March Show & Tell

Our March meeting was wonderfully attended.  Hanging in the back of the meeting was this gorgeous quilt:

It will be raffled off in the May meeting to raise funds for the IPS Archiving project.  Be sure to buy your tickets before then!

The majority of our show and tell quilts were from Terri McNeill's workshop the month before.  Isn't it great to see how the same pattern can be interpreted by each quilter using different fabrics?

Lynne also showed several quilts made with fabrics from Seams Sew Simple, giving each and every one of us a few new ideas!  Thanks, Lynne!

Our April meeting was filled with a Paula Rafferty double sided log cabin workshop and a wonderful shop:  Floppy Fabrics.  Stay tuned to see everything in our next few blog posts!

Feb Branch Meeting Show & Tell

What a hectic meeting our February one was. There was a pretty full house of members, including our intrepid quilters who come in from the Aran Islands and Dot and Mary Francis from the USA who were visiting Spiddal for the weekend. Both quilters, they had discovered our meeting through the Fennel Shed Website. It was lovely to meet them and hopefully they enjoyed the rest of their trip to Ireland. They were on their way next day to visit Anne Marie Hobbs in Co. Wexford. 

Members of our branch contributed to a fabulous show and tell.  Here's a little peek:

Gaye Grant: From Paper To Quilt

Gaye Grant, of the Fennel Shed in Buncrana, demonstrated again what a great ‘piece maker’ she is. Quilt after quilt showed how she takes the basic building blocks of squares and triangles, works her magic and viola: quilt!

Gaye has a passion for piecing and designing which was very infectious and yes, I think we need a workshop.

 

There were some nifty short cuts or techniques for example using pre-cut squares to produce some squares and ½ square triangles in 3 cuts. (you had to be there!) An aversion to waste means making patches from your cut offs as you go along and using them to border blocks or quilts. 

  

January Meeting

The quilters in the West are an intrepid gang, they turned out in great numbers for our January meeting.  In past years the inclemency of the weather has put people off travelling from the outer reaches of the region but this year things were much milder. 

We received copies of the lovely calendar put together by Mna le Cheile, the Inis Oirr Quilters Group. It is a lovely piece of work combining quilts and the marvellous Inis Oirr scenery. If you'd like to know more about the group check out their blog mnalecheile.blogspot.ie.  We still have copies of the calendar for sale at €10 so make contact if you'd like to buy one. And don't forget tickets for the "Let the Flowers Bloom" Quilt at €5 a book.

We were also lucky enough to have not one, but two local shops at our meeting to supply threads, perle cotton, precuts, rulers and rotary blades.  

Fluffy Sheep Quilting

Seams Sew Simple

 Textile artist and long time IPS member Ann Fahy donated a box of fabrics to the branch and on foot of that we invited members to bring in any unloved fat quarters to donate them for sale for the charity Lily Mae. One quilters 'yeuch' is another one's 'yum'! We still have fabrics left but so far have €130 in donations. Thank you to Ann and to all the members for their support.

Today Veronika Feldman demonstrated a really quick pinwheel which would make a lovely child's quilt. (photo?) Thanks Veronika. Thanks too to Toni Foley, branch treasurer, who stepped out from behind her table to demonstrate beautiful fabric flower brooches. This involved circles of fabric (using your favourite wine glass as a template), and dental floss (stronger than thread for pulling in the circles of fabric). Who knew household items could be so handy for our craft?

As usual there were lovely items in the Show and Tell. 

Mari showed a finished UFO with lovely hand quilting, Kathy Fallon had a stunning quilt with log cabins and maple leaves, the pattern for which she went to great lengths to procure as it was well out of print. The magazine in question sent her a copy of the pattern.  Linda showed a really fresh table runner in blue and white with a complicated looking shape. Sewing a mitred corner is straightforward on an 'outside' corner but much more complicated on an'inside' corner. 

Anybody got any tips on how to do it? Lynn had a simple but effective cot quilt from a single piece of children's border print with a plain border print around it. Lynn said the machine quilting was very manageable on such a small piece and encouraged members to give it a go. Anne Marie showed a square in a square quilt which all began with a  charm pack of yellow squares won in the raffle at the IPS meeting in April last. Mary Madden showed us a quilt made block by block from a series that ran in the Farmers Journal, a lovely folky quilt. Susan very proudly showed a spider's web block but even more impressively a handy ruler caddy made from a coat hanger and some hooks.

In the afternoon we got busy putting together our charity quilt.

What's coming up:

The Tessellations Workshop for February with Terri McNeill is fully booked and we all picked up our requirements today.  We look forward to hearing Gaye Grant sharing her wisdom on 'A quilt from start to finish...how I do it'.  In March we will have a sewing bee for the hospital quilts and Adeleine Jordan will share some of her work and show how to make a quick book cover. In April Paula Rafferty will be bringing her Fashio snas Frontieres Pieces and giving a workshop on Double sided log cabin using jelly rolls. Have you booked yet?

Angela Keane of the 1913 Lockout Committee will be with us next month to explain about how we can be part of the Tapestry Project.  Other groups have already stitched their pieces but we will get going in February. See www.1913.committee.ie for details.

December Branch Meeting

As always, the December Western Branch meeting was a hit!  Everyone came in high spirits, with something to share at show and tell and a delicious treat for the Christmas party!  Thank you, Roisin, for supplying us with fabrics from The Quilt Shop in Tuam.

To kick off the festivities, people brought in a Christmas ornament for a lucky dip.  Just place yours on the tree and (after a little mix and match) you'll receive one in return.  What luck!

We also played our annual game of Fabric Bingo, each one of us frantically marking block names off from our hopeful list of 25 names as Anne Marie called them out.  We were lucky enough to have two tied winners!

Attention teachers within the Western (or near areas!) Branch of the IPS:  Would you like to join in a Train the Trainers session?  If so, we would like to hear from you.  Please contact Anne Marie at ainemnio(at)hotmail(dot)com.

We finished off the meeting with a festive Christmas party filled with great company and treat after treat!

Again, please keep working on your children's quilts for donation to the hospital this May!

Once again, thank you Ester, for capturing our meeting in photos for all to see!

October Branch Meeting

The October branch meeting was quite a treat for the Western Branch quilters.  We had two guest speakers from our own branch, Lynn Naughton and Pam Dolan.  Lynn her process of translating a photo to her sketchbook to eventually creating a fabric of her own.

While Pam gave an overview of color, a most-know for every quilter.  Thank you, Pam, for covering the basics that we should all know!

The afternoon workshop was taught by a duo of teachers, Johanna and Collette, giving instruction to make the world's best tote bag.  It seems everyone in the branch is using theirs!

November Branch Meeting

The Western branch of the IPS had a particularly fantastic monthly meeting in November.  Our meeting focused on local talent with a particularly extended member show and tell session as well as a trunk show hosted by the Ready Thready Sew group from Tuam and the local shop, Fluffy Sheep Quilting.

Several members came to the meeting already wearing their October workshop bags.  Looking good, ladies!

Raffle tickets are now available for this spectacular quilt.  Don't miss out on getting yours!

We have challenged one another to finish off our UFOs by this spring.  Each member, then, brought in a UFO to show the group with a promise to have it quilted and bound by May.  We look forward to seeing these finished off at our AGM meeting!

Our guest speakers, the Ready Thready Sew group from Tuam, presented an incredible array of quilts showing the talent and creativity of each of their members.  They even brought little dolls and basket liners!  What a treat!

Please do not forget, branch members, to make a child's quilt for donation to the hospital at the May meeting.  Keep working on those in your cold, dark, January evenings. 

Many thanks to Ester for providing many of the photos in this post.