Merry Christmas Everyone!

We had a small gathering today at Jillian’s with some show & tell:

Jillian purchased this stunning quilt on a holiday in South Africa. It has all sorts of embellishments on it and is a wonderful reminder of her time there.

Ellen has made this quilt from lovely batik fabrics – it looks beautiful.

Alison made this Christmas themed table runner from a pattern in Quilting Arts Holiday issue 2008.

This will be our last meeting for this year as many people are heading off home or on holiday. Have an enjoyable Christmas & New Year and a safe time everyone.

Christmas Lunch

We had a lovely day at Janice’s for our annual Christmas celebration. Unfortunately a lot of the photos were lost, but we have managed to uncover these:

The hat designing and making was fun – thanks Janice for organising this – some wonderful creations were made – sadly just a memory now.

We did however enjoy decorating some little gingerbread folk and hopefully the neighbours enjoyed our singing of some traditional Carols.

Thank you Janice for your kind hospitality and everyone who provided such wonderful delicacies for us to consume!

Sewing Triangles

Today someone was asking about an easy way to make triangles.
Jane suggested this product called Thangles. This looks so easy to use - no tricky maths involved and plenty of ideas as well. They have online shopping as well

Recipe

GINGER CRUNCH
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125g butter, soft
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups SR Flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground ginger

GINGER ICING:
75g butter
3/4 cup icing sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup
3 teaspoons ground ginger

* Cream butter & sugar till light & fluffy
* Sift flour, baking powder & ginger
* Mix into creamed mixture
* Turn dough onto lightly floured board. Knead well
* Press into 20x30cm tin
* Bake at 190c 20-25 mins until light brown
* Pour hot ginger icing over base while hot

ICING: Melt ingredients & stir together

Makes 24

Day at Kathy's & Christmas Tree of Circles

Thanks Kathy for hosting us today. Lots of stitching went on this week - Kathy was busy with her log-cabin block which turned into a pincushion - beautiful colours, some very recognisable fabrics from a recent challenge????

As discussed, here is the link to amitié in Bentleigh, Victoria, another lovely patchwork store which the Melbourne girls are lucky to have. Go down to the heading of circles, dots & living creatively. There is another challenge in conjunction with the Living Creatively website. One of the staff members has made a Christmas Tree quilt entirely of circles and spotty fabric. It's simple and really effective.

Living Creatively is a mecca dedicated to all kinds of crafts. It was started by Kerri-Anne Kennerley, probably the Antipodean equivalent of Martha or Oprah. Kerri-Anne had a vision to provide a showcase for people's artistic talents and there's lots of eye-candy on this website. The site focusses on small and home-based businesses, designers, places to visit when travelling and in the future a place to sell your work. You can sign up for regular newsletters.

I have published the recipe for Kathy's Kiwi Ginger Crunch slice which we all enjoyed today. Yum!