class.

You can buy all of Juliet's patterns in her online store and print them out at home.  Just click here.

Sophie Wood

Sophie Wood was our guest speaker at our July meeting. You can read more about her here on her website, or follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

Sophie is a very talented art quilter from Christchurch.  She showed us some amazing quilts, and spoke about how she turns her ideas into quilts.  Our guild found her story inspiring.

Here are some of the quilts Sophie showed us.

a self portrait in green - 12" x 12" mini quilt

a close up of the chair in the above quilt

another 12" x 12" mini quilt

a close up of one of the 3D elements in this quilt

another 12" x 12" mini

some of Sophie's long term hand piecing

June club day - guest speaker Helen Bevan

Helen Bevan was our guest speaker at our June meeting.  Helen is an art quilter from Wellington.  She explained how she turns her ideas into amazing quilts.  Here's some closeups of just some of the quilts she bought to show us.

June's block of the month was called "Comb Over" and it was won by Bridget MacFarlane.

I'm exciting about our next block of the month - Faceted Forest. Here's a sneak peak of the samples:

Although we're a quilting guild, a lot of members knit too, so I can't resist sharing this amazing cardigan Janet Evans had just finished.  I guess it's called improv knitting because there's no pattern - she made it up as she went along.  Well done Janet.

Our May meeting - AGM

Our may meeting was our AGM.  We now have 180 members! We didn't have a guest speaker, but Sheila Christensen did explain the Hoffman Challenge and showed the fabric that has been selected.  There were plenty of quilts in the show and tell.  Here are some of the quilts made by previous Block of the Month winners:

Starry Night by Bridget Macfarlane

Button Town Two by Barbara Yoller - 2012

This month's block of the month was called Raspberry Fanta and the blocks looked great together. Helen Rowland was the lucky winner of these blocks.

Raspberry Fanta

Another beautiful quilt on display was a Storm at Sea quilt made by Teresa Keown.

Storm at Sea by Teresa Keown

And from our March meeting:

by Jeanette Lillas

Our next meeting will be on June 28 at 1.30pm.

New Zealand Quilter Magazine

Have you seen the latest New Zealand Quilter magazine? It's issue 95 and it's on sale now.

 

It contains an article about our guild's 30th birthday project - the scrappy bear's paw quilts - and some great photos of the quilts.

It even contains the pattern to make your own quilt, if you missed the instructions given out at the guild:

And there's an article about the Stonestead Outdoor Quilt Festival, held in February. Quite a few of our members entered their quilts in this local show.

The quilt on the left is by Anne Read, and the one on the right by Helen Malanchak.

Rush out and buy your copy today!!

Recent Show and Tell and March BOM

We've seen a lot of lovely quilts at show and tell lately.  Here's some of them:

by Jeanie Sullivan

Cathedral Window in denim by Debbie Fink

by Irene Anderton

Our March BOM was called Blue Willow and the blocks looked like this:

The lucky winner was Sue Muir.

February meeting - Griet Lombard

We had a great meeting on the last Saturday of February.  It was lovely to see all the members in their colourful summer clothes, and to have the doors and windows wide open.

Griet Lombard was our guest speaker and bought along many of her quilts and textile works to show us.

Griet started life in South Africa before moving to New Zealand several years ago, and her older quilts reflected the colours of her environment there.

Her work features lots of embroidery, stitching, threadwork and beading.

This quilt came about after a friend suggested making a butterfly quilt, and a beautiful bright blue butterfly visited Griet's garden in South Africa.

More recent quilts reflected Griet's journey to New Zealand, and her efforts to create a home here.

The quilt below was inspired by a crocheted afghan throw Griet saw in a magazine, and is made up of a series of heavily stitched mini quilts, made day by day, as a form of creative therapy.

Griet also taught her Faded Roses class for our members the following day.  To learn more about Griet, and the workshops she teaches, visit her website.

We collected a lot of Batik Bliss blocks made for Block of the Month. The aim was to use bright tropical colours, and these blocks certainly do look tropical.

We had 76 in total, so we split them between two lucky winners - Wendy Welsh and Tracy Carew.  Here are just some of the ones Wendy got to take home: