There was a “rugby” theme at our meeting last night and our speaker Tina Downes spoke about “Insights into the history of the NZ Rugby Jersey”. Most of us probably wondered what that would be all about. Tina is a lecturer of Fashion Design at Massy University and told how the Rugby Museum had asked if her team could replicate copies of early New Zealand All Black jerseys. This challenging brief led to much research, and the jerseys chosen were from the 1884, 1905 and 1925 touring teams. These early rugby jerseys were made from knitted wool fabric and surprisingly some early knitting machines were still available in a Manawatu factory. Once set up with yarn after standing idle for many years the machines had no trouble in producing the woollen fabric, then the silver fern emblems were hand embroidered on the completed replica jerseys. One of the replicas was passed around the hall for us to inspect. Sadly not a single All Black could make our meeting – that would have been an eye opener for our bunch of quilters!
I was on hall duty holding up the quilts for “Show and Tell” and didn’t really expect many quilts to arrive, since our quilt exhibition is coming up fast. I imagined that most would have their quilts hidden away till exhibition time. However, there was a good selection, including several items from recent classes. Penny had been rather busy and had brought several quilts along to show us. Her wall hanging was as a result of a challenge with her stitching group to use a particular fabric, and this is what Penny came up with.
Penny’s wall hanging
Penny also showed us a quilt she had made from some floral blocks she had won from a “block of the month” draw, adding nine patch blocks to complete the quilt. This is Penny’s first attempt at free motion machine quilting.
Pretty floral quilt
This lovely quilt was made by Jeanette. She took her blocks along to a quilt shop and the assistant suggested that she use this particular fabric for the background. Although not a fabric that Jeanette would have originally considered, she was pleased with the choice and it certainly does go together very nicely.
Jeanette’s quilt
Words, words, words - Margaret R is a teacher, and that is probably why she chose to use a selection of fabrics printed with text as the background of her quilt. The simple design looks very effective and the text fabrics adds extra interest.
Margaret’s quilt
A lucky little boy named Charlie will be getting this bright quilt very soon. You can’t see it as the quilt is folded over, but his name is appliquéd in large letters on the top of his quilt. Lynley made this great train quilt which will surely be a huge hit with Charlie.
Charlie’s very own train quilt
And last but not least is Heather’s Op Shop Shirt Challenge quilt number 12. I asked her if she had used up all her op shop shirts yet, but no, she still has plenty of them left to work with. The red centre squares of this log cabin quilt came from a blouse, not a shirt, but that’s close enough, isn’t it.
Heather’s latest shirt quilt
Another interesting quilt club night, showing you just a selection of the show and tell. We all found out things we didn’t know about early rugby jerseys. There was great show and tell, as usual, and nice home baked goodies for supper.
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