November Branch Meeting

We held our Mid-West branch meeting on Friday, November 10.   We had three Christmas demonstrations on the night led by Kate Hennessy, Suzanne Pass, and Kate O'Donoghue.   The demos are to prepare us for our Christmas "Wrapped" challenge where we are to bring in a small Christmas item for the Christmas party on December 1.   We'll also be having a pot luck for food and a wrapped fat quarter gift exchange.   The Christmas season has begun!

The main order of business was to announce that Frances Shanahan stepped down as our branch Chairperson.   Suzanne Pass stepped up as temporary chairperson and asked if anyone new would be willing to come onto committee.   Suzanne thanked everyone for their support over the past few weeks.  Imelda O'Grady kindly stepped up onto the Committee, and after the meeting, Kate Hennessy agreed to cover the editorial role that Suzanne had previously covered.   Suzanne Pass has officially agreed to step up as Chairperson.

Mary Murphy came up to Show and Tell early and shared the story behind her Aurora piece, that is a yellow tent in the foreground. 

Loretta O'Brien showed her "Touch of Red" EQA piece from a few years ago.   We discussed the current EQA Challenge of "Boundaries."    Loretta also gave a moving talk about Helen Hardesty, a founding member of the Irish Patchwork Society who passed away recently.

Liz Stanley brought some gold work that she did recently, a quite unusual piece.  She also had with her a beautiful bag that she cleverly used a man's shirt for the lining!

Kate Hennessy, who is also the hero of the day for doing a demo and stepping up into the editorial role, showed a beautiful baby quilt.   She started this before the baby was born, not knowing whether the baby was a boy or girl.   It's perfect for either! 

We have a wonderful group and we're now set to continue with a strong committee set for the coming two years.

October Mid-West Branch Meeting

The Mid-West Branch met on Friday the 13th in Baptist Church, Limerick.  The night was definitely not an unlucky one!   We had many new members join, and we were very lucky to have Roisin McManus bring her shop from Tuam.   She brought a huge selection of fabrics, including some fabulous Christmas fabrics.

Our meeting was run by Frances Shanahan, our current branch president, and she was extremely complimentary to Tracy Watson who was our speaker for the evening.   Frances, along with many members of the branch, went to see Tracy's exhibition last year in Ennistymon.   We were all treated to the back story of how Tracy prepared herself for the exhibition and gathered her ideas and pieces together.   Tracy displayed her selection of pieces including the "cartoons" that she used to create her curved pieces.  She also framed some smaller pieces, which worked quite effectively.

Meeting in progress

Tracy Watson's pieces on display

Our Show and Share began with Ruth Bourke showing a few of her pieces.  She brought several with her as she was off to Galway in the morning to do a workshop for their branch.   She showed her Rainbow Rose which is the piece which represented Ireland in the Diversity gallery at Birmingham Festival of Quilts.  She also showed her color Ticker Tape example, which each square a different color.  It's a fun way to use up scraps!

Gillian Killick brought her piece "Waves of Color" to share.  She had it in the Dublin Knit and Stitch last year, it is a lovely triptich and hangs incredibly well.

Many members, including some new members, showed their pieces in the show and share.   It's so inspirational to see so many active quilters in our group!   For a full set of photos go to: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm5MHhkx

AGM 2017 in Cork, October 7

The AGM for the Irish Patchwork Society took place in Cork at the beautiful Kingsley hotel, and it was a lovely relaxed day.   We arrived to tea and coffee along with the most delicious little biscuits, and had plenty of time to wander around to shop and visit before the meeting commenced at 11:00.   Many members of the Mid-West branch attended.  It was also terrific to be able to connect some new faces with names from the many exhibitions.   We gathered our Mid-West members for a photo:

Ruth Bourke ran the meeting with style and grace.  There is a lot of work being done by the committee, the most largest new piece of work is getting our organization set up to be recognized as a charity.   This will allow us a different status and recognition as a group that provides education of the arts.   We have a lot going on in terms of public exhibitions!

The Strategy Planning Group has also been meeting regularly to help organize processes, and is making great progress.  Mary Hunter gave us an update on their sub-committee.

The quilt making Challenge is always a bit of fun.   This year the challenge was to make a Binary quilt, it could be any two colors but could not venture away from those two.   Jane Horner helped to hang the quilts in the little mini-quilt show.  Many different colors and ideas were represented.   The winner of the challenge wins a prize with a mini-quilt.   The winner was Linda Cowley, who also won last year, so she won her own little quilt!

