November Show 'n' Tell

We've Been Liberated!

Yesterday we were very fortunate to have Janet Bottomley teach a workshop on Liberated Piecing. Janet recently inspired us with a talk on the subject and we couldn't wait to get started. The liberated star blocks above show just one of the three blocks we all made on the day. Read on to see more!

Janet had brought lots of her blocks and quilts to show us:

Janet loves bright colours! She encourage us to use scraps and that wasn't a problem as some of us had brought along huge bags of fabric remnants! We weren't allowed to spend too long choosing colours but  all the finished blocks looked lovely. First we made square in a square - liberated of course:

then 'wonky'stars

We were very impressed with Muriel's liberated star!

The third block was the asterisk

This was great fun to sew and was a good way to use up thin (1") strips of fabric.

We all had a wonderfully day of sewing and some even had time to make extra blocks or use up some 'crumbs' with truly liberated piecing:

Finally here are a few more of Janet's beautiful quilts:

And she brought her very first quilt to show us:

If you'd like to learn more about liberated piecing look out for Gwen Marsten's book:

and visit Bonnie Hunter's blog http://quiltville.com/

Liberated Piecing

 

 This month we were very fortunate to have Janet Bottomley as our guest speaker explaining all about liberated piecing. Janet entertained us with a slide show and display of her own quilts and blocks, and also some antique quilts she bought in the USA. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed her talk and had lots of questions about the quilts. Here are a few photos of Janet's antique quilts:

This one has a scrappy but regular design on the front but really Janet bought it because she liked what's on the reverse:

A fabulous scrappy liberated quilt! You can see a close up at the top of this post.

 This Lone Star was made using an array of fabrics and it seems the maker added the colours quite randomly! The whole quilt was tied with green and yellow wool:

 The pineapple quilt top above was completely hand pieced and we wondered if the single black block, which seemed to be made of a synthetic dress fabric, had a particular significance to the maker.

You can see  Janet's quilts and more about her recent visit to the US on her blog: A Quilter's Journal.

Also at this month's meeting we had some lovely items in our Show-n-Tell:

Pippa has made these cute cupcakes for the Young Quilters group she organises for the Quilters Guild. She has a new website called  Quilt and Stitch for the group where you can find step by step photo tutorials for this and other projects.

Ann brought along two of her works in progress:

A beautiful foundation pieced quilt

Quilt started at our recent workshop with Carolyn Gibbs

Mandy had brought along her finished table runner made at a workshop with Sandra Morgan earlier this month:

Finally Sue Abrey showed us her fantastic new book 'Pick Four':

You can see more about this and watch out for a book blog hop with giveaway prizes on Sue's blog Quilt Times. Although the book hasn't been officially published in this country yet it is available now from the Book Depository.

Thank you Janet and everyone who participated in this month's meeting - it was very enjoyable and inspirational!