First Quilt Group Meeting of the Year

Lots of lovely people have been asking my what they can do to help which is wonderful.  I have been working on a list of suggestions which I will share with you but first a run down on today's activities.

What a productive day.  Not all the Gumnuts could meet today because of various holiday commitments but we still got lots done.  We all gathered at our favourite quilt store and started sewing early.  

Left to right - Lyn, Del, Audrey and Debbie.

And we are all watching Sharon preparing some morning tea - 

 Who else but our lovely Sharon would bring the icing sugar to sprinkle on our muffins for morning tea!

 Debbie brought this quilt with her.  She had taken the nine patches that Tarnyia had sent us and turned them into this lovely quilt top.

 Then she got to sewing these gorgeous purple nine patches, also from Tarnyia, adding the green sashing and purple corner stones.  Now Debbie has taken it home to finish it off with a purple border.  The computer does not do the colours justice - this is such a pretty quilt in the flesh!

 I finished off three laundry bags and now they just need their draw strings before I pop them in the mail tomorrow.

 Lyn worked on these stars, most of which Celia had sewn.  We added the two with dark green backgrounds to being them up to 15 and then Lyn went on to start adding a magenta-ish sashing - sorry forgot to get a picture - too busy sewing.

 Sharon worked all day on these disappearing nine patches for a horse loving soldier girl.  Can't wait to see this all together.  I had cut all the pieces out and Sharon sewed them - her first disappearing none patch - I think I have her converted.

 I also worked on stars - making more to go with some Celia had sewn - I didn't finish any - can you believe that when I cut out the extras I forgot to cut out the corner pieces of each block - needless to say I have homework to do!  So, in order to make the most of my time I took some fabric that was donated to Debbie and started cutting 6 1/2inch strips - sewed them all together and then just before I left to come home I got the huge long strip cut into 27 42" strips - that is enough for 2 1/2 quilts!  I think I will be cutting an extra 6 strips next chance I get!  

So that was our very productive day!  Tiring but oh so satisfying!

Now, what can you do to help?

I have tried to structure this to be inclusive of everyone, regardless of skill, time of financial situation.   I hope everyone can find something here that they are happy or comfortable with.

1. make a laundry bag or two (or three……)  Instructions coming up in my blog soon - hopefully tomorrow night
2. make a quilt top (or two or three….)  The soldiers quilts are made and sized specifically to fit into a particular sized post box coz then I can post them for free – anything posted to the soldiers in Afghanistan under 2kg is free!   I designed our quilts to be the width of the fabric so about 42” and about 66” or 1.8m long. Basically we just sewed 6 1/2 “ wide strips of fabric together into one long strip – cut that down into 42” lengths and 11 of those made up the quilt tops. Quick and simple – utilitarian but I still think they looked cool and the guys that have received them so far loved them.
3. make a quilt – Follow the instructions above and then layer and quilt.  We simply quilted in the ditch along the stitching lines of each row – i.e. ten rows of stitching per quilt.  Mind you, we had 23 quilts to layer and quilt in one day.   More quilting would probably not be a bad idea.  Binding is sewn on by machine for durability.  I cut my normal binding about 2 1/2 “ but for these quilts, to make it easier to managed I cut 2 ¾”.  Sew on the back first, fold over to the front and use a zig zag stitch if you like or a straight stitch – whatever you are comfortable with.
4. if you don’t have time to sew a quilt or a laundry bag, no problems.  Cut some 6 ½” strips and send them to me to be incorporated into quilt tops here.  Or you can buy or send me 80cm of fabric for a laundry bag and send it to me!  I will make it up.
5. If you want to sew something but don’t have fabric, let me know and I will send you a kit to make a quilt top or laundry bag.
6. If you are time poor but still want to help, you could buy some batting online (we always need batting!) and have it shipped to me for the quilts.  Batting is one thing we are in short supply of and always have to buy.

 If you have any other ideas how you can help, please let me know.  I am definitely open to suggestions.  I try to answer all emails as long as you are able to be contacted.  I try to get back to you on the day you contact me but I am coordinating this on my own with sewing help from my quilt group, so please bear with me if it takes me a day or so.

Happy stitching!