January: Heritage Quilt project is in progress

Members of the Western Branch of the Irish Patchwork Society are working on a group heritage quilt which will be donated to the Galway City Museum during the exhibition there in May.

The quilt will be made up of various sized blocks, depicting scenes from Galway city, county and the West of Ireland.

All of these will be assembled into a quilt over the coming months.

The photo shows work in progress on a block depicting 'The Long Walk' by the Corrib Quilters. The block is being made in 3 sections (sky, houses and water) and uses a variety of piecing and applique techniques. The finer details will be stitched on top. Photos of more blocks to follow!

January quilting bee

The snow and ice made it unsafe for a lot of people to travel to the January meeting and so the slideshow and talk by Naomh Muire Quilters will be postponed until the February meeting.

In the meantime we made a start on assembling the raffle quilt using the recent challenge blocks.

First the blocks were laid out on the floor. A further two blocks will be made into matching cushions.

Toni got to work pressing seams as neutral sashing was added between each block.

Mari was busy cutting sashing strips.

Margaret got to work stitching.

Mary, Joan and Colette trimmed each block to 12.5 inches.

January quilting bee

Veronika and Johanna trim the blocks.

Berni is busy sewing rows of blocks together.

A job well done! The smiling faces of some of those who participated in putting the quilt together.

Still needs a border, which will be added next month and then it goes off to Frances in Maam to be 'long-arm quilted'. It's looking good!

January Show and Tell

This quilt was made by members of Naomh Muire Quilters to donate to victims of the recent flooding in Ireland.

Sally made this block showing a hurley and a very realistic sliotar as a tribute to Galway's hurling tradition for the Heritage quilt we are making to donate to the Galway City Museum.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to snowy 2010! Despite the bad weather, for those of you who can make it we will be meeting as usual on the second Saturday of the month (9th January) at 10am in the Bridge Centre, St. Mary's Road, Galway.

The Naomh Muire Quilters will give a talk about their recent trip to Hungary to view the exhibition which featured the 'Let the Flowers Bloom' quilts. They will also explain how they approach the making of a group quilt like the one above which was made to celbrate the Volvo Ocean Race in Galway.

And in the afternoon we will have a 'Quilting Bee' where we will work on putting together the raffle quilt.

If you can make it safely, we hope to see you there. If the weather prevents you from travelling, stay safe and warm at home and drop by the blog next week for snapshots from the meeting.

Hand-made name-tags

Veronika did a great job making name-tags for each member. They make a colourful display!