It’s our Christmas Stitching Monday

It’s the time of year when groups and clubs have their final pre-Christmas meeting, and yesterday was the wind-up meeting of our Stitching Monday group.  There were only a few of us to start with, but as the morning wore on, more friendly stitchers came to join in our last day.  We had planned a special shared lunch and Jo had a moment of panic when she couldn’t locate the cooked bacon she had brought along to top off her lunch dish.  She checked in the bag, went back to her car, even carefully retracing her steps back to the car park but all to no avail.  The fate of the missing bacon remained a mystery.  Petronella, our librarian, was busy doing a stock stake of all the club’s library books and didn’t have time for any stitching,  but stayed on and joined us for lunch.  Our lunch was delicious, and we told ourselves that the healthy savoury items more than balanced out us eating all the delicious sweet goodies.  Jo climbed up on a chair to get a bird’s eye view and take a photo of our  lunch tables.

All ready for lunch

Joyce’s eye catching quilt, “Good Golly Miss Molly” had progressed in leaps and bounds since last month.  The borders have been completed and now just the corner units need to be constructed.  This will be an eye catching quilt when it is completed.  Thanks to Joyce too for cutting me off a few more of her selvedges to add to my collection.

“Good Golly Miss Molly”

Margaret is always busy and I snapped her trimming up her Debbie Mumm blocks which will be made into a charity quilt.  The blues and yellows being used are always a winning colour combination.

Margaret trimming her blocks

William Morris designs and fabrics are a real favourite with Sylvia and she was busy hand quilting her third William Morris quilt.  This one is a beauty with a large appliquéd design in the centre and is finished with an appliqué border. 

Sylvia’s William Morris quilt

Sylvia also brought along a lovely cushion to show us, in pretty pinks and blues.  It will be a gift for a grand-daughter and the front had lovely stitcheries set with piecing.  The back of the cushion was a piece of intricate hand quilting done during a recent holiday.

Pretty cushion for a grand-daughter

It was nice to welcome Rebecca back after an absence of a year or so.  She was working on an embroidery piece she was making for her City and Guilds course, set  by Sian Martin of the UK.  Rebecca was using her favourite range of turquoise in her colour palette.

Rebecca with her embroidery

The others were all busy too.  Jo was doing more of her clever machine quilting on her quilt, and I saw Faye diligently stitching down a binding.  Maureen was  working on her 1930s flower blocks, stitching them down with black thread to highlight the design.

Maureen showing her 1930s block

And as for me, I started a new project.  Four years ago when I was undergoing  cancer treatment, I received many blue  “healing heart” blocks from the Southern Cross Quilters internet group.  My aim is to slowly work on this quilt, and have it done by the end of next year.  That will be when I reach my five year anniversary from diagnosis and I am hoping the specialist will tell me that I need no further check-ups. 

Adding sashing strips to my blue heart blocks

So that is it for Stitching Mondays for the year, and many thanks to Margaret for being the facilitator of this group.  Our next get together will not be till February, but no doubt everyone will be hard at work over the Christmas break working on their projects.