Mariya Water's Workshop on the long weekend in June

This very interesting workshop was held in the new Ruth Fairfax House and several of the country girls stayed in the wonderful facilities of CWA's very own new building. Mariya is a dedicated quilter and lives in Melbourne and has won many professional and popular awards in Australia and U.S.A. Her 'Renaissance Revival' quilt (which I understand from a current Quilt Magazine has recently won Australia's National Quilt Award (sponsored by Bernina). This quilt is currently travelling around Australia with the Craft & Quilt Fair and will be in Brisbane later in the year. I was fortunate enough to view it at the Gold Coast Craft & Quilt Fair early in the year.

On the Sunday evening Mariya gave us a power point presentation of some of her quilts together with some of her prize winning quilts for us to see, study and touch.

Decorative Thread Workshop - Finished size 45cm X 55cm

The first day was spent working on a design using decorative threads using bobbin drawing, machine couching and echo machine quilting techniques. There were 2 patterns - Dandelions and Fish. The fabric used was either hand painted or batik styled fabric. The photos are of Mariya's samples and work in progress by some of the girls participating.

Ridgeland Branch Workshop

Earlier in the year Lynne (a Piecemaker's tutor) travelled to Ridgeland to conduct a Bargello Workshop for the Ridgeland members. Ridgeland is about 28 Klms from Rockhampton and consists of a School, CWA, Community Hall and Showground. Members for the workshop came from the surrounding properties and others who are now retirees from Rockhampton and other towns.

The photos above are of some of the half finished Bargello's and the other Lynne's teaching quilt.

Later I hope I will be able to post some of the finished articles.

Country Patchwork Daytripping

The Flyer said "Bring a hat and a chair". An invitation to an outback garden day, no, nothing like it. Come to the first open day for a new patchwork shop "Cow paddocks Patchwork Crafts n Coffee". Julie Latcham, a young enthusiastic patchworker and teacher on a property near Dulacca in Southern Queensland has set up shop in a Donga beside her house, where she also teaches a variety of workshops, has a mail order service (a must for isolated patchworkers) and fabric clubs.
Eleven members from the Mitchell Kenniff Country Quilters set off early for the 3 hour drive. We didn't fill the cars up with quilts for show and tell because we would need the space for our purchases. Some of us needed a fabric fix.
Even Julie was surprised at the response expecting about 50 people. Over 100 patchworkers from the Miles, Chinchilla, Condamine, Dulacca, Wallumbilla, Taroom, Wandoan, Glenmorgan, Mitchell and Charlewille areas as well as one from Barcaldine made the journey. It was a wonderful day with demonstrations of new products, competitions, lucky draws, informative presentations by a prize winning quilter and professional machine quilter both from the Glenmorgan district, inspirational show and tell and great food supplied by the local Dulacca Kindergarten and Playgroup mothers.
Being able to swap ideas and information with other quilting groups was part of the experience as well.
There is no need to tell you that Julie's shop was greatly depleted of stock when everyone left, however, I'm sure that her very diverse range of fabrics, patterns, threads and notions would quickly be replenished.
Our long trip home was full of chatter about the great time we had and how we will definitely make the effort to go next year as this will now be an annual event. We all agreed that those fold up chairs take up a lot of room in our car boot.
Written by Gary Burey.

Gary is a member of Amby QCWA and Piecemakers and also a member of Kenniff Country Quilters - Mitchell.

Quilts from Moggill members

The Hexagon Quilt was made by Liz who has a love of 'traditional quilts'. She used fabric from her stash and scraps from other quilts of friends and her own.

The Strip Quilt was made by Bernie from a Rainbow Kit from a 'Strip Club'. All the blocks are the same and placement and colours make the design.

Chelsea Physic Garden Small Quilt

This little quilt (8.5x9.5ins) was made to commemorate a trip Lesley made to Chelsea Physic Garden in London last year. This garden was originally opened to train apprentice apothecaries to identify and grow medicinal plants.

The quilt has as its base tea bags which were first used to make tea then dried, emptied of tea leaves and carefully opened out. They were then applied to a piece of painted calico with diluted PVC.

I drew the map showing the location of the garden in London, wrote the name of the benefactor Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) in the top right hand corner and the date of the start of the garden 1673 in the bottom middle. Other stamps were applied to the surface to indicate the use of the garden which was to collect and grow medicinal plants from around the world, something it still does today. In the bottom right corner a rock garden is shown as the garden has the oldest such in Europe. There is also a stamp of a rhino as for some reason this appears on the top of the gate to the garden.

After stamping I coloured some of the images then quilted it using the map of the layout of the gardens as the template.

Chelsea Physic Garden is the second oldest of this type of garden in England and still continues to maintain its collection of rare and medicinal plants from around the world.

Sashiko Crazy Patch Workshop 2007 at Emu Park

Finished Quilts

This beautiful blue quilt was created by

Joy from Yeppoon.

Bernie from the Moggill branch made this

at the Emu Park workshop. Note the richness

and depth of colour.

Photos from Yeppoon

These photos were sent from Yeppoon when two friends, both CWA members but from different branches, spent some sewing time together with Meggs the cat.