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.