We had a wonderful meeting yesterday, thank you to those who joined us for it!

First Anne Marie Horan visited us to outline changes that the Executive propose to make to the constitution of the IPS to make it more logically organised, and to remove duplications. All members will be sent the proposed changes by email (or by post if they do not have email), and there will be a vote organised.

Then Mary Palmer outlined a project that is organised by the Quilter’s Guild of Ireland, with support from the government’s Keep Well campaign via the DCCI. The theme of the project is “Home”: The idea is that people make blocks on the theme of home (house, trees, or paths & gardens) and send them to the QGI, they will then make them into quilts. The quilts will be used to benefit women’s shelters and mental health services. They have asked that people use batiks if possible, but if they don’t have those they can use whatever they have to hand. 
Everyone who takes part will have their name go into a draw (once for each block) and they will be raffling 50 prizes in honour of the Design and Crafts Council’s 50th anniversary. Because so many children are taking part, a special junior raffle will be held for them. The aim is to get the blocks sent in by the end of the month.

For more information you can contact Mary, or contact us and we will pass on the info.

Last month we challenged everyone to show us their (oldest) UFO (unfinished object), and at this meeting we had quite a few shown. It was great to hear how we ended up not finishing these projects, and when and where they were started. There was encouragement for some projects to call them finished right now. And other projects were suddenly back in favour to be finished after having been hidden away for a long time. I think the oldest project was from the late 1980s…! And one of us admitted to have thrown out some projects that were never going to get finished!

Of course, there were some recent projects to show as well, see photos at the end of this post.

After this, we had a lovely chat and a lively discussion about quilting, the society and the branch. If you want to join our meeting online next month, look out for our emails (check your spam/social folder if you don’t find it, or contact us to ask about it or to find out about other ways to stay in touch). It is possible to attend from a computer/laptop/phone or tablet, and as was discussed yesterday, someone without camera or microphone was still enjoying the experience (and was able to join the discussion using the chat function…).

Next month we will have a speaker from Northern Ireland. Jude (Judith Hollies) is a prolific quilter and sewist, and a teacher both online and (when possible) in person. Find out more on her website: Just Jude Designs or if you like find her on Facebook or Instagram. We will have more details on her visit when we announce next month’s meeting.

Lastly, of course, a post should have photos!

Marie showed several project in various states of being finished (or not even started, but planned):