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.