September Guest Speaker: Mogs McDonnell shows her designs for 'Fashion Sans Frontieres' at Birmingham Festival of Quilts

Congratulations to Mogs on her fashion collection for 'Fashion sans Frontieres' at the Birmingham Festival of Quilts in August 2011. Chairperson, Lynn Naughton presented Mogs with flowers and a big thank you from the Western Branch for making us so proud! Mogs received an award for the quality of her stitching and workmanship in her evening-wear collection. The Irish Patchwork Society team of 4 received an overall award for their day-wear collection.

Mogs shows the back of her pieced, quilted velvet coat. The title for Mogs' collection was 'Swanning Around on the Corrib'. Taking inspiration from the white, black and orange of the swans and the blue of the lake and sky, Mogs created her colour palette for the collection.

Mogs shows the front of her coat, with fur trim on the neckline.

Mogs created a 70's inspired day-wear look with tie-dyed top, over-sized baker-boy cap, elephant-flare denims and traditional Irish críos (belt) which was hand-woven by Mairéad Sharry on Inisheer.

Mogs gave us a wonderful talk, slide-show (with grateful assistance from Agnes Warren) and show & tell. She took us through her journey from being asked by EQA representative, Loretta O'Brien to participate, creating her 'mood-board' to describe her inspirations, creating each piece, travelling to Birmingham, practicing for the cat-walk and finally the show itself. We are so proud of all her work and in awe of her talent! Keep it up Mogs!

Monthly meeting on September 10th: Welcome back!

Here's a letter from our chairperson Lynn Naughton to welcome you back after the summer break and outline our upcoming activities...

The committee met last week to finalise the details for our upcoming branch meetings. This Saturday we have an exciting line up. Our shop is Rags for Linda and Agnes has moved her talk back to November to allow us to introduce a very special show and tell. Our workshop in the after noon will be a quilting bee to make our Hands for Céad Míle Fáilte. Please see instructions below.

100,000 welcomes! 1,000 quilters throughout Ireland will trace their hand on fabric and sew it onto a 10" square. The block can be made of any kind of white fabric background with green fabric hand, or a green fabric background with a white fabric hand. The block should be quilted with just the wadding behind and no backing. Binding is not necessary. Your name, where you are from, and a welcome message should be written with a fabric pen or stitched onto the front of the block.

Quilters are encouraged to appliqué and embellish their blocks as much as they wish. Blocks will not be returned, but instead sent to our committee and assembled into a 25 metre Irish chain pattern. You will become part of history, as this exhibit will not only be used as the official welcome exhibit for our quilt festival, but will be used as the official welcome exhibit for quilt festivals in the years to come.

In October we have Maeve Meaney bringing her shop, Ann Fahey will be giving us a talk. The workshop in the afternoon will be another quilting bee. Those off you who would like to make a panel for the Internation Quilt Festival of Ireland to be held in Galway next year, are invited to work together on their panels. Details of these panels and entry will be available at our September meeting.

November we have Teresa O'Riordan bringing her shop, Agnes will give us a talk and Marilyn Farrell will give us a workshop on Hand Appliqué.

We look forward to seeing you all again on Saturday, don't for get to bring your sewing supplies and embellishments.

Best Regards Lynn Naughton Chairperson

Tea Duty September Monica Lannon and Maura Cunningham.
October Maureen Martin and Ann Conroy
November Kathy Fallon and Martha Doherty

PS Don't forget your packed lunch