Today, 31st January, Bourne Quilters held their first ever bag workshop. What better way to chase away the winter blues than spending the day sewing with like minded people. There were four options available. A backpack, shopping bag with zipped pocket, small bag with drawstring top and a jelly roll bag. They were all demonstrated by our talented members Wendda, Valerie, Sandie and Lesley – many thanks to them for all their hard work. By the end of the day quite a few people had finished their bags and the remainder were well on their way. We look forward to seeing the finished items at ‘show and tell’ at our next meeting on Monday.

Membership subscriptions are due now. Thank you to all members who have already renewed.

• If you are currently a member, you wish to renew and none of your contact details have changed,
  please pay £30 for your 2026 membership, preferably via Bank transfer to :
  Account Name: Bourne Quilters
  Sort Code: 20-69-34
  Account Number: 40594628
• Please put MEMBERSHIP26 in the reference, the bank will pass your name with the payment.
• If your contact details have changed, please fill in the renewal form which can be found on the Forms page and email it to members@bournequilters.com
• You can also pay by cheque which should be made payable to Bourne Quilters. Cheques can be mailed to : Rita Duncan, Bourne Quilters, 9 Lindens Close, Emsworth PO10 7PY.
• If you are currently a member and will NOT be renewing your membership for 2026, please send an email to members@bournequilters.com to say that you will not be renewing as we have several people waiting to join the group.

The Annual General Meeting for 2025 will take place on Monday 1st December at Emsworth Community Centre at 7.00pm followed by our Christmas Party.

You are asked to bring a SMALL plate of finger food/nibbles for us to share. Mulled wine (including non alcoholic) will be available. We will not be running the destash table or library, but there will be a festive raffle and Show and Tell

As there is still a lot of building work going on at the community centre, there is no parking available directly outside. There are usually plenty of spaces in the car park behind Tesco.

We hope that you can join us.

At our September meeting, Richard Riordan told us about the upcoming QG Regional Day to be held in Chichester on 15th November. Click here for more information on the QG website

The following details have been supplied by Gill Riordan, the organiser of the event.

Earlybird ticket prices end for purchase of day tickets to Chichester regional day on 30^th September.

Your ticket covers the following:

Talk by Joy Harber ‘’An Obsession with Log Cabin’’

Talk by Sally Ablett on working with Lewis and Irene fabrics.

Lunchtime activities (may have a kit cost) booked on the day with Maria Hearn, Sally Ablett and Trish Grammer.

Stallholders include Falcon fabrics, Fabricatrading, Stitching Post, Kallosphere, Linda Miller, Burning issues, Chalkhillblues, sew Creative, Linus, Sugar bowl crafts and Jules longarm quilting.

The main exhibition will be work of students of the Master Quilter course. We will have other exhibits including Mavis Walker’s fabric chess set and local block of the month work.

Of course we have refreshments, the college bistro, the massive raffle and the huge de-stash table.

REMEMBER to bring your mini quilt entry on ‘New Growth’

Early tickets £15/18 non-members

Standard tickets £20/25non members

Tickets are available from regional treasurer, email treasurer_reg2@quiltersguild.org.uk with your ticket requirements.

BACS payment details are QGBI, sort 60-83-01, a/c 20323990 ref CHI25 your name

We have updated the website to include a Hints and Tips page. Our first article is on cleaning your sewing machine. You can find the page Here or from the main menu at the top of the page. If you have any hints or tips that you would like to share then use the Contact us page to let us know so that we can see how it can be shared.

At 8.30 on Saturday 28th June, thirty members and friends boarded the coach in Emsworth Square and made our way, via Basingstoke to Lady Sew and Sew in Henley. Most of us hadn’t been there before and were absolutely wowed at the huge variety of fabrics available. Reactions varied between those who dashed around like ‘a child in a sweet shop’ and those who were paralysed like ‘rabbits in the headlights’! The whole day was so much fun, sharing each other’s excitement over purchases as well as indulging our own ‘need’ to own some of the beautiful
products available. The staff were great; friendly, welcoming and incredibly helpful. Tea and coffee were available all day but the glass of Prosecco was the icing on the cake!

We’re all now asking, “Where are we going next?”

Bourne Quilters Members are so productive that there isn’t room in our newsletter to include pictures of all the lovely items that are brought to our monthly meetings for show and tell. So we now have a dedicated page on our website: Show and Tell where you can see more examples of everyone’s work.