We had a delicious lunch with a view of the river, then came back to the hall to chat some more until we were called for the speaker portion of the meeting.   Janice Gunner from the UK came to talk about a specialty of hers - Japanese textiles.   We were treated to many beautiful fabric examples and the history behind the fabrics as well.  Janice has travelled extensively in Japan.  Janice prepared a slide show with photos from Japan and the regions that produce the different types of fabrics.  

Thank you to the Cork branch for the wonderful day, and thank you to our committee members who put in so much time over the year.   The Irish Patchwork Society is a terrific group!

Branch Meeting September 8, 2017

We held our first branch meeting of the new year at the Baptist Church on Friday night, September 8.  It was a busy night at the door with membership dues as well as our usual meet and greet with raffle tickets.   We had a much larger number of visitors than usual, and we all made an effort to help them feel welcome.   It's great to have a so many new faces at our meeting as well as all of our friends.

Sew Crafty Fabrics with Avril Riordin provided the shop for the night.  She brought so many bright and beautiful fabrics, thank you for traveling with your wares!

Frances Shanahan, our new president, ran the meeting with style and grace.   We had a new type of guest speaker, a yoga teacher Sara Cory.   She demonstrated some mindfulness techniques and hand stretches, great for quilters who spend hours at our sewing machines.   Namaste.

Our meeting challenge was to create a name tag.  We had five entries, and we voted during the meeting.   Our winner was Liz Stanley.   Well done, Liz.

Tracy Watson explained her workshop which will take place next month on October 14.  She will be teaching methods for couching threads to create different textures.

We had another completed quilt from our 2.5 inch squares challenge!   Claire Lynch showed her completed challenge quilt.

Many quilters shared their summer projects in the Show and Share this month.  Thank you to everyone who was able to attend and we hope to see our friends who could not make it next month!   A larger set of photos is posted on our flickr feed:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/midwestpatchwork/sets/72157686426009464

Thank you to everyone who attended and helped to make our meeting a great success.

European Quilt Association in the Birmingham Festival of Quilts

The Irish Patchwork Society (IPS) is a member of the European's Quilter's Association (EQA).   Each year the EQA puts together a gallery in the Birmingham Festival of Quilts where each country contributes an equal number of quilts according to a theme.   The quilts must be of a specific size and follow the guidelines that are decided by the international committee.   The International Representative for Ireland is a member of our branch, Paula Rafferty.   Thank you to Paula Rafferty for her work in helping to make this gallery a huge success.   It's the only gallery like it in the Festival of Quilts, and many quilters report it as one of the highlights of the show.

Ireland always has a wide range of quilts representing quilters throughout Ireland, with all 8 branches of the Irish Patchwork Society invited to to contribute.   This year the Irish quilts were on the theme "Inspired by the New York Beauty Block."

Below are the details of the names and maker's of the individual quilts.

Several of the quilts were contributed by members of our branch.  Here are just a few of ours:

Skull Beauty by Paula Rafferty

Lady Liberty by Ursula O'Sullivan

BeautyFlies by Isobel Maher

Sunshine on the Sea by Imelda O'Grady

Thank you to everyone to contributed to the EQA gallery, it was an amazing display of quilting techniques!  

Four Winds Textile Group at the June Meeting

We were very lucky to have four members of the Four Winds Textile group visit our meeting on Friday, June 9.   They are a group of quilters from Cork with over 25 years together, and many amazing examples of group quilting endeavors.   They brought their quilts from an exhibition that they worked on in 2011 inspired by Gee's Bend Quilts.   Not only did they use the patterns, but they also made the quilts themselves with fabrics that they already owned, whether from clothes or fabric their stashes.   The quilts were amazingly diverse and colorful.

This quilt above was made with men's shirts based on a Gee's Bend design

The Four Winds Quilters also brought some of their own pieces, we especially enjoyed seeing some of their group efforts like this group piece done in rounds:

There was a special interest in a playful quilt with lots of "fairy doors."   Anne spent some time explaining her methodology on this quilt.

Here is one of their latest collaborations where each quilter did a separate piece with a different color, but the same style and fabrics.  It's quite modern and the textures are amazing.

My personal favorite was the Quilt Tree.   It's a piece that was done years ago and it is a tree that continues to grow, new scraps are added with each new quilt made.

Thank you to the Four Winds Textile Group for visiting our meeting.  You are all an inspiration!

Aurora is up - come visit in Northern Ireland

Our co-exhibition with the Northern Ireland Patchwork Group on the theme "Aurora" is up and open for viewing in the Northern Ireland.   It will run through the end of June 2017 in Lisburn Arts Center, Northern Ireland.  It previously exhibited in Dublin in the month of May.

Mary Palmer Show and Tell from our April meeting!

