We did it!

Well we did it!  We have had our first meeting and we are up and running.

I think we had about 15 people in the end.  It was a little bit chaotic to begin with.  We had to work out how we were going to do things but people helped out as we needed it and we had a great evening.

We started with refreshments including homemade cake which was excellent.  Then Jude our chair said a few words and introduced our speakers Hazel Ryder and Terry Donaldson.  Jude and I know them through our City and Guilds course - they were our fantastic tutors.  We were so glad they agreed to be our first speakers.  It was easier knowing they understood that it was our first meeting and we were nervous and that it could have been a bit shambolic.  Most importantly, we know they are great speakers and have a lot of work to talk about.

This is Terry and Hazel with Hazel's Welsh quilt.

We passed a very pleasant hour and half being shown the various quilts  they have made through the years, starting right at the beginning when they were first learning to quilt.  It was interesting to see the development of their work and how it has changed as their skills have developed - no more bought fabrics these days.  Most of what they use is hand dyed.   Between them they have wracked up an impressive number of awards from various quilt shows.

They have finished running City and Guilds now and instead, run their own course through their business InStitches.  If anybody is interested they can find more details here here on their website..  I would highly recommend them.

Next time we have a sewing evening so if anybody is interesting in coming along for a bit of sewing, a cup of tea and some chatting you are most welcome.  7.30pm, Carnival Hall Basingstoke.  Hope to see you there.

Denise

Baking for the meeting!

It's our very first meeting on Tuesday 10th of September and as well as providing two excellent speakers, Denise and I have decided to start the meeting with refreshments: tea or coffee and homemade cake.  So far we're providing cherry cake, ginger cake and Dundee cake.  We're asking for donations for the Roundabout Quilters' funds for the refreshments.  There's also going to be a raffle, drawn at the end of our meeting.  All we need now is lots of people to come along!
Jude

How it all started.

We are a new quilting group so I thought I would just share the story of how we came to be.

In September 2011, I started a City and Guild course in Patchwork and Quilting in Odiham, a course taught by Hazel and Terry (who incidentally have kindly agreed to be our first speakers).  I had done 4 leisure courses before but wanted to go beyond the basics and actually make something!  I had a load of notes and samples but only one quilt which I made at my first ever course, 15 years ago.  It was a Christmas sampler quilt which doesn't see the light of day for 50 weeks of the year. In between courses I didn't have the confidence to make a quilt by myself so the bag full of samples stayed a bag full of samples and got left at the back of the cupboard.

On the course I met Jude who is the Roundabout Quilters chair this year.  She was very keen to join a quilt group but found that there wasn't anything local that didn't have a waiting list.  For various reasons I couldn't go to the group anyway so we hatched a plan to start our own!

To be honest, I didn't think we would actually do it - it seemed a bit daunting really, but thankfully Jude is not easily put off and at the end of our course we started work on Roundabout Quilters.  Now we are coming up to our first meeting and I am fretting about whether anybody will show up!  It is a bit like having a children's party and wondering if anybody will turn up or whether we would be here with a mountain of party food and no children.  Of course they usually do show up so I hope we have a good meeting next week.

Just to liven up the post, I have added some pictures of our assessed pieces for City and Guilds, taken at our exhibition.

This is my table runner - non-block using Japanese folded squares.

This is my quilted bowl machine and hand quilted on silk.

This was Jude's final quilt - bed sized and all made with hand dyed fabric.  Not the best photo I am afraid.  It is so big I had trouble getting it in the frame!  

A few of my samples.

This was Jude's pieced wall hanging.

Thanks for reading.

Denise