We plan to update this regularly.

on 5th April, over 30 enthusiastic BQ members converged on Westbourne Parish Centre for a fun day sewing a variety of small quilts destined for the special care baby unit at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth. This was the perfect opportunity for both experienced sewers and newer sewers to learn from each other.
At the end of the day everyone was well on their way to producing a lovely quilt. We look forward to seeing the finished items at our show and tell

The good news is that Emsworth Community Centre is now open – apart from the damaged Assembly Rooms. This means that our meeting on 7th April can go ahead in the Mountford rooms as originally scheduled. However, parking on site is extremely limited and you are advised to park offsite. The nearest car park is Palmers Road car park (behind Tesco) and this is free after 6.00 pm.

Unfortunately, there was a fire at Emsworth Community Centre on the afternoon of 18th March. Thankfully,nobody was hurt although the building itself suffered damage.

It appears that the majority of the damage occurred to the roof of the Assembly Room and the rest of the building may have been spared. No one is able to enter the building until a full inspection has been carried out and it will be after that inspection that we will be told if we can use the Mountford Rooms for our next meeting on Monday 7th April. In the meantime we are considering other meeting venues so that we have a contingency should it be needed. As we know more we will provide updates, and emails will be sent to members.

A somewhat belated welcome to 2025. I’m not sure how January passed by so quickly!

The programme of speakers for our meetings and accompanying workshops has been finalised and you can find the details on our programme page. As we go through the year we continue to develop the mini workshops that we are running alongside our Bourne Stitchers group and the dates and details will be promoted in our newsletter and at meetings. Similarly as the programme for our young quilters emerges, details will be available in the newsletter.

This month we are launching our ‘Block of the Month’ and are starting with the lovely Puss in the Middle. Instructions were emailed out to all members with their newsletter. There will be nine blocks over the course of the year followed by ideas for sashing, quilting and binding to finish off the quilt.

Bourne Quilters are very pleased to introduce our first Young Quilters Workshop. Please contact Karen if you would like to attend or know more about Young Quilters. We look forward to seeing you there.

You can download a copy of the flyer here

On Monday evening Joy Harber told us all about her quilting journey and showed us some of her quilts ranging from very small mini log cabins up to full size quilts made using the same small blocks. A number of us joined her on Tuesday at Emsworth Community Centre as she showed us how to make teeny tiny log cabin blocks. Whilst some of us may have come across log cabins before, they were nothing like these ones. We were sewing with 3/4″ strips and the central square of the blocks was only 1/4″. By the end of the day we all had an exquisite small piece to show for it and had enjoyed learning an new technique

What a fantastic day it has been. The quilts on display were a feast for the eye. They range from stunning mini quilts to magnificent beasts that could cover the largest of beds, and everything in between! There was machine piecing, hand piecing, EPP (English paper piecing), foundation piecing, appliqué, and just about every technique and style imaginable. The colours varied from monochrome to scrappy and the most vivid and zingy colours that really popped. There were examples of hand quilting, FMQ (free motion quilting), Longarm quilting, sashiko, rulers and demonstrations of simple hand crank machines as well as an embroidery machine that seemed almost capable of operating independently.

Lots of enthusiasts turned up to enjoy all that BQ members had to offer – including the coffee and cakes. At one point the queue for this was almost out the door and we wondered if we would have enough.

Thank you to everyone who turned up today and if you couldn’t make it we look forward to seeing tomorrow for day 2. PS don’t worry – we’ve been baking more cake so there will be enough to go round.

Instructions for registering quilts for the show were sent out by email with the May newsletter. These, together with the Quilt Registration Form and the Quilt Display Labels can all be found here on the Quilt Show page of the website. These forms can be completed electronically if you would rather do this than fill them in by hand.

Once you have obtained your registration numbers from Kathy it would be very helpful if you could submit your quilt label descriptions by email as detailed on the form so that we can prepare labels in advance.

Who knew that scraps could be such fun! We were lucky to have Mel Lewis from Sugar Bowl Crafts come to our meeting on 4th March with her fantastic scrappy quilts. The following day she ran a workshop where she showed us how we could do the same. It was the perfect opportunity for us to rethink our attitude to the offcuts, trimmings and snippets of fabric that we didn’t know what to do with, but knew that we didn’t want to throw them away.

