What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

After promising you I'd always do my blog posts on Friday nights NZ time, I slipped one in on Sunday, so if you missed seeing my Purple Zone quilt you can click back and read about it here. 

I've got more quilts from the exhibition to blog about, but first on to my shopping from Capital Quilters' exhibition last weekend. 

We had five retailers at the exhibition and I think I bought something from nearly every one of them.  

my haul from the exhibition

First up was this very interesting fabric from e bond for Free Spirit Fabrics ...

It's only one week until our exhibition!!!

It's going to be great because we have some very talented members at Capital Quilters.  I've entered seven quilts.  Yes, SEVEN. 

One is a 12" x 16" challenge, so that hardly counts.

Two you've possibly seen finished here on my blog or in person.

Two others you would have seen progress photos of, but not seen them finished.

And the final two are total surprises!! These are quilts that I've completed without showing them on social media at all.  Not even my friends know about them.  And I ...

I've got exciting news to share.  Capital Quilters are having an exhibition in May 2024 in Lower Hutt. 

It's going to be on Saturday 11 May and Sunday 12 May which is also Mothers' Day.  Wouldn't be lovely to take your mum to a quilt show on Mothers' Day? You can look at the quilts together and then stop in at the on-site cafe for a bite to eat. 

Of course we're going to have merchants too so you'll have to allow time for shopping too.  

The Lower Hutt Events Centre is the lovely modern ...

Can you believe this is my most viewed blog post ever? Click here to read about my Scrappy Bear Paw quilt.  

Yes, people just love my Scrappy Bear Paw quilt.  I suspect it's because of the bright colours that I chose, and the simple hand quilting with Perle 8. 

Maybe I shouldn't have allowed my son to take it to his university hostel.  Actually, I don't mind.  I can always make another one when our guild turns 50 years old which is now only 12 years away.  

The display at Capital Quilters when the guild turned 30 ...

On Monday I went to a class with visiting Australian tutor, Chris Jurd.  We spent the day making one big 18" Mariner's Compass block.

I'm really pleased with how my block turned out, especially as I made it all from stash!!  I didn't have enough of my favourite green for the background, so Chris encouraged me to alternate it with another green and it's worked out well. 

The fabrics I used were all left over from my Endless Lockdown quilt made back in 2020. The kit I had purchased was very generous with the fabrics, so ...

I think I'm going to call my tree quilt "Pine Hill" because that's where I grew up in Dunedin.  I went to Pine Hill Playcentre, and Pine Hill School. And the trees on my tree quilt look like pine trees to me.

Well, the hand quilting on my Spooky Darlings quilt didn’t last very long because even after the first day I could feel a few twinges in my hands. 

So, I decided to change to machine sewing and I made a few more trees for our Capital Quilters tree quilt along. I still had all the fabrics set aside, so it was quite easy to make some more wonky trees.  

Some Tula Pink Holiday Homes prints

Some Kaffe Fassett Mosaic Circles

I laid all my tree blocks out and started to think that it looked a bit plain, so I ...

Last week I was the guest speaker at Rose City Quilters in Palmerston North, this week I was the guest speaker at Capital Quilters in Lower Hutt.  

Yes, I had a last minute invitation to be the guest speaker at Capital Quilters last weekend.  Unfortunately I couldn't let you know, because like Palmerston North, the meeting was restricted to members only, with a maximum of 100 attendees.  

I hadn't really unpacked from my Palmerston North trip, so it was easy enough to scoop up a few quilts and put them in the car.  I changed my talk up ...

My Glitter quilt is finished! And it won a prize in our guild's exhibition. 

Yes, I won Best Hand Pieced and I was thrilled. Glitter is designed by Jen Kingwell from Australia.  I started my Glitter quilt in a hand piecing class with Jen Kingwell at the Christchurch Symposium in October 2017.  I did promise Jen that it would be finished by October 2019, and the top was finished by then, but I didn't start hand quilting it until January 2020.

Now it's finished, and it will look just right on our bed. I chose the greens ...

What a thrill it was to see my quilt hanging in our guild's exhibition last weekend.  It really glowed in the dark exhibition space. And the rosette on it matched the colours in my quilt perfectly!

I'm just writing this very brief blog post to let you know that won some awards at the Capital Quilters show this weekend.

Next is my "We Built This City" quilt and it won a Merit in the Build It Up challenge, and also the Joanne Johnson Colour Award.  This quilt was ...

Good news - we're back at COVID Level 1 (our lowest level) and our quilt show is going ahead next weekend.  

I'm really looking forward to seeing my Glitter quilt hanging, and then getting to take it home again.  Although I finished Glitter back in April 2020, I haven't used it on our bed yet, or shared it on social media.  It was to be my main entry in the QuiltNSW Sydney Quilt Show, but that got pushed back twice, and is now cancelled for 2020.  Our own shown in Wellington has been pushed back once, but we ...

Due to the return to COVID Level 2, we have made the very difficult decision to postpone our Quilted Exhibition planned for next weekend 22 - 23 August 2020.

It's only two weeks until Capital Quilters' Exhibition opens at the Lower Hutt Events Centre.  We're in a bit of a quiet lull at the moment, because we've finished our quilt, and hand the frantic activity of hand in day, and now we're just making final arrangements with the venue.  

This weekend I'm going to our guild's retreat.  We're quite a big guild, so we usually have 3 retreats a year - 2 at Silverstream in Upper Hutt, and one at Home of Compassion in Island Bay, Wellington. Different groups of members are regulars at each venue.  I only go to the Home of Compassion retreat which is usually in the middle of winter.  

Yes, I have great news for all the quilters in New Zealand.  

Our raffle quilt - see below for details

Capital Quilters' 2020 exhibition is going ahead on Sat 22 - Sunday 23 August 2020.  Everyone is welcome - we'd love to see you all there.  

There's lots to say about the exhibition, so I'll work through all you need to know.

WHO: Capital Quilters - I'm proud to be a member of Capital Quilters.  We're a large guild based in Lower Hutt, Wellington.  We meet at Waterloo School on the last Saturday afternoon of every month.  We have ...