During our April meeting last month we had an epic show and tell with Mary Palmer. There were so many photos of all her amazing quilts we had to make a slideshow. Enjoy and thank you to Mary for her visit. See you all tomorrow night for our AGM!

Layered Stories Exhibition details!

Call for Baby Cot Quilts

The Limerick Quilt Centre have their annual exhibition, River of Dreams in Limerick in the School of Art and Design, Clare Street from the 23rd to the 30th of June. This year baby cot quilts are requested for donation to The Heart Children of Ireland. Quilts be displayed during the exhibition and then donated afterwards.

For anybody interested in making a baby cot quilt, the size is 36"x42" and the hanging sleeve must be placed on the 36" size. For more details see the River of Dreams facebook page.

Upcoming Events!

Event Name	Dates	Venue
"Fun" Modern Quilters Ireland 2nd Exhibition	2nd May -23rd June	St. Patrick's Hospital, Dublin
The Spike Quilters	2nd - 30th May	Thurles Source Library
Tracey Watson & Joke Buursma	20th May - 23rd June	Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, Co. Clare
Hands Across the Border "Aurora"	15th - 23rd May June	Custom House Quarter (CHQ), Dublin
Western Branch Exhibition "The West"	22nd - 29th May	St. Nicholas Church, Galway
3rd Irish Quilters Showcase "North, South, East and West"	May	Hunt Museum, Limerick
River of Dreams	23rd -30th June	Limerick School of Art & Design
Festival of Quilts	10th - 13th August	NEC, Birmingham
Open European Quilt Championships	19th  - 22nd October	Maastricht, The Netherlands
Knitting & Stitching	9th - 12th November	RDS, Dublin
An Grianan	2nd - 4th March	Temonfeckin, Co. Louth

February Recap

Our guest speaker for February was Ailbhe O'Callaghan from the Southern Branch and I took so many photos I thought it easier to make a slideshow to share them!  More of our branch show and tell will be posted on our Facebook page!

Thank you to Ailbhe for sharing her gorgeous quilts with us!


This Friday's meeting our guest speaker will be Nikki Foley who is talking to us about quilt judging.  See you then!  Doors open at 7.30pm.
-Ruth

Upcoming exhibitions for your diary!

“Community.” 

Southern Branch exhibition will be running at the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh from the 2nd of March to the 26th of March.  The opening reception will happen on the 2nd of March with Cork County Mayor, Seamus McGrath in attendance. 

"Fun"

Modern Quilters Ireland second exhibition at St.Patricks Hospital, Dublin May 2nd to June 23rd.

Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon, Co. Clare.

An exhibition that will be held this summer by Tracy Watson and Joke Buursma

12th May and 23rd June.  Gallery website is theCourthouseGallery.com for details of opening times

Hands across the Border “ Aurora” 

Official Opening Tuesday 16th May 2017 in CHQ Custom House Quarter, IFSC, Custom House Quay, Dublin Northside, Dublin.  Exhibition will run until the 26 th May.  Northern venue is Island Arts Centre, Lisburn, June 2017 

The Spike Quilters

Exhibition in Thurles Source Library centre from Tuesday May 2nd toTue May 30th. Library hours. (9.30 to5 pm week days and10 to 5pm Sat. Closes 1pm to 2pm for Lunch.  

Third Irish Quilters’ Showcase Exhibition  

May-June 2017   The Mitchel Hall, Spike Island 

The Kniting and Stitching show 2017  

Simmonscourt, RDS, Dublin 9-12th November 

December Meeting

As always, our December meeting was our Christmas party. A great chance to catch up with friends, have a chat and eat plenty.

We had a sewing-themed Christmas quiz devised by Grania Preston which caused plenty of head-scratching on the night.

Our challenge was to make a "One Hour Basket" by Kelby Sews. A free pattern and tutorial to make the basket is available at

https://www.craftsy.com/sewing/patterns/1-hour-basket-tutorial/236408

The One Hour Basket challenge was won by Imelda O'Grady.




Our shop on the night was Fabric Matters. Thanks to Wendy for travelling down to Limerick with her shop.


There was lots of Show and Tell on the night.


Here's 1 of two quilt tops that Suzanne Pass whipped up using fabrics that a friend had given her.

Here's  a lovely child's train quilt that Deirdre Treacy has made.

Frances Shanahan made this lovely baby quilt and matching One Hour basket .

Deirdre Treacy also showed this fabulous log cabin quilt in a straight setting. Lovely use of light and dark fabrics here which really shows of the log cabin pattern.

Here's another amazing quilt by Imelda O'Grady.

Here's a quilt made by Claire Lynch