What a great day!

Well I don't mind telling you I am tired but it is a good kind of tired.  Today I went to a sew in to complete quilts for Queensland. Corrie of retromummy put out a call for people to donate 12 1/2 inch blocks, quilt tops or quilts to be sent to those who were affected by the floods in Queensland in January.  She had no idea what she had got herself into as she received blocks, flimsies and quilts from all point of the compass I am sure.  Today was the day to try and finish as many of them as we could. 

What a well organised day it was!  We had a huge room on the second floor of a community centre.  Corrie cooked up a storm of frittatas for our lunch and we all brought a plate of other yummies - cakes, cookies, slices, brownies - we did not go hungry.  Tea and coffee, soft drink, water - LOLLIES purely for energy of course!

We set up our machines on tables side by side in a great big L shape along two sides of the room and on the floor in front we laid out the blocks and quilts.  We started by laying out quilt blocks in groups of 12 or 16 usually.  At times there were upwards of 18 or 20 quilts laid out.  When we ran out of floor space we started sewing them together and then adding backing.  By lunch time I think most of the quilts blocks had been turned into quilt tops! While some of us concentrated on sewing, others concentrated on pairing up tops with backing.   Most of the quilts were small children's quilts and we simply backed them with polar fleece.  I have never done that before and was interested to see how it worked.  Lots of my bloggie buddies have done it.   We sandwiched the tops and fleece right sides together, sewed around the edges, left an opening to turn them right side out and then top stitched the edge.  Simple!  This was the first quilt completed and then we were on a roll!!  

 I really like this one - lots of these blocks were completed by HAND!!!

 Someone bought in a piece of camouflage polar fleece and amazingly there was the perfect quilt top to go with it!

 Congratulations to this lovely lady below - this was her first ever quilt!  Woo Hoo!!!

 End result:  A lovely big pile of completed quilts

 a number of quilts divided up among us to take home and finish, some large ones to go to some generous long arm quilters and a bundle more to be sent to the Queensland Quilters for completion.

I bought home two to finish - a lovely small Aussie one that has lots of button hole stitch applique.  It is gorgeous but too small on its own so I want to do it justice with a border to make it big enough to stand along.  I also brought home a lovely jungle themed one which with fabric for the backing.  The backing needs piecing and there just wasn't time to do it justice today so.  I will post photos of those tomorrow I hope.

At the end of the day Corrie gave us all a charm pack - an unnecessary but not unwelcome and definitely generous gesture.  I received a charm pack of

Yahoo - I love this fabric - particularly the one one the top - might have to buy me a bit more to use as a border on the resulting quilt!

I met some great people - lovely Lisa who worked with me till lunchtime, trimming, pinning and ironing while I sewed.  She, sadly doesn't have a blog.  I also met the lovely Sheridan a.k.a. chaletgirl who also organises the  sew it together events.  I missed this year's but I will have to try and schedule in next year's.   There were lots of other awesome ladies there but I was just too busy sewing to chat much and didn't really get to know any of the others!  But you know, quilters are always a lovely bunch so you can imagine what they were like!

Till next time......happy stitching!