Suddenly it is September, and there is an autumnal feel to the day… How did that happen so suddenly?!
After a lovely summer with (for me) not all that much sewing, we are looking forward to evenings with a quilt again!
The recent news on the upcoming lifting of restrictions is promising for in-person meetings, so we may be organising “real” meetings soon. Unfortunately, that time has not come quite yet so the committee has had to decide to have our monthly meeting online again. I suppose we all have to have a little more patience.
We are meeting this Saturday 11 September using Zoom. Members will have been sent the link by email, contact us if you are a member and you haven’t received it.
PROGRAMME:
9.30 AM – start of the meeting and a short branch update.
10 AM – SPEAKER: Suzanne Pass will give us a talk on her recent visit to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. Expect lots of quilt photos to inspire!!
Afterwards – SHOW & TELL – send us your photos in advance so we can share what you’ve been up to!
This morning we had our last meeting for the summer and everyone was in good spirits.
All members should now have received your fat quarter (get in touch if you haven’t), and hopefully it will inspire some projects to keep us busy over the coming months.
We are planning a sewing meeting (socially distanced) outside in the Regional Park in Ballincollig. We hope some of you may join us there to work on your own hand project, or to help with sewing bindings to some of the quilts of the “Keep Well” project. We hope to be in touch with details (and directions) about this in a few weeks time, and dependent on the weather of course.
Also, a reminder that the national AGM for the IPS will be held on Saturday 19 June online. Check your emails for details and to register. This is the opportunity for all members to find out what is going on at national level and to make your voice heard if there is anything you want to discuss.
We do not know yet what September will look like regarding meetings, so we will be in contact about that nearer the time.
Below some lovely work that was shared with us from Tracy, Assumpta and Sandra. Wishing you all a lovely summer!
This coming Saturday, June 12, we will be holding our June branch meeting, starting at 10AM. The link to the meeting has been sent to our members by email.
This will be a “Sit and Chat” meeting, to catch up with each other and have a get-together before we have a break over the summer.
While we will not be having a meeting in the coming months, we hope you will keep sewing. To encourage everyone we are setting you a challenge. Our members will be receiving a small surprise in the post, and we hope that you all will be inspired to make something with it. In the hope that we will be able to see your makes in person, we have set the finish time for this challenge for our November meeting.
As we are almost at the end of our patchwork year, I also would like to say thank you to all the members who have stayed with us and tried to make the best of a year (and more) of meeting online and sharing your quilting with us via photos. You have been brilliant!
We hope to see you all at our meeting this Saturday at 10AM, so grab a drink, find your meeting link email and connect with us!
Thank you to all who joined us for today’s meeting. We were happy to welcome Frances Gamble from New Zealand for a talk on how she documents her work.
After a false start caused by me (twice!! – I’ve sat on my hands the rest of the time), Frances treated us to a lovely talk. She showed us how she keeps track of how projects are made (pattern, fabrics, and all kind of information). Of course this included lots of photos of her quilts and other makes, which was most inspiring. In preparation for the talk she had gone through her older records as well, and found it most interesting to see how her style has changed over time, too.
Another inspiring theme was Frances’ use of textiles like old table clothes or embroidered blocks into her quilts. Sometimes they were used as a frame around the label, other times as blocks in a quilt, or as pieces into the back.
We all came away with ideas and inspiration. And in discussion it was concluded that it is never too late to start keeping a record of your own, even if it is just to look back on what you’ve made, or to easily find that pattern that you want to make again.
Colette send us some photos of her quilts to share:
Our next meeting will be on Saturday 12 June, so be on the lookout for the link in your emails a few days before that.
This Saturday, 8 May, we will hold our monthly branch meeting. This month we will have a special guest from the other side of the world, thanks to the wonders of the internet! Frances Gamble moved several years ago from Cork to New Zealand, and she has agreed to stay up late to give us a talk.
To make sure she isn’t missing too much of her “beauty sleep”, we have decided to start somewhat earlier than usual due to the time difference with NZ: Our meeting will be starting from 9 AM, with Frances’ talk starting at 9.30.
This morning we had a brilliant meeting, with a record number of attendees. Thank you to members of “other” branches of the IPS who attended, I hope you enjoyed your visit “down South”!
The highlight of our meeting was the talk by our visitor Judith Hollies, from Belfast. Judith spoke about her personal journey from sewing on a treadle machine for many years, making clothes and other items, followed by doing a City & Guilds course in patchwork and quilting, and finally to teaching and having her own premises to teach in.
