Virtual show and tell-January

In place of our usual show and tell at our monthly meeting it seems like a good idea to have a monthly roundup of what everyone has been making.

This is the second elephant that Barbara has made. What a brilliant choice of fabric!

This was the first attempt that Mags had at a swap block. She decided that it wasn't suitable       
(mainly because she wanted to keep it for herself!)

This was made by Barbara G from the Inferno fabric by Guicy Guice. She is so in love
 with this fabric that she's already bought another load of it!

This is another attempt by Mags for her swap!

This is Liz, somewhat behind the rest of us, making the first lockdown quilt. It's certainly
bringing back memories for the rest of us

This is mine (Cat) and it's one quarter of my Orbital quilt by Libs Elliott. Made mostly with 
Kona and Dashwood solids. Just another three of these to go!

This is Heather's finished top for her Dandelion clock quilt which she started at a Jo Avery class.
I love the way all of these clocks look totally different from each other.
Check them out on Instagram at #dandelionclock

We have lots of new members this month! This is by Marianne, made for her sister's 50th birthday
and just finished. Her sister is now 53! It is also absolutely massive!!

This is Barbara G forcing her poor husband out in the snow to show us her
finished top from Jo Avery's book

These two quilts are from another new member. These are Avril's latest finishes.
They are an Avery garland quilt and Elizabeth Hartman's penguins

And talking of the lockdown quilt this is Margaret's completed quilt.
Totally quilted by hand!!








And just look at the talented makes by the Flower Girls this month. A small extra bit of crafting, started during lockdown last year, and still continuing. 

Not a bad haul for January!

As i mentioned above we have some new members this month. So welcome Catriona, Dawn, Avril, Marianne, Caroline and Kristen. We hope to see lots of your work here in the coming months

Dancing with Irene

And a final project from last year which i saved till last. Irene Roderick is the Irene in question. She is an artist who moved on to quilting a few years ago. She has a special technique unique to her called "dancing with the wall" It involves a sewing machine, a pile of fabric and a design wall. The idea is that you simply make up pieces of improv using the fabric at hand and then put them on the wall-the dancing is the part where you are going back and forward from sewing machine to design wall (there is no mention of the stage when you just sit there, staring at the wall, wondering what the hell you are doing....)

We did this course over a week. The first night Irene went through the process, referenci
ng her work, which is absolutely stunning-check it out on the link above-and sent us off to play. Two days later she was back to go through the mechanics of sewing together many random pieces of fabric which have now taken over your life. Irene constantly monitored our WhatsApp group, adding encouragement and helpful hints. Two days later we were all back to show what we had achieved. I'm sure no-one will mind me saying that this was somewhat varied! We all met up again 6 weeks later to show our final (or as final as they were going to get) Here are the things that we produced-some more finished than others!

This one belongs to Jo. We has almost as much fun naming these as we did making them. This one so closely resembled a favourite cake which had landed on the floor (?) that it became known as Oops i dropped my battenburg. Although this does rather miss the point that if anybody did drop any cake several of us would have caught it before it got anywhere the floor 

This one belongs to Barbara. All those flying geese seemed like a really good idea until the time came to sew the whole thing together. It's known as Flight of the covid geese

This one is Irene's quilt. She put us all to shame by finishing this well before the rest of us even had anything remotely resembling a quilt

This is Juliet's quilt, called Evolution. This went through an initial phase of looking a little gynaecological. Every time Juliet tried to do something about it, she made it even more gynaecological so we just stopped mentioning it

  

 

 

This is Heather's. This went together with considerably less swearing and general angst than the rest. Note the beautiful quilting!

                                                 

This one belongs to Pam. It went through many different versions of assorted animals, from dragons to this, which was known as Ferdinand the fancy pigeon (or something like that) Rumour has it he migrated to warmer climes and was never seen again

This one belongs to Mags and it's called I've got the blues. This is possibly a reference to how she felt after this class, which she didn't enjoy at all. I still think it's brilliant!

This beauty is by Karen and was a bit of a nightmare to construct. So much so that she resorted to applique for some pieces, leaving some of us to wonder why we hadn't thought of that

This one is by Pauline and is somewhat smaller than the rest. This is mainly down to the fact that she only started making it the night before our six week later review! I like it best this way up, where you can marvel at it's main feature. It has no name, but i think it should  be called Decapitation of a llama.

This one is the last. It belongs to me (Cat) and i have no real idea how it ended up looking like this. It's called One angry dwarf and two hundred solemn faces. Just because. Bonus point if you recognise the title.

So that was it. Possibly the most fun, and most inspiring class we will ever do. Irene is still running these classes-info on her website. You should sell your granny if necessary to get yourself  a place. I promise you won't regret it.

An evening with Stitchbirdie

Last night our guild along with our friends in the Glasgow MQG were treated to a talk by the talented Lorna Reid, otherwise known as Stitchbirdie. Check her out on Instagram to see just how talented she is (and also that she has a cat, which means she is undoubtedly a good person)

 Despite not having given many talks before she gave us a fascinating tour of her creative life, from high end swimwear designer, to running a studio/shop in West Kilbride and then to her year taking part in the Stitchstories: 52 postcards, where a group of creatives each made a postcard-sized artwork every week for the whole of 2019. 

The original 52 stitched stories originated in Arran with Fiona Doubleday. Ange Sewell of Weft Blown brought it to West Kilbride where it is known simply as 52 Stories. Not only did we get to see all the postcards but we got an insight into the design process and construction of each of them. The detail and precision are incredible.

Below are some examples-

 
And just to show off a bit, this image on the left shows our attempts to produce some embellished paisley designs in a class we did with Lorna (where we were all in the same room-remember that?)

 

Get a hold of this fabulous woman and book her to do a talk for your guild. We’re trying to persuade her to do some online classes too, so we can try some of the techniques we have now heard about!

Thanks for a wonderful evening Lorna.

NB she did once design a jumper for Pringle which was worn by Nick Faldo but please don't hold that against her......

 

Images used here are copyright of Lorna Reid. Please don’t use without her permission