Crafty Weekend in the Blue Mountains

After a few false starts and some mishaps The Sisters of the Travelling Quilt (more of this later) did actually manage to go for our crafty weekend.  We have been doing this for several years now.  A group of women at work, all who are craft fanatics or varying sorts decided we would escape from kids and work and housework and husbands etc every now and again.  We started as a group who met occasionally in one of our houses for a day of sewing and laughing and eating......you all know what we mean.


Anyway....latest instalment was at Katoomba in the beautiful Blue Mountains west of Sydney.  It only takes about an hour to drive there from most of the suburbs where we live, so it is perfect and the travelling does not impact on the crafty, laughing, eating etc.

The house we stayed in was called "Lyrebird Loft" - up a bush track that even an agile goat would have had second thoughts about, through the scrub for a short way and then there was the house, perched on the edge of cliff with a view that took your breath away

Here is the verandah which overlooks the view above.  The yellow tree is wattle which means that Spring is on its way.

As always with these little excursions, we never starve, so we had roast lamb and vegetables and gravy for dinner and patisserie cakes that Jen B brought.  Stoked up the wood fire, and drank and laughed and actually did some sewing.

We have infected Jen B with the quilting bug.....she is very crafty by nature, with a great sense of colour - she is actually Australia's answer to Martha Stewart....but she is now also a quilter.  Up to now she has been a crochet person, but we took her to a quilt show at the Rosehill Racecourse and she got sucked in by one of those chenille baby quilt kits. So she started on that.  She got her sewing machine out of the cupboard where it had resided for some years (her mother will be very pleased with this as it was a present from her mother, who was a little disappointed that it did not get more use).  Away she went sewing one big block to another big block....and that was all it took.  The Quilting Bug is more virulent that Ebola.  She kept saying "It's so much quicker than crochet!!"  She basically finished a lap sized baby quilt that evening!

Then there was Iris.....now Iris likes a chat on a hot day....if you know what I mean.  But when she is sewing - not a word - rather disconcerting really.  Like kids when they are quiet you tend to go and check them to make sure they are alright!!  She finished 3 quilt tops over the weekend and basically got all the blocks complete for a fourth.

The top quilt does not give anything like the impact of the actual quilt.  My camera is not the very best.  The blocks are purple and grey patterns and the border is dark purple....very impressive.

Kaz is another one of our converts to quilting and she finished two quilts as well...somehow the second picture went astray...but this jelly roll quilt is lovely.

I actually finished one as well....but to be honest it had been in hibernation for some time.  You know when you start a quilt all full of enthusiasm and then you meet obstacles and the enthusiasm wanes......anyway I discovered that I had actually done all the stars for this quilt and only had to do the quite simple block border.  I am still considering if it needs a border....will have to think about it.  What do you think?

Dont you love quilts that have feet!!!  In this case my quilt has two pairs of feet and a hand!!!

Having been doing a lot of cross stitch recently I really did love getting back to the immediacy of quilting.  I think I have been won over by jelly rolls....Coral the Quilting Queen (who could not come this weekend sadly) gave me a book of jelly roll patterns and both Iris and I are doing patterns from it.  I, of course, in my usual way picked a complicated once with 340 flying geese.  But they are all finished and only have to be sewn together.  When I post this I am going to the sewing room to do just that.

So thank you Sisters of the Travelling Quilt for a lovely weekend.  The Sisters started on one of our other weekends......we have decided to make blocks inscribed with some of the silly things we have said during the weekend.....this weekend will be "Was there garlic in that lamb?"  This from Iris....her digestive system does not react well to garlic.....I will say no more on this subject!!

Hello to all my followers....wish you had been with us....happy stitching!!