Sunshine

A beautiful day, chairs in the garden, three out of six QQ's - a great day for chatting, sewing (well one sewer and two hookers) and even a little walk around the shops! One QQ in the USA, one QQ making a celebration cake and the final QQ heading off to the FoQ.

CB - having been given an amount of grey (rough) wool - she was trying to produce something exciting!

HW - continued with her Dahlia - finishing her last round with the hand dyed fabric - more dyed fabric required before she can continue - looking lovely.

AB - persevered with her crochet granny square - getting there! It'll be a blanket before long!

Refreshments to keep us going.....

And lunchtime treats......

A stroll after lunch to Hobbycraft allowed us to pick up some bargain fabric - CB getting very excited by HW's idea of bunting - nothing wrong with stealing someone else's idea - especially as there is no chance that the bunting will be produced by CB before the year 2020 - and HW will have hers up before the end of the week!!!

And then late afternoon we were joined a rather large friend - where's the macro lens when you need it!!

Very lucky with the weather - very lovely relaxing day.

Near & Far

How far would one travel to a QQ meeting...... walk, car, plane? Yes this month we managed all six of us together (it does seem to get harder and harder!!), and for those of you who are regular readers, you will know this was no mean feat - as one of the group is now based in the USA!!!

Meeting at Christine's, always a treat, and with all six of us, we knew we were in for a great day whatever the weather!

Show and Tell first, and with several finished items,  it motivated us all with our current projects!

Project Linus Quilt - Christine

Baby Quilt, and a matching bag - Taggy

Ripple Blanket - Carole

Current Projects -

Dahlia - Helen

Dahlia - Christine

Granny Square - Annie

Poppy Project - Taggy

Quilt As You Go - Christine

 

 

Winter Shawl - Ellen

Min Bee Hives - Stephen (our newest QQ part time member!!)

Retirement - with great jealousy (!!) we celebrated Christine's retirement - with a magnificent lunch, bubbles, trifle and cake!

Retirement gifts - flowers from Hampton Court Flower Show, awaiting their position in the garden. Crafty Gnome - who kindly whistles when you move past him.

Mini Me - did take a bit of a shine to him - not sure if she has experienced whistles before!! Look at her sitting in the smarties - any one would think you can't get them in the USA!!

And of course the day would not be complete without a walk around the wonderful garden!!

And finally - I seem to chase this one round the garden for a long time - only for him to land when my focus was else where! Not quick enough to get him sadly - back half amazing - you can just start to see the detail in the wings - but head completely out of focus - next time maybe!!!!

Great day once again!!

Happy sewing - next meeting only three weeks!! Bonus!

Can it really be June already?

And the answer to that question is...

Oh yes!

The weather forecast promised a perfect day for some quilting in a gorgeous garden.  HW felt almost selfish taking an early morning stroll around ...particularly as 4 of the quirkies had other commitments keeping them from joining us today, as always, in CD's garden there was something interesting everywhere you looked...

So the 2 of us settled down to some colourful dahlia piecing...

CD putting together the final round....

and HW being picky and unpicking some of her first round, 'cos it just wasn't sitting flat enough and after some coaching from CD realising that if it wasn't lying flat now no amount of pressing or hitting with a hammer would make it lie flat in the future...

It didn't take long to get it flatter, and ten row 2 blue petals starting going back on again....

We paused for a little show and tell....which had a very woolly theme this month.  These two bags have been made from the pack of stylecraft chunky that arrived at last months meeting... look the big bag is big enough to hold all 24 balls of the other pack of wool CD ordered....

 




And those 24 balls are gradually being made into this fantastic stripy blanket....

And as if CD hadn't been busy enough with all this hooky, she'd also found time to stitch together some donated knitted squares into a blanket, that will probably be heading towards a new home in Romania very soon...

After all that excitement we needed a healthy lunch, and SB, once again came up trumps...

 

After lunch we were joined by an interloper...with a different craft...Someone who makes empty cotton reels into drain pipes....

and is daft enough to accept the cheeky challenge of adding a "to scale" bee hive to his layout!

 

We were suddenly distracted by a major, unforecasted deluge.  Thank heavens for plastic curtains...

We were able to carry on sitting outside and watch the day gradually return to bright and sunny.  We were unexpectedly joined by CB who managed to give herself a half day off from the rigours, or should that be tortures?, of writing up reports for her City & Guilds certificate course.  We all Oooohed and Aaahed over the photos...which look fabulous here... but utterly spectacular in actual printed out format.

So  crafting and conversation flowed all afternoon.....

It all came to a close far, far too soon.  CB and HW headed home... trying hard not to get too jealous of CD's plan for the next few days....

We've seen how much she can craft when she's working 4 days a week....what will she do with allthat extra time on her hands?