Category: Uncategorized

October Recap

On By corkipsIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

There was such a buzz at the meeting last Saturday, and what a turn out! It was great to see everyone.

We were joined by Moya Geraghty of Patchwork Plus, whose shop is always a big draw. Moya gave us a fascinating and inspiring talk entitled ” Sure, I haven’t a Notion – Current trends in Patchwork and quilting”

Moya Geraghty, Patchwork Plus

Also with us were Adam and Jack from the Singer Sewing Centre, Waterford, who expertly serviced more sewing machines than I could count in the course of the meeting. Many thanks to them for coming along. If you didn’t make it to the meeting on Saturday and your sewing machine is overdue for some TLC, then check out the website here https://www.sewingmachines.ie/

Adam and Jack from the Singer Sewing Centre, Waterford

And, of course, we had our usual amazing Show and Tell of our members’ work…

Ann Pasley was delighted with her adorable Reindeer mug rug; Assumpta Lydon showed us her completed quilt from Lena Pugachova’s Improv Curves workshop last month; Heidi Wischniewski showed off her Improv Curves quilt, cute (and useful!) trinket trays and a ‘manly’ quilt in autumnal colours; Bernie Kelly brought in a beautifully hand quilted baby quilt panel; Noreen Brazier showed us an I Spy quilt. As an Early Years Education specialist she had added a matching bag of squares, each with a different texture, to match to the jars on the quilt – amazing; Marie Sprott also brought in her completed Improv Curves quilt as well as a quilt she has very kindly made for the local priest; and finally Tracy Wardle showed us her completed quilt made for her Row by Row Block of the Month (course is still available to purchase!), and two Christmas items – a Shoo Fly Christmas tree wall-hanging and a Leaf and Berry table runner – both for upcoming workshops, contact Tracy at twaddle1164@gmail.com for details.

As part of Show and Tell Mary Palmer showed off one of the Quilts for Ukraine that she and lots of our members have been working on in the last while. The next Sewing Day for Quilts for Ukraine is Sunday 20th November. Please note that Mary will also be having two Open Sew Days on Sundays 30th October and 27th November.

All of these sewing days will be held at Knockavilla Community Hall. Contact Mary Palmer here marimu.designs@gmail.com or call +353 87 948 1567 for more details or to get involved.

Mary Palmer with a Quilt for Ukraine

Next meeting is our Open Meeting on Saturday 12th November, same time, same place. This meeting is free to attend, we’ll have a shop, demonstrations of various patchwork techniques, tea/coffee, cake and chat! Why not come along and meet up with like minded thread-heads?

Coming Up: September Meeting

On By corkipsIn Meeting Announcement, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Lena Pugacheva – Improv Curved Piecing

After our sultry summer break it is time to break out the needles and pins again! Our first Branch Meeting of the year is this coming Saturday 10th September.

Venue: Sacred Heart Church Hall

Door open: 10am

Shop: Lismore Quilt Company

Speaker: Lena Pugachova

Show and Tell: Bring along your most recent work for us to coo over

Coffee and Tea: Provided. Bring along some sweet treats to share

Library: A small selection from the library will be available for your perusal

Please note that if you haven’t already renewed or joined online via the website, that you can renew your membership at the meeting. Please bring along your printed and completed forms with the subscription fee of €50 (cash only if paying at the meeting). Forms will also be available at the meeting.

We welcome Lena Pugachova to our first meeting of the year. Lena will be our speaker and is also giving a workshop on Improv Curved Piecing in the afternoon. Workshop was full as of June 2022 but enquiries can be made via our email corkips@gmail.com.

See you there!

November meeting recap

On By sewofcourseIn Meeting Recap, UncategorizedLeave a comment

For the first time we organised our meeting in person as well as online, and we even managed (imperfectly) to connect the two!

It was lovely to see so many attending the church hall this morning, even if the facilities were limited… I’m sure to see the quilts in Show & Tell “for real” must have been quite a treat, as well as shopping for fabric, of course.

Online we had about 10 people, and it was greatly appreciated that we offered this option too.

Assumpta spoke about the Passage West Creates shop, that she found herself manager of, with great enthusiasm. By the looks of the display tables they have a lovely selection of handmade items for sale in the shop, as well as brilliant community activities. Definitely worthwhile to check out if you are in the area, or if you are too far, visit their online shop: https://passagewestcreates.ie/

Our summer challenge, using a fat quarter that was sent to our members at the start of summer, had quite a few entries. We will be drawing a winner from all entries and will announce the winner in an email. Some were shown in the hall, others sent to our email address. And the Show & Tell had a wonderful array of quilts, cushions and other items:

Many of us have been making for Christmas, too:

Some links that you may want to have a look at:

Our next meeting will be the Christmas meeting, planned for 11 December. Keep an eye on your emails to find the details nearer the time. In the mean time the committee will be scratching their heads over quiz questions and other festivities…

September again

On By sewofcourseIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

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!

May meeting

On By sewofcourseIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Good morning everyone,

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.

We hope you will al join us at this earlier time!

September meeting recap

On By sewofcourseIn Meeting Recap, Uncategorized, Virtual MeetingLeave a comment

Online meeting

Since our September 2020 meeting could not take place in person, it was “moved” from the hall to an online meeting on Zoom. Eight of us managed to join the meeting, where we chatted all things quilts and beyond.

Frances showed us her indigo/white quilt top from a star pattern by Marsha McCloskey. She also managed to find the bright top she made from the “Sewcial Distancing” quilt-along by Nicky Foley (Sewing Shed) as well as a “disappearing nine-patch” in progress for a baby quilt.

Marie showed a baby quilt she made with soft blue and yellow fabrics and Beatrix Potter prints (see below for a photo).

