Meeting 12th June 2009

IRFU QUILT RAFFLE
.
Congratulations to Alice Quaid on the incredible 6200euro that was raised by the raffle of quilts for the IRFU Charitable trust. The IRFU Charitable Trust helps rugby players that are disabled through accidents on the field and provide for 34 Irish disabled players with help in adjustments to houses and transport and for medical care. Alice explained that the idea for the fundraiser was seeing the dress shirts worn by the players which had the RFU badge embroidered on the pockets. Being a quilter she saw that the material could be used in a quilt and the idea took root. One of the quilts sewn by her sister, Julie Crosby, was made from donated dress shirts that had been given from the wives to be sewn. The first prize quilt was sewn by Alice and shows the signatures of some of the Munster players including; Brian O'Driscoll Denis Hickey Shane Holgan Peter Stringer Denis Leamy Luke Fitzgerald Malcolm O'Kelly John Hayes Paddy Wallace.



It was a pleasure to welcome Declan Madden who drew the numbers in the raffle. Good luck to all the players currently with the Lions in South Africa.

Many thanks to all those who donated their quilts for prizes.


TALK AND SHOP 12TH JUNE 2009


Nikki Foley was the guest speaker and shop for the evening. Nikki's interesting and illuminating talk was on some of the gadgets that are available and her thoughts on the gadgets on how useful or on the interesting effects that you can achieve using them. There was a lot in her talk but the pointers that I found most interesting were;

1 portable ironing boards made from the inners of the fabric rolls covered in wadding and fabric with a handle on one end, perfect with a small travel iron for sitting next to your machine in classes.


2 Rotary blade sharpeners extend the life of the blade as each blade can be re-sharpened twice. The cost of the sharpener would be gained back over time. Unfortunately the sharpener will not take out nicks caused by rolling over pins etc.

3 Bias binding tool, the hint was given to buy the next size up and to experiment on which way up you find easier to get the correct result.

4 Two ways of getting a home PC to print out designs onto material were shown, firstly an A4 sized treated paper that after printing can be ironed onto material, secondly a paint that can be painted onto the fabric then placed into the printer. For the paint there is a choice of matt or transparent so that you can choose between the material showing through the printing or not.

5 Fabric effects with water soluble paper and angelina wool.

6 Fabric bondings including a description of bondaweb, steam and seam and a glue pen.

I think that all of us who listened to Nikki's talk learnt something, thanks Nikki.