Gathering Lavender

SWL Quilters plan to have a group activity picking Lavender and possibly combine this with a pub outing in July.

Lesley who has experience in this area, told us that the time to collect at Carshalton Beeches was the last weekend in July when they held the Carshalton lavender festival. https://www.carshaltonlavender.org

Requirements: Scissors and a bag to put the lavender in. You could pick as much as you wanted. You were then charged according to how much you had picked.

Another possibility would be to go to Mayfield near Banstead. https://www.mayfieldlavender.com You could walk through the lavender fields in June and go to the shop and purchase the lavender that you wanted.

Once purchased or gathered, the lavender needs to be stored in a pillow case in a warm dry place for several months until the flowers are ready to fall off their stalks.

Lavender could also be purchased on line for example the Daisy shop.

15th April meeting

South West London Quilters’ meeting report 15th April

We had an excellent meeting yesterday (15th April). Meg, who had done a lot of preparatory work on the Tiger Tiger Group Quilt, had prepared bags of the blocks for us to organise into a suitable arrangement. We worked together on the design and below is the layout we came up with. Meg then carefully bagged up the blocks for each row with instructions for each member to take away and stitch together. There were 13 rows, with 9 blocks in each. We discussed the quilting, and whether or not to have a border and a final decision will be made at our next meeting, but the majority were in favour of a 6″ border in red with quilting in the ditch stitched with an invisible thread, and then adding some decorative ties.

Show and Tell

Barbara had been on a felt animal making workshop in the Lake District with her sister and made this characterful felt rabbit. She said it was an extremely enjoyable workshop to go on.

Louisa had been busy making small quilts for a friend’s twin boys, The quilt tops were made from the Meadlowland pattern – ‘They came in June.’ and the one below is being made for Project Linus. Louisa restricted her palette to shades of cream and purple. The design was simple and effective.

Sue showed her new purchase, a folding cutting board from Ansio and Lesley produced an unfinished quilt top which she had recently brought out of the drawer with the intention of finishing it. It was very jolly with sheep incorporated into each block, all beautifully made by hand and really worth finishing.

Regina collected monies for FoQ tickets. If you missed the meeting and wish to avail yourself of a cheaper ticket please contact Regina via Swlondonquilters@gmail.com. Regina also talked about her mini workshop on making fabric boxes to be held next month, May 20th.

Crazy quilting challenge

The Challenge which we completed in January was to make a crazy quilt block, measuring no more than 20 inches square. There were lots of entries, and Barbara’s piece was picked as the winner. Below are some images of some of the work. Barbara’s silver piece is just visible in bothphotographs below, it was No. 8.

Crazy quilting challenge

Please can other members let me have photos of their panels so we can add to the images on this page please.

Christmas decorations mini-workshop

At our November meeting, we held a mini workshop where Regina showed us how to make felt Christmas tree decorations. The pictures below illustrate the types of things that can be made very easily from felt.

Regina running the workshop
Green felt Christmas tree decorations
Examples of felt tree decorations

Postcard challenge

Our first challenge, set at our inaugural meeting in July 2018 and judged in September was to make a fabric postcard. It needed to be something you could actually put in the post. Sue Hart had made postcards before and she shared some that she had made and received and brought along books which were well illustrated with examples.

Most of us rose to the challenger and in September produced the following results, with Sue’s being voted the winner. Below you see the entries.

The Group’s fabric postcards
Sue’s winning postcard.


Annie’s postcard