December Christmas Meeting

The December challenge was to make a Christmas piece without using the colours red and green. Gillian Sheehan's folded fabric piece was voted the winner on the night.

Bridget's teddy bear in metallic Christmas fabrics was voted second.

Maeve Meany's angel came third.

Angels seemed to be the theme of the night as two other entries also had angels! Paula Rafferty had 9 angels on the go!

Claire Lynch's piece (my own!) also had 2 angels and was made in the shape of a Christmas tree.

Christmas Meeting

The Mid-Western Branch's Christmas Party is on in the Limerick Baptist Church, Limerick on Friday the 14th December.

The December challenge is "anything but red or green". This is an unusual challenge because we automatically associate the colours red and green as being the "Christmas colours". However, there's plenty of other options, even look at the colours that are now being used for christmas decorations - blue & silver, purple etc.

November Meeting

The guest speaker on the night was Ann O'Rafferty from the Dublin branch of the IPS. She wowed everyone with her amazing array of quilts, especially when they were nearly all hand-quilted and large in size. Shown below are just a sample of the quilts she brought to show on the night.

Ann was also giving a 2-day workshop on the Saturday and Sunday on Baltimore Applique.

Tracy Watson brought in her piece that she had entered in the Youghal Quilt Competition. Her quilt was 3-panels based on the view from Mount-Saint Michel in France.

November "Make a Bag" Challenge

The November challenge for the month was to make a bag. There were 12 entries on the night, all showing a variety of styles and colours. Fran O'Donoghue had 2 entries on the night which are shown below! Fran was frantically trying to get the white bag finished at the start of the meeting, and her efforts paid off - the bag was voted the winner!

Tracey Watson also had 2 entries, one of which was a beautiful hand-dyed velvet evening bag with appliqued leaves.

Her second bag was a lovely Halloween trick-or-treating bag.

Gillian Sheehan made a appliqued draw-string bag using a tea-towel as the base fabric.

Kate O'Donoghue's entry was a very vibrant green bag made using Japanese folded patchwork squares.

Claire Lynch also had 2 entries - the one seen below was made from a brown paper bag.

Gwen Cottiss entered a black bag that she made for her daughter.

Maeve Meany came second with her Japanese lady quilted bag.
Valerie Shortt's mother entered this bag with incorporated the clever use of a "cheater panel".

November meeting

The November meeting is on this Friday - 9th November at 8pm.

The challenge this month is "make a bag" so make sure you bring one with you. We're all expecting to see loads of bags (and at least 1 bag from every member!)

National Quilt Exhibition 2007

The Irish Patchwork Society's Biennial National Exhibition will be taking place this year at Callin Hill Mart, Kilkenny. The exhibition will be displayed from the 21st June - 6th July 2008.

The theme this year is "Links".

Patchwork Books which mention bags (November Challenge)

"Crazy Quilting" by Barbara Randle uses crazy piecing to create a variety of bags, pillows etc. The crazy quilted pieces in the book use the crazy piecing technique in a modern way using vibrant fabrics. No hand embroidery is used, instead the embellishment is all done using the sewing machine. For people who have a variety of stitches on their machines and have never used them, these could the perfect projects to use them on. Other embellishments in the book are make using couched threads, bits of coloured wool etc.

"Patchwork with Pizzazz" by Lise Bergene is another great book. There's loads of projects in the book (60 in all) and there are instructions on how to make a wide variety of bags. The author is Norwegian and most of her projects show a Scandinavian influence.