We were able to share some of Moya’s (Patchwork Plus) new website, too. She found the time to set it up during the summer (due to Covid), and will be adding more to it. Find the link on our Helpful Links page.

Frances mentioned that she enjoyed the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show (online) which can be found at https://quiltshow.com/.

Also, the quilt galleries as well as (free) workshops and lectures of the Festival of Quilts can be accessed until the next festival in 2021 at https://www.thefestivalofquilts.co.uk/beyond-the-festival-of-quilts/.

Memberships are now due, and should preferably be sent to our branch treasurer (see the email we sent recently). Members that haven’t renewed by the end of October will be removed from our database and will no longer receive emails or the IPS Newsletter…

Finally, we will soon be sending a short questionnaire round (by email) to all our members to see what we can do in the coming months…

Show and Tell

Several people shared their quilt project photos with us, so here is a recap of those:

Marie Sprott made this cot quilt for a friend whose daughter is expecting her first baby in October. The quilt is made up of nine patches plus squares from Beatrix Potter fabric . I did zig zag machine quilting across the 9 patch blocks and I am in the middle of doing free motion quilting in the white areas of the BP squares. As you can see it is being scrutinized by two friends:

Tracy Wardle has finished two projects this month. The first is my 2nd mini double wedding ring – finally, I completed a quilt for my bedroom!

And secondly, I quilted, bound and labelled the quilt I’ve been working on from last year’s Kaffe Fassett workshop up in Newtownmountkennedy. Another UFO down! I downsized it for a throw rather than a bed quilt then added a couple of inner borders before finishing with a Chinese coins border, which I mitred for a nice effect. I experimented with a 3.5″ double fold binding (á la Philippa Naylor) – what do you think? Thanks to Moya at Patchwork Plus for the gorgeous backing fabric, it’s perfect!

Heidi Wischniewski finished her Baltimore Applique Quilt and is “quite pleased with it”:

She started a new project “20 Different Cats Quilt “. Bought the Downloads from Susan Claire @ Gourmet Quilter.com. 12 cats done already in raw edge applique and I’m loving it:

Eilís Watson has truly been busy. She made 5 pixelated heart quilts (tutorial available on Missouri Star Quilt Company). Two (unquilted) are made from 5” x 5” squares and will be gifted to my friend’s two daughters. Two (turquoise and purple/pink) are stitched using 4.25” x 4.25” squares and the little one (floral) was made with 3.5” x 3.5” squares. These three were given to three of my nieces during lockdown:

The other quilt was made for a staff member’s new baby boy. The pattern is from #kitchentablequilting and was part of a lockdown quiltalong. Other quilts, using this pattern can be seen on #tessaqal:

Thank you all for sending the photos and for joining us online this morning! And members, keep an eye on your inbox, we will be in touch soon…

Virtual “meeting” in May

On By sewofcourseIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

For those who read the blog, but not their emails…

We are putting together another post of “Show and Tell” instead of our meeting tomorrow. If anybody has a photo of any current or recent project (or more than one), please forward them to us at the usual email address.

Many thanks, we hope to see your work at the meeting tomorrow!

April branch meeting going virtual

On By corkipsIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

We hope you are all well, and coping as best you can with the current situation.
As you will expect, there will be no branch meeting this Saturday, and no-one really knows when we will be able to get together again. So as a community we have to limit ourselves to online contact.

In my last post I asked you to send us a picture of your current project (finished or work-in-progress) to add to a gallery on the website. I was hoping that we would have lots of photos and it would feel like a virtual show and tell. However, so far we have received exactly ONE photo to fill the page…!!!
I will be making a post on Saturday to show off that one photo (I will be adding a couple of my own), but I would love to see others send me an image showing what they get up to in their crafting time. I am NOT looking for professional photos, I do NOT need that heirloom quilt showing off. But maybe that baby quilt you are sewing the top for, the wall hanging that still needs binding, that new pattern you are sewing up, even the crochet you have been doing to try and relax in the evenings….. Share it with us, please, and let us feel as if we are meeting while browsing the photos on the website.

So get your phone/camera out, and take a picture. Describe what the picture is and send the photo to us. We all would like to see!

And to get us all some inspiration for sewing/quilt making, I have been working on the website, too. We have made a new page: “Sew at Home” where you can find ideas and links to patterns, most of which are free. If you know of any other links that can be added, do let us know and we can update the page.
Also check out our older pages, “Block of the Month”, “Back to Basics” and “Downloads” have some good project ideas, too.

So, stay home, stay safe (and keep sewing)!
Sandra

An Update

On By sewofcourseIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Dear members (and anyone reading),

In these unsettling and strange times, I am writing to say hello to you all.

Now we are forced to stay home, some of us will have much more time to sew than usual, others will have much less time than in ordinary times. But our quilting (and crafting in general) mostly helps keep us sane, so let’s celebrate that!

Since we will not be able to have our monthly meetings for the moment, we would like to create an online “Show & Tell”. Please take a photo (or several) of (you and) your sewing, quilting, piecing, or otherwise crafty project. Like with our usual show and tell, tell us what the project is, and perhaps how you will finish it, or any other information… Send the photo + info to our usual email address (comment below with your name if you don’t know it, and I can send it to any IPS member asking).

We are hoping to have a virtual “meeting” here on the blog, on our planned meeting day of 18 April (or as close to it as possible) by posting photos of us all and our project(s). A big post hopefully with images to cheer us all.

We are also working on putting up ideas for if you are stuck at home and need inspiration. We will post about it and send emails round when it is live on the site…

For now, take heart, take care, stay safe, stay sane…

Sandra x