Goodbye to 2016

This is the last post for 2016, and a report on our last working day - 17 November.  Bit late coming, I know, but things got a bit hectic over December.

Jill provided us with some statistics for our creativity for this year:

91 x lap quilts
155 x children's quilts
64 x single bed quilts
1 wall hanging

Total: 311 quilts

The quilts were distributed to: - Palliative Care Unit, Concord Hospital; Kalparrin Day Care (Dementia Unit); Meals on Wheels Concord; Ronald McDonald House; Domestic Violence NSW; Anglicare; Kathleen York House; St Mary's Nursing Home; Meals on Wheels Strathfield.

Besides this we gave 69 x baby wraps to Westmead Hospital for fund raising by the volunteers; 11 x raffle quilts to various organisations and 6 quilts to people in the community who were not well.

Here are a batch of quilts laid out being selected for their recipients:

 

The next two quilts were made by Jan.  The first one was a donation with the back ground pieced and one or two of the leaves appliqued.  Jan completed and quilted it.  It was selected to be given to the Senior Citizens Club as a prize for their Christmas lunch to be held on the 5th December. 

 

Beautiful Celtic style applique on this one:

 

 

This sweet little children's quilt top was one made by Shirley, our friend who lost her life to cancer a couple of years ago.  It was quilted by me (Dasha).  If you wish, there is a post about Shirley which you can visit by clicking here.

Block detail

 The next two quilts were made by Jill.

Quilted by Evelyn

Quilted by Maria

Next up are 2 by Cheryl:

Jill used a pretty toile as the centres of the blocks on this one:

 

Bev made two strippy quilts:

 

And Maria was into the strips as well.

Last but not least, two by Evelyn:

Our last meeting for the year was scheduled for 1 December.  We met at the Country Club at Breakfast Point where we had a lovely lunch.  I forgot to take a group photo, but here is one of part of the view from the balcony.  Not bad eh?

 

See you all in New Year.

First November Meeting and a Lovely Surprise

I thought I had better set to and write at least one of the outstanding posts from November since we are meeting again tomorrow.  That will be our Christmas lunch so no work will be done, just a lot of laughing, eating and talking.  Not necessarily in that order. 😃  There might also be the odd glass of wine there too.  We are making a donation to the Flying Doctor Service instead of giving gifts to one another this year.

The group has had several invitations for Christmas functions - The Mayor's Morning Tea on the 30th November; the Senior Citizen's Lunch on 5th December; and Catholic Care has invited us to an End of Year Mass and Lunch.  We are sending several members of the group to each of these functions.

Concord Hospital advised us that our last donation raised $250 in a raffle. 

Lots of lovely quilts came in.  We are so lucky to receive donations of completed tops sometimes.  The first three quilts are donations.

Cheryl quilted this pretty one:

Donated top

Look at the detail in this.  The 9 patches were made using 2" squares.

 

 

These two are Jelly Roll Race quilts.  They were donations, and were quilted by Maria.

 

 

 Bev made this cute basket quilt.

 

Jan made this one.  Click on the photo to see a larger version of the photo.  The shapes are terrific! 

 

The designs are called Tangrams, and she was inspired by this web page: http://www.tangram-channel.com/  There are literally a bazillion shapes you can make up with the simple triangle/square shape. 

 

This is also Jan's work:

 

Lovely, mushrooms, butterflies and other insects.  There's also a frog and a turtle.  All in Jan's trademark needle turn applique.

Next up is Evelyn's fun kids quilt.  What little boy wouldn't love the dinosaurs?

 

And this one is by Evelyn too.  Great quilt for a man.

 

Jill made the following quilt, and Evelyn quilted it.

 

And this is another Jill/Evelyn combo.

 

And now for the surprise.  Back in one of the posts I did in September (which you can see by clicking here, I showed you a pretty little pink quilt made by Robin.

 

 

This quilt made it's way to Ronald McDonald House and ended up on the bed of a sweet little girl (I'll call her "A" here) who needed an operation at Westmead.  Now the mother (I shall call her B here) was an enterprising soul, and found our blog address on the label.  B wasn't a blogger, so had to create a profile for herself before she could leave a message of thanks to Robin.  When the email came to me, I forwarded it to Robin, but had to reply on the blog as B was a No Reply Blogger.  A few more messages flew back and forth, and finally we received a couple of the loveliest photos of A with the quilt on her bed.  I am not sharing these photos for obvious reasons.  Wasn't that lovely of B to track us down just to say thank you?  Makes me want to go sew another quilt.  LOL

First October Meeting

Since the last meeting, we have given a number of quilts out.  Jill took 7 quilts to St Mary's Villa at Concord, a nursing home we have supported for many years.  Sadly, they have a large turnover of residents, which means that they can always use more quilts.

Evelyn took 10 quilts to the volunteers group who run the shop at Concord Hospital. This group made $30,000 last year, which was donated to the hospital.

We also donated one large quilt for raffling in aid of the Palliative Care unit at Concord Hospital.

Heaps of good work by the ladies today, so just take a moment to look at this eye candy.

The first 5 are by Evelyn:

 

This one is by Coleen, quilted by Evelyn.

 

Bow Ties by Dasha quilted by Robin.

 

We think this one is by Robin, no one owned up to it!

 

3 quilts by Jill:

We get a lot of partly finished quilts.  Sometimes it's just a bunch of blocks, sometimes a completed top.  These next quilts were all donations, completed by various people.

Maria's friend Robyn made this one and donated a completed quilt:

 

The centre for this top was donated.  Maria added some applique and quilted it:

 

The quilt top was donated, Bev completed it:

 

The appliqued squares were a donation, Bev completed it:

 

Just look at this gorgeous applique!

This was a large quilt top from a deceased estate.  Robin quilted it, and we will no doubt use this for a raffle quilt some time.

Second Meeting for September

Its interesting to see what comes in each time we meet.  Some weeks there is a veritable flood of tops and completed quilts, other weeks there's just a few.  Our second meeting for September was the first sort - a heap of completed quilts were brought in.  Unfortunately I haven't been able to identify who made a couple of these.

Here is what came in:

Cheryl made the first 2

 

Robyn has been busy.  She must have quilted in her sleep!  The next two were tops donated by Coleen's friend, Maureen.  Robyn quilted them.

 

This one is one of 4 tops.  The mother of a friend of mine donated two very large tops.  I split them into 4 smaller tops, and added borders to make up single bed quilts.  This one was quilted by Robyn. 

 

This is another one quilted by Robyn.  Not sure who made it.

 

 

Next three quilts were made by Robyn.

 

Told you she was quilting in her sleep!

 

Evelyn made this one.

 

Evelyn also quilted the next two which were made by Jill.

 

Not sure who made these next two.

 

And this last one might have been made by Ann

 

So that's it for September.  See you next time.