Blogs with free bag patterns - more tips for the November Bag Challenge

The challenge for the November meeting is to "Make a Bag".
There are hundreds of web-sites which give free tutorials, instructions and ideas on making bags. I just had a quick check and noted down some web-addresses which could be of use.

http://creativelittledaisy.typepad.com/creative_little_daisy/2006/01/basic_purse_tut.html
Tutorial for a small bag.

http://www.supereggplant.com/archives/000216.html
pattern for a little bag

http://welshquilter.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html
This blog gives a step-by-step tutorial on how to make a bucket bag tote.

http://www.kristinlaflamme.com/patterns.html
There are 3 free patterns here, two of which are for bags. One pattern is for a Sűbe Sac and the other for a square bag pattern.

http://artsycraftybabe.typepad.com/artsycrafty_babe/2007/05/the_purse_proje.html
This blog show how to make a small bag from a tea-towel!

http://mizutamago.typepad.com/weblog/2007/07/tote-pattern.html
This blog shows a pattern for a small tote bag with a cute gathered front.

http://tinyhappy.typepad.com/tiny_happy/2006/06/shoulder_bag_tu.html
Shoulder bag tutorial which can easily be customised to your own design.

October 12th Meeting

Breeda O'Sullivan from the Skerries Mills Quilting was the speaker on the night. She brought a large suitcase full of pieces to show. Most of their items were from their recent exhition "Quilting on the Rocks" which was shown at Skerries Mills in Co. Dublin. Their work was excellent and showed a high degree of skill.

The monthly challenge for October was to make something using the A4-sized fabric square of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that everyone was given. The fabric was something that a lot of people initially thought "uugh" as it was completely different than their usual fabric choices. As it turned out the fabric lent itself very well to an wide variety of patchwork layouts!

14 entries were received on the night which was a big increase on the usual amount of entries for the challenge. There was fantastic creativity present on the night, as everyone's pieces were totally different and unique.

Gwen Cottiss was the deserved winner on the night with her hexagon pieced basket of flowers.


Bridget came second with her curved stained-glass effect piece, which was very eye-catching and showed a great range of fabric combinations.

Paula Rafferty entered two pieces for the challenge. Paula liked the fabric some much , she had to go and buy more of it! She made a very detailed foundation pieced circular wall-hanging. Her 2nd piece was made using the klaidoscope method, and really showed the versatility of the fabric choice as it looked like a wide variety of fabrics had been used instead of just one!

Valerie Shortt made a very colourful quilt which used the challenge fabric as the centre of the some of the squares.

September Meeting '07

The September meeting was the first one to be held in our new venue - the Limerick Baptist Church. There was a good attendance on the night, and it was a busy night with most people renewing their annual membership.

John O'Donnell (from the Singer shop in Waterford) was the speaker and he gave great tips on taking care of your sewing machine. I think everyone picked up at least one new tip.

The challenge for September was "The Seasons". Unfortunately, there were only 3 entries submitted on the night. Entries were from Ann Bradshaw, Claire Lynch and Gillian Sheehan. Gillian's piece of the houses was voted the favourite on the night.

There were a number of pieces presented for the "Show & Tell" so there were some people who were busy sewing over the summer. Paula Rafferty showed 3 quilts that she longarm quilted. Maeve Meany also showed a quilt that she has made for her brother's 50th birthday. It was made with a 60 inch block!!

Valerie Shortt showed a quilt that she helped an 11 year make. A guest on the night (Fran O'Donoghue) showed a number of fantastic bags that she had made for her daughter. And Kate O'Donoghue showed two quilts that she had made (one of these quilts is shown below).

Some photo's from the June '07 Meeting

Ann-Marie and Frances Nugent showing a strip-pieced quilt which Frances made.

Some of the Thurles & Kerry ladies with their group quilt.

Valerie Shortt showing her Black & White Quilt.

The next branch meeting will be on the 12th October at 8pm.

Don't forget to bring your pieces for the monthly challenge, which is to make something with the challenge fabric. All of the challenge fabric has to be used in your piece but you can make anything you want with it. It should be very interesting to see how the same piece of fabric can be used in different ways!

Hello there,
This is the first blog posting for the Mid-Western Branch of the Irish Patchwork Society.
Hopefully this blog will show highlights of our monthly meetings, workshops, exhibitions etc.