Here are the photos to go with the August news post:

This is Joanne Farmery's Inner City quilt - it won best amateur traditional quilt at the Taupo Symposium last year. It is completely hand made - piecing and quilting, and created an amazing reaction when people came in to the shop.

Joanne taught the class recently at the shop

and these are the blocks that everyone created:

Don't they look great? Joanne taught hand piecing techniques including how to make those points meet perfectly. Hand stitching is getting very popular, being something you can do while on the move, or in the evening in front of the television.

Upcoming classes include a repeat of Vickye's Petals class on September 17th and 24th

And another chance to make my version of a Flat Mat Bag - very handy for carrying your quilting tools to class - turn up to Symposium in style! The class is on October 24th

I have been busy working on a quilt for...

August News

It’s been another great month of quilting. Joanne Farmery’s Inner City class was a highlight, I have put photos of the blocks made on my facebook page.
Welcome to Gill, Lisa, Lyn, Ruth, Carol and Glenys who started their beginners course last month, and congratulations to Carol, Kath, Annette and Eileen who completed their course.

CLASSES

The next six week beginners class will be on Tuesday evenings from 6pm to 8pm, starting on October 14th. To register, call in at Quilters’ Lane.

Petal Class – due to demand we are running another class on Weds 17th Sept 10-1 and Weds 24th Sept.
Date changes :
Free Motion Quilting now Sat Sept 13th 10am to 4pm
Sunburst block now Sat October 18th 10am to 4pm.
Please see our August Class List for a full list of what’s on.

MYSTERY 2014
Part Seven of our 2014 Mystery is now available at Quilters' Lane. We are now busy preparing for the Reveal Days – November 8th and 15th – when you can come and see the quilt...

Here is the latest news from Quilters' Lane:

CLASSES

Beginners Patchwork and Quilting starts on Friday July 25th from 10am to 12pm and runs for 6 weeks.

Inner City with Joanne Farmery - Saturday August 2nd 10am to 4pm. This class is perfect if you are looking for a travel project that you can carry with you as the quilt is all hand pieced. Also you will be using your scraps so there is no initial outlay on fabric for this quilt.
I am also updating the class list again and have added another Free Motion Class and Flat Mat Bag class. More classes will be added soon , please see our class list for details.

JULY SPECIALS
This month we have specials on our computer aided quilt design software. EQ7 is the package I use to design all of my Mystery and Shop Hop quilts. Normally $385, it is marked down to $299 for July only. Quilt Wizard is a simplified version of EQ and allows you to work out your block sizes, sashings, borders etc and to print out block instructions. Normally $59, reduced to $39...

Joanne Farmery with 'Inner City'

This year we have been to a lot of craft fairs and quilt exhibitions with the shop. Packing everything up and travelling all over the place is fun but very time consuming, and it uses up a lot of energy. So it was wonderful to spend a weekend at the Symposium in Ashburton as a tutor instead of being a merchant.

My hosts for the Braided Ribbons symposium were fabulous. Alison Bufton who was my hostess picked me up at the airport, drove me to the hotel and wherever I needed to go and generally looked after me all weekend. Paula Lawrence was a great organiser and the committee can be congratulated on a fantastic event all round.

Saturday saw my very first Symposium teaching engagement. Being a teacher in a previous life and teaching a lot in the shop I hadn't been getting too nervous, but when the moment came I was a little anxious and hoped I had remembered everything on the needs list and that my students would enjoy their day.

Twelve lovely ladies appeared in the classroom and we...

Summer is moving along here in the Wairarapa. We have had stinking hot days and some pretty cold ones as well. I have been enjoying doing my hand pieced quilts but also getting in some sewing machine time.

The nice thing about having a lot of 'UFO's is that when you do pick one up it doesn't always take long to finish it. Some time back I started a quilt that was a version of a Lone Star, all with strip piecing. Having decided to teach the quilt as a class it was time to get the thing finished, so that was today's job (being Wellington Anniversary day). I had started with a cream fabric for the centre

I decided the cream wasn't working so tried out a couple of other ideas. Here is the blue Philip Jacobs coleus fabric:

I quite liked that but it wasn't working with the pink background, so I went back to the original idea which was to put the outside fabric in the centre also. And here is the finished block:

I;m pretty happy with the...

This weekend we have been launching the 2014 Mystery Quilt at the shop. I have been overwhelmed with the support for this quilt and it's great to know that people from far flung places will be all making the Mystery.

There are still some places left to do the Mystery quilt - you can participate in the shop or by post - we can send the blocks to you if you are not able to get here. These are some of the colourways that are still available:

There's rich autumn tones in Autumn Bounty:

Sedate greens with a bush theme:

Modern and fresh yellows and greys in Spring Fling:

Cute lions and monkeys in Jungle Fever:

(the little 'curl' is representative of the orangey fabric we are using, it hasn't arrived in yet)

Pink as anything elephants taking a shower:

Again , one more fabric to add

Cool blue, white and silvers in Winter Frost

And finally one for those who love their horses:

If you would like to know more, send me an email or...

Where do you get inspiration for your quilts?

I have some quilts under way from patterns, but I just can't resist changing the pattern to better suit what I want to do. I'm also really interested in taking images and using them to inspire a quilt, not just literally by attempting to reproduce the photo, but also by taking lines, shapes, colours and textures from the image and playing with them in fabric.

This quilt I made for the 12 by 12 challenge on the theme of 'Spring' was quite literal in reproducing the image. I even traced some of the flowers.

The butterflies and some of the leaves were decoupaged from a paper napkin, and the background is a fabric I hand dyed. I used fabric paints for the flowers and leaves and parts of a pack of silk waste for the stamens.

For my 'Leaves of Autumn' quilt I went walking and gathered some leaves to work from. Here are some of the 'prototype' versions:

And the finished quilt:

I will be teaching workshops on this quilt...

No blog for a long time - what with the Shop Hop and the Mystery Quilt it has been a very busy time at Quilters' Lane. I've also enjoyed meeting lots of people who have popped in while on their holidays either from other parts of NZ or from around the world. It seems the Wairarapa is getting on the tourist map!

Over the past year, quilters have been working on my Mystery Quilt, which I called 'Conundrum at Cocktail Hour'. Each of the seven colourways was named after a cocktail - or at least loosely. The colours were:

Black Russian - Black and White with a touch of Red

Chatham Island Iced Tea - yes that's Chatham Island, not Long Island! - Chatham Island Forget me nots and other kiwiana

Blue Hawaiian - blue/green batiks

Kiwi Grasshopper - Kiwiana with greens

Shirley Temple - sweet and pink and floral

Champagne Cocktail - purples, blues and ivory with gold highlights

and Sundowner - rich browns, oranges and golds

Here are some of the colour charts that people chose from:

Black...

We are having a Spring Clean at Quilters' Lane - everything excluding batting will be 25% off from tomorrow Monday October 7th at 9.30 am until Saturday October 12th at 1pm. Make the most of the school holidays and come and enjoy, the weather is beautiful here in the Wairarapa!