July Stitching Monday

It must have been the wet weather which kept the numbers small at our monthly Stitching Monday yesterday.  But then again, it could well be that our quilt club had organised a whole weekend of quilting classes – perhaps some of the ladies were all quilted out!  Never mind, the old faithfuls were there to keep each other company. 

My sewing machine was whirring away as I worked on more of my paper pieced log cabin blocks.  This is quite a slow process with stitching a log, then jumping up to my cutting board to trim the excess, then on to the ironing board to press the block.  But I stitch six blocks at at a time so the numbers of finished blocks soon adds up.

My paper pieced log cabin blocks

Everyone else was doing hand work.  Maureen was finishing off the last of her place mats which will be offered for sale at the upcoming craft fair.  Joyce was keeping her company as she was  busy hand quilting her Crop Circles quilt, made from lots of New Zealand fabrics.

Joyce and Maureen working side by side

Karen and Brenda had recently attended an abstract  workshop with well known tutor Claire Smith, with the students choosing their own design.  Karen spent some time cutting and sticking her fabric on to the background.  The pieces are then heavily machine quilted with different threads.  Brenda had brought along her finished piece for show and tell.

Preparing her art piece

  Brenda’s finished sample

Margaret loves vintage linens and has quite a collection of old embroidered doilies.  She was hand stitching her latest batch of “doily dollies”  and they are coming together very nicely.  They are so pretty with colour coordinated buttons for their hair and it is a lovely way to make use of old doilies.

Margaret sewing her doily dollies

Blue doily dolly

I was rather taken with Margaret’s blue and white hexagon bag.  This is a Bronwyn Hayes design and features Bronwyn’s trademark stitchery designs.  Margaret had dug into her collection of vintage buttons to add to the bag. 

.Margaret’s blue stitchery bag

The numbers may have been small, but we all worked happily away on our projects during our stitching day, sharing good company.  That is, after we got the lighting sorted.  It was so dim inside the hall on our arrival that we really wondered how we would see to do our stitching.  In came the electrician who went up to the light dimmer switch and turned the big knob right around.  Thank heavens, the hall was bathed in bright light.  And we didn’t even know there was a dimmer switch hiding on the wall!