International Quilting Day

Last week I went to the 'The Third International Quilting Day' in Barnsley - I thought this was a 'big' title until I found out that in America on the third Saturday of March Quilters fundraise: hence the International bit.  The day was organised by Janet Bottomley of the Yorkshire Modern Quilt Guild, you had to pre-book and do a bit of prepping: but what a fantastic day!

Before we attended the day we were asked to design and make a block based on the colours of Black, White and Lime on no particular theme.  These were then to be exhibited, voted for and then raffled as a set to be made up as a quilt.  I produced 2 which I'm not even showing here - the quality of the work was so high I felt very inadequate!  And the 3 photos above show the exquisite work on display, unfortunately I've not got a photo of the winner: it was of a Panda - but not the panda in the first pic.
This was one of the quilts produced last year from the donated blocks....again, look at the quality!!!!!

There was 2 activitys during the day and this was our favourite - in fact we were beside ourselves with excitement doing it as my friend Ruth also happens to be a teacher and it was a great feeling having somebody teaching us!   We did a hand sewn block of foundation piecing to produce a 'half pineapple'.  We drew the block onto calico and then using 1" scraps we produced the block by hand sewing.  Here's some pics of the process ....

     

And this is the potential outcome - should you decide to produce more blocks.....

How fabulous are these....

After this activity we had a bit of lunch and listened to the 'Show and Tell' where quilters exhibited and talked about their quilts....

Very impressive!

And there was an ongoing raffle, a silent auction and we had been asked to donate unwanted fabric, books and any other 'crafty' stuff.......so I had a bit of retail therapy and bought these.....

It was a fantastic day with about 100 like minded women and we managed to raise over £1000 for Barnsley Hospice.  If you read this Janet thank you SO much and we are gearing up for 2014!