Special Trading Hours This Weekend

Due to a very special event Berrima Patchwork Shop will be CLOSED on the following dates: 

Saturday 27th July
Sunday 28th July
Monday 29th July
Tuesday 30th July
Re-opening at 10am on Wednesday 31st July

Quilting in the Highlands Sponsors

We have to put out a HUGE BIG THANK-YOU to our Quilting in the Highlands Sponsors, they have been amazing this year with their generous gifts. They include - PK Fabrics, Victorian Textiles, Lloyd Curzon Textiles, J. Leutenegger, Macs Crafts, Sewline, Gütermann Threads, Universal Magazines (Homespun and Quilters Companion!)

There are fabric bundles, charm packs, layer cakes, patterns, magazine subscriptions, templates, magazines, threads and much more. This photo wouldn't even be a 1/4 of what we will be giving away over the duration of the retreat!
For information about Quilting in the Highlands go to www.berrimapatchwork.com.au/quilting
 

Kit Cutting Time For the Retreat

Today is kit cutting time for our workshops which are part of our Quilting in the Highlands Retreat. These are just some of the beautiful fabrics that we have to cut up as part of Rachelle Denneny's Workshop: Turned Edge Applique by Machine.

This workshop is based on Rachelle's award winning quilt Royal Amethyst and the students will be learning Rachelle's technique of turned edge applique by machine to create a bed scarf/table runner. The students have a choice of two different colour ways - Royal Amethyst and Royal Sapphire. Plus the kit is part of the workshop and you get to use these amazing shot cottons from Reece Scannell and Maywood Studio Shadow Play Fabrics!

This workshop is part of our Quilting in the Highlands 2013 Retreat. We do still have one place in this workshop if you are interested. For more information about this workshop and the other workshops on offer go to www.berrimapatchwork.com.au/quilting

Cover Quilt- Quilter's Companion

I finally can say I am a cover girl.... well my quilt is! The latest edition of Quilter's Companion features a quilt which I designed and  made called Candy Twist. This quilt was inspired by my little nieces who just love the colour pink. Now pink is not really my most favourite but how could I look into my little niece's faces and tell them that so Candy Twist was created just to please them (I'm sure they will be fighting over who get this quilt.... stay tuned there may be another pink quilt in the making!)

The quilt is designed to fit a single bed and would look great in a range of fabrics. The fabrics which I used  is from the Benartex fabric range Lili-fied. This range is available in the pink/orange colours and also in blue/greens.

The quilt was pieced using my Aurora 440QE and then quilted using the new Bernina 710.

I am rather bad when I make my quilts and don't tend to trim the threads on the back as I go, when you are sewing with white YOU NEED TO DO THIS! If you don't, like I did, you will find once you have pieced the entire top you will spend hours trimming all those threads off. I was looking at using a bright backing fabric on this quilt and couldn't as it would have shown through the white. I did use for the batting Matilda's Own Poly which is very white in colour and don't have a high loft like most battings (it is very similar to the cotton batting) so was perfect for this quilt.

Once the quilt was pieced it was time for the quilting. I try to quilt all my own quilts, my quilting is never the best but with practice I am getting there. I really only wanted to do simply quilting so I quilting in the ditch all the top and then using the Bernina Stitch Regulator (the BSR) I stippled all the white fabric. I didn't quilt on top of any of the pink fabric, by doing this it gave all the pink fabrics a raised effect which I liked.   

Quilter's Companion #62 is available now in the newsagents so make sure you go and check it out!

Below are some of the photos I took when I was quilting.

An upclose photo of the quilting. Quilting white on white is hard on the eyes but I did love the effect it gave.