Sew for the Show day

Almost 30 BQ members converged on Westbourne Parish Hall for our first ‘Sew for the Show’ day on 24th February. Some sewers worked on a number of projects such as flowers, toilet bags, thread catchers, trays, key ring holders, non slip mats and tote bags which were demonstrated by group members. Others brought along their own projects to work on. By the end of the afternoon, the tables were covered in fantastic offerings. More details to follow in the next newsletter.

February BQ Meeting

5th February was our first meeting this year and we were very happy to have Kim Edith as a speaker. BQ members also brought along some of their fantastic work to show everyone. This included a number of completed selfie portraits as well as a selection of bags and quilts. More details to follow in the next newsletter.

Selfie Workshop

On the 20th January over 20 BQ members turned up at Westbourne Parish Hall where Barbara and Jane from Hayling Piecemakers showed us how to turn our selection of fabrics into fantastic portraits. We look forward to seeing the finished items soon. Hopefully some of them will be on display at the quilt show in July.

Please check out our updated website. You can now find our recent newsletters, updated meeting and workshop programme for 2024, guidelines on how to make a members sash (see patterns tab). If you have any suggestions as to what you would like to see on the website please speak to a committee member.

While we continue to go through the current restrictions we will be holding our Monthly Monday evening meetings via Zoom – please check the Programme for speakers and events.

Ou weekly Bourne stitchers meetings continue via Zoom every Tuesday morning at 10.00am Ellie sends out an invitation to all members each week, it really is so nice to see familiar faces and catch up on members activities.

There are a number of changes or additions to the 2020 program – please check the program page

December meeting as usual is our AGM.

Glenis made a beautiful display for our Christmas raffle.

After the business of the day it was time to say a huge thank you to four of our longstanding committee members Lyn, Glenis, Lis and Pauline who are standing down from their committee roles this year. We gave them each a keepsake that we hope will remind them of the time the have spent helping to make Bourne Quilters the successful group we have today.

We then had Show and Tell starting with items made at this years Christmas Fun Day

Other beautiful items made by our members then followed

An enjoyable evening was concluded with traditional nibbles and mulled wine

 

A Fun Day indeed some excellent projects made and enjoyable lunch.  Many thanks to those who prepared the projects and taught them on the day.  A big thank you to the Committee who prepared lunch – Chris and Carol  have kindly given their soup recipes for those who asked for them – see below the photos.

Soup recipes

Sweet Potato and Red Pepper Soup

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 500g sweet potato, peeled and chopped
•  1 large onion, roughly chopped
•  3 garlic cloves, crushed
•  1 litre vegetable stock
•  1 chilli, deseeded and roughly chopped
•  Salt and freshly milled black pepper

1. Heat olive oil and gently cook onion and garlic.
2. Add potato, pepper, stock and chilli (if using), bring to the boil then simmer till the vegetables are all soft.
3. Blend until smooth.
4. Season to taste and serve. (I didn’t add any extra seasoning.)

Parsnip and Apple Soup

•  1 tbsp olive oil
•  1 medium onion, roughly chopped
•  2 medium parsnips, peeled and chopped into small pieces
•  2 dessert apples, peeled, cored and chopped into small pieces
•  2 pinches dried thyme
•  650 ml chicken or veg stock

1. Heat olive oil and gently cook onion
2. Add parsnips and apples and cook for a further 3-4 minutes.
3. Add stock and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer until parsnips are soft.
4. Blend until smooth.
5. Check seasoning and serve.

Carol’s Chunky Vegetable Soup

 You can use any root vegetable and quantity for this soup.

• Vegetables chopped into cubes

1. Carrots
2. Parsnip
3. Sweet Potato
4. Swede
5. Onion
6. Potato

• Tin of chopped tomatoes (2 if making a large quantity)
• Vegetable stock cube in 500ml
• Tablespoon Olive oil
• Teaspoon powder Mustard
• Teaspoon Aromat
• Salt & Pepper and tomato paste to taste if needed
• *chilli if you like it spicy

Heat the olive oil and gently coat the onion and soften add

mustard powder and Aromat (Chilli if required)

Add the vegetables, stock and tinned tomatoes. 

Bring to the boil then turn down to simmer stirring frequently for 2 hours.