This introduction was followed by Judith’s extensive Show & Tell of the many items she has made in different fabrics, many of which are repurposed. Vintage sheets, denim, tweed and many other fabrics are used, and the explanations of the specific techniques used for each showed Judith’s expertise and experience. The talk was very much enjoyed, and many of us felt inspired to give our “non-patchwork” fabrics a try in a future project. On behalf of everyone, thank you Judith!!
If anyone wants to know more about Judith and her work, find her website at https://justjude-designs.com/ or look her up on social media:
Our own members have also been active, and have sent these pictures of their own work:
Assumpta made this quilt top from a pattern from quilts.com found on Pinterest:
She also made this “Trip around the World” quilt which has just come back after Mary worked her quilting magic on it:
Colette made these journal quilts, “Curves and Discord”::
Moya sent this picture of an Easter altar cloth that she made for her Mom’s parish:
And finally, Sandra finished this wall hanging “Against the Current” which was made following a “sew-along” organised by Nicholas Ball on Instagram (@quiltsfromtheattic) making improvised fish. It was a great way to make it up as I went along, and trying a facing on non-straight edges:
Next month we will have a visit from Frances Gamble from New Zealand, so mark your diaries for the 8th of May.
We will have our April meeting this Saturday, the link has been emailed to our members. Check your email inbox…
We are very happy to say we have secured a speaker for our meeting! Judith Hollies is a very experienced quilter, making quilts and smaller items. She often uses repurposed fabrics in her sewing.
We hope that you will all attend, it would be good to have many people showing we appreciate a visitor!!
On another note, we are looking for members to help out in the committee. It isn’t much work and the current committee members are staying, but we could do with some extra pairs of hands! Please seriously consider if it could be your turn to give your support to the branch in this way.
We hope we will see you all there! We start at 10.30, with our speaker scheduled for 11.00.
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!
Tracy’s not quite finished quilt.Tracy made this for the Cork Textiles Network “comfort” challenge
Marie showed several project in various states of being finished (or not even started, but planned):
Marie showed also this finished quilt
Colette made these three blocks as part of a year-long block of the month
Colette also finished this machine appliqué quilt after a class with Tracy
Bernie had this as an unfinished quilt, but finished it in the past few weeks
Assumpta made this top recently, light borders are planned for it
It was lovely to see everyone at the meeting this morning. Thanks go to Tracy Watson, who gave a wonderful talk. She spoke about making a series of quilts for an exhibition in The Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon (Co. Clare) a few years ago. Starting with how she came to make quilts for an exhibition, she spoke of her inspiration, photos, samples and sketchbooks. Showing lots of photos of her quilts she spoke of the colour choices, curved piecing, trapunto, couching and quilting. Afterwards more explanations followed, especially on the techniques she used. A very inspiring talk, the only disappointment being that we can’t touch the quilts through our screens, or even see their texture close up…! We will have to invite Tracy again when we are able to meet in person once more…
Frances McCarthy showed us some older projects that were never finished, and there was much discussion about how long ago they may have been started. There was some discussion on old projects and why they weren’t finished. So next month’s challenge is to show your old(est) UFO (quilt top, blocks, etc.) at our next meeting. It will be great to see that (probably) all of us have unfinished items that did not get finished for one reason or another… Please send photos in advance so we can make a little slide show!
This month Tracy Wardle sent us a photo of a quilt she made from the instructions for the 2020 Mystery Quilt by Mary Palmer. About 40 mystery quilts were made in the IPS, all very different due to the colour choices. Tracy chose a dark background:
For anyone who would like to do their own version of this mystery (though no longer a complete mystery now you’ve seen this photo…), the instructions can still be found on the IPS website, under Resources – 2020 Patterns. You will need to log into the site since this part of the site is only visible to members.
Some weeks ago Colette Carey sent us some photos, too. The first two are baby quilts made for her two granddaughters born in 2020:
She also sent photos of two small journal quilts, that which were completed in an ongoing course with Nikki Foley:
Our next meeting will be held on 13 March. It would be great if we could receive photos of your finished projects, and of your (old) unfinished quilts, in advance of the meeting. We will gather them in a slide show for the meeting.
Look out for the link which will be emailed as usual. A reminder will be posted nearer the time, here and on our Facebook page, too.
Southern Branch of the Irish Patchwork Society 