December: Another Year Over.....

OK - so where has 2015 gone.  I cannot believe we are posting the final meeting of 2015 for the QQ.  Our final meeting was a fun and full one.  Activities varied, great food and belated birthday celebrations. And always difficult now, but a full house!!

Can you guess it was our Christmas meeting, a Christmas tree of bread rolls with a wonderful Cauliflower and cheese soup (with a great addition of some herb mustard).....

 

Various skills were on show today, a couple of hookers were in the room....  a new Corner to Corner (C2C) pattern was big tested by HS.  A boarder in dc was being tested by AB to complete her large Granny 'square'.

 

Hand sewing from the other three - HW trying hard to finish her whole cloth quilt now the cold weather is coming in.  CD continuing with some new stitch experimenting from a course completed a few days ago.  Great fabric (hand dyed)  and some wonderful thread. And finally CB finishing the binding on some small table runners for Christmas Gifts.

  

We had our 2016 diarys at the ready for pining down dates for next years meetings!  As you can see only one of us has made it to electronic format!!!

And belated birthday greetings for CB.  A delicious cake made by AB.

With many, many wonderful gifts.  So very lucky to have good friends.  THANK YOU all for your amazing gifts.

And to complete the day, a quick walk - in the very windy, wind to Hobby Craft.  Three dressed for the walk, the other needs a chat from her Mum about dressing for the weather conditions.

Another year over, wishing you all a GREAT CHRISTMAS AND A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR.  I hope Santa is kind to you all with great crafting gifts but I hope most of all he brings you extra time to enjoy your hobbies in 2016!!

October: The month of Finished Projects

Missing one member today - with HW becoming a member of Walsall Quilters for just one weekend. We started the morning off with a mass of finished projects - its been a long while since I've seen so many....

Three from HS....

One from CD.... although there is a little to finish on this one.

Front

Back - do you know what it says??

Two from CB.... just a label for this one.

Lot's of chatting, laughter but, for me, not much work!! We caught up with absent friends - sending belated birthday wishes across the pond. What did we do before Face time?!!

Lunch was an excellent soup, made with a bits of this and a bits of that!!! - so good in fact, we had eaten it before a photo was taken but luckily I did manage an image of the wonderful loaf we had - eat your heart out Paul Hollywood!! Dessert was a wonderful 'apple cake' with a surprise crunch topping - again eaten before a photo was taken - we really must be more disciplined!!! 

Work in progress was varied....

AB working hard on her granny square.

CD with some hand quilting, another section of a wholecloth quilt progressing well.

CB adding sashing to some blocks made by QoS members - ready for quilting.

HS..... using some left over wool to product a crochet blanket.  Variegated wool gives great results.

Lets see how productive we can be before November!

September: All together again

Today was all about colour and plotting future plans...

Firstly the colour from show and tell of projects we'd been working on.  Big coloured blankets

Squares from CD

wrong side HW hexagons

right side HW hexagons

And little cute robin bunting...

We had plenty to get on with as we plotted...

Another colourful blanket by CB...

 

Communication themed flags for CD for a twining challenge quilt...

 

Another crochet blanket by AB...

 




A mystery quilt taking shape with help from HT...

And some tiddly hexagons by HW heading towards being fundraising brooches...

 

For lunch we had a new soup, Sweet potato, carrot and peanut butter,  which was an experiment ..but perhaps not one to be repeated.  Along with apple an blackberry crumble...

 

After lunch the sun came out long enough for someone to indulge her other hobbies briefly...

 

The sunflowers I understand ... but the toadstool???

Anyway the afternoon finished with much plotting about the next round of Birthdays as we have 2 quirkies with a BIG birthday ending in zero next year we are on the verge of booking ourselves a special treat!!  Which will be even more special if we can lure our special guest from America along.

Squeeeee Excited already!!!!!!!

August: Summer Time

Once again a very small gathering for this months QQ meeting.  It's incredible the amount of 'stuff' we all cram into our weeks, and even though we plan these dates at the beginning of the year, life sometime gets in the way of our fun!

With CD celebrating her parents 60th anniversary and HW picking up kids from Grandparents, it was left to CB, AB and HS to eat cake and hook!! Although we did have EL pop in from the US to bring us up to date on Turtles hatching and giant dahlias!

So busy chatting and hooking, I'm afraid very few pictures were taken - so a short one this month!!

CB, starting a crochet blanket, one for use in the garden (to keep for herself!)  Foundation row was started Thursday night so it was hook, hook, hook......

HS was finishing a new born baby hat, having already hooked the body of a poncho in matching wool.  Look at the little tiny ear flaps!

And AB, was coming to the end of her massive grey granny square..... discussions to add another colour took place at length!!

Missed photo's of lunch, but cake was eaten - and lovely cake it was too!

And face time with EL - what would we do without the Internet!!!! EL was getting ready to babysit a turtles nest - overdue for hatching - how very exciting!

Happiness is a day of hooking with good friends! Lets see if we can get a full house for September!

July 18th

This month was an odd one with only three participants. CB and HT had prior engagements and EL was unavailable via the internet.

HW was busy making a quilt for a friends mother. Working to a deadline certainly concentrates the mind and gets things completed in a timely manner. All the free motion quilting was completed today, well done.

Free motion quilting under way

Close up of butterfly pattern

All quilting finished, ready for binding

AB was crocheting her big Granny square.

Granny square getting bigger

CD, who took up golf a couple of months ago, thought it would be nice to have a unique golf card holder. There were a few design faults, like stitching through a corner tab when stitching pockets for pencils and it could do with a bit more ease for folding. May have to make another to iron out the faults. It is now in use so not so bad.

Necessary bits for golf card holder

For lunch we had Faro (wheat equivalent of pearl barley) and roasted vegetable salad with lemon and thyme chicken, with lime cheese cake to follow, it was delicious. Unfortunately, in our rush to devour it, we forgot to take a picture.

Lunch was delicious!

After lunch it was back to work, with a short interval to look through some new books, have a cup of tea and a piece of HW's cherry cake. The cherries came from her garden and the cake was scrumptious, HW was a little disappointed that all the cherries had sunk to the bottom. How about serving it hot, upside down and covered in custard as pudding?  

Another productive day, we look forward to the next one.