3 Crows Sitting On A Wall - by Jo

(October Meeting)

The hall was filled with quite a buzz of anticipation and excited talk about what was to come and how enjoyable our Exhibition had been.

Claire started the evening by thanking everyone for an amazing Quilt Show, how amazing all SQ quilters work looked when displayed and what a lovely day it was. We also had the pleasure of meeting six new members to our group. 

On the stage sat, ' The 3 Crows ', as Claire called them, Jill, Kate, Ann D and interviewer Deirdre. They had been asked to bring their first quilts, favourite quilts and most current quilts to show us and talk to us about their quilting journey.

We discovered that Jill started quilting over 20 years ago and her first quilt was a block of the month and it is stunning, one of the blocks was used by the teacher as an illustration in their book. Jill has a love of paper piecing and fabric manipulation, and French Civil War reproduction fabrics. We could see Jill's beautiful work in her winning quilt at our exhibition. 

Kate has been quilting for just over 10 years and started her journey with a quilt course at Thread Bear, which many of us remember, especially Steph and Kate with fondness. Kate has a love of colour and uses Kaffe Fassett and some Tula Pink designs in much of her work. Her inspiration came from a quilt she saw by Tracey Emin. What I found particularly fascinating is that Kate is colour blind but as one of her Grandchildren said, 'colours don't always go together but they work'. Kate has developed a love of curves in quilting and her Quilt 'The Avenue' is just the start. 

Ann has only started quilting since she retired just over 4 years ago. Ann had made her own clothes when younger, so a sewing machine was her friend but the terminology of the Quilting World left her, and all of us in the beginning, completely baffled, Clam shells, Cathedral Windows and has quickly learnt the importance of the ¼ inch seam. Ann has made several small quilts and her entry for the exhibition of her Give Us A Clue was amazing. We all look forward to seeing your William Morris Quilt. 

It was so interesting to hear, as Jill said when she first started quilting scissors, a ruler and cardboard where the main pieces of equipment. So much has changed but what has not changed is that there is never enough material in our stash, never quite the right colour and no matter how full your sewing room is there is always room for one more fat quarter and if you are really lucky one more sewing machine.

A brilliant evening and a big thank you to the 3 Crows.