Wild Threads West Cork are a group of textile artists, who meet to share, support and stimulate each other to create stunning pieces of hand stitched art. Some of them are our own members, too. They take inspiration from the flora, fauna, land and seascapes of West Cork.

The group have an exhibition at the Blue House Gallery in Schull, from 26 July to 7 August. So take a trip this summer, support them and check out their work!

For more information click on the links in the text.

The IPS is exhibiting 152 EQA Boundaries quilts at the Limerick School of Art and Design. “Boundaries” was the theme for the 2018 EQA challenge, and the quilts were displayed last year in Birmingham.

The exhibition is open from 16-19 July and 22-26 July in the LSAD Cathedral Gallery, from 10 am to 5 pm. Not open at weekends.

The exhibition for Hands Across the Border – Ruby Serendipity had its official opening on Thursday July 6th, in Louth County Library, Dundalk. The exhibition will continue in Dundalk until July 12th, library opening hours.

The Hands Across the Border exhibition then moves to the Chapter Room, St Mary’s Cathedral, St James’s Road, Kilkenny from 17th to 21st of July.

The IPS will be present at the European Quilt Association stand at Festival of Quilts in Birmingham from July 31st to August 4th.

Challenges:

– Knitting and Stitching: The challenge for all members is to make a quilt measuring A2 (16.5″x23.4″) (420mm x 594mm) ‘portrait’ and the theme is “There is always one!” Quilts to be brought to your September meeting. Forms will be available shortly. 

– For those of you who like a challenge there is an open call for art work for Westival Music and Arts Festival in Westport in October. The closing date for the visual arts call out is August 16th 2019. The theme is Brittle/Fragile – what suits this theme better than textiles? – have a go, the more we present textiles for exhibition the more acceptable it will become and we all know that we can hold our against any other art medium. More information on https://westival.ie/pages/visual-arts-open-call

For those of you who intend to go to the AGM this weekend, the agenda of the meeting can be downloaded below:

AGENDA AGM Irish Patchwork Society (39 KB)

Also, in case you haven’t received an email about the last-minute change of venue for the weekend, below are the main changes:

Have an enjoyable weekend in Galway!

We gathered for a great meeting on Saturday 18 May.
A wonderful group of quilters visited us from the Mid West branch, and Nikki from the Sewing Shed brought her goodies from County Kerry.

We started by introducing the new branch committee:

At the start of a new year for the committee, we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to let us know what you want from our meetings and our branch. Suggestion slips were available at the meeting in the hope of receiving feedback from our members. Let us know what you like, what you don’t like, who or what you’d like to see at the meetings, etc. If you missed them, they will be available again next month. Or get in touch with anyone of the committee to pass on your views…

Frances announced we have been invited to attend the opening of the exhibition “Colours of my Mind”, featuring work from Joke Buursma and Ethelda Ellis. The exhibition will be open in Mountmellick until the 27th of June.

Suzanne Pass from the Mid West branch then showed us slides of the 15 quilts she and others in the branch made for the Heart Children Ireland (also known as Henry Bear), a charity that provides quilts for children in Crumlin. they had just been handed over the previous week, but Suzanne also made a heart quilt for herself which she showed.

After that, all visitors from the Mid West branch showed us some of their individual work. From their wonderfully varied quilts:

To bags, wall hanging and cushion:

And a great reversible quilt:

Then it was time for our own show and tell:

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And Marie and Mai showed some quilts they had made for the Cork Cancer care Centre (formerly the Girls Club) who are looking for lap quilts.

In the afternoon Frances had an enthusiastic group (including the Mid West members) to do a mystery quilt, which was greatly enjoyed by all accounts.

We hope you will all be coming to our next meeting on June 8th, which will be the last before the summer.

I was delighted with the attendance at our AGM this month as we find that it gets slack when the AGM is mentioned ! We wore our Easter Bonnets for the occasion, no frills upon it!

That said I would like to thank the Ladies who have come forward to continue to look after our Branch Meetings. I hope you enjoy your time as much as I have the last 3 years and thank you for my Beautiful Quilt.

I was overwhelmed by the Quilt and the positive comments from all and would like to thank all the outgoing Committee members for their support and work that they put in to make our meetings so much fun.

I also roped them into making a Banner for our meetings, you can see behind some of the photos.

We also would like to thank our Library Ladies, Mai and Joan for the work they put in for the last nine years!

Our shop was Patchwork Plus with Moya and our Speaker was Sandra Jansen on her fantastic work so far especially her experiment with the Log Cabin Block.

Thank you to all for a wonderful Show and Tell and all the goodies.

We had a great meeting on Saturday with a first Visit from Quilt,Yarn,Stitch all the way from Tuam! Everyone was delighted with the quality and variety of the shop and thankfully  Roisin is willing to come again .

We also got to try out our new toy… hands free microphone, it really worked wonderfully and we are very grateful to Siobhan’s Husband Len Stone for researching the best one for us.

Our Speaker was Tracy Wardle on her experience doing the city and guild and we got to see her wonderful work. We all enjoyed her stories and were in awe of her work as she graciously passed around her pieces. What a Joy!

We then had our Show and Tell and everyone turned out the most fabulous pieces as usual.

Ita Doolan had a fabulous Quilt tool to show us in the form of two different size rings with two knobs to hold while quilting, taking the pressure off your hands trying to move the material around as you Quilt.

I would  like to remind everyone that next month is our AGM and encourage members to consider joining the Committee. We need at least 3/4 more people to help keep the Committee running properly.