Quilty Goodness

Two weekends ago (yes, time flies and this is a belated post), The Country Yard celebrated its 20th birthday.

We were lucky, we had some lovely fine weather both for setting up, and on the day.

A peaceful start to the day - before people started arriving! The shop is set on lovely grounds which were immaculately presented for the day.

Set up the day before - where will all these quilts fit?!

It was a lovely day. Morning tea was available and a lot of our visitors enjoyed sitting in the beautiful garden chatting with friends. In the shop we had a good sale so I'm afraid I didn't get out and about at all!

We had asked for quilts which people had made over the years. Many of those that came in were original Block Of The Month programmes we have run. It was a real trip down memory lane to see them all!

Some readers may remember me talking about a challenge quilt I was making for the celebration. Every three weeks or so we were given a theme. We were to make a 12" block relating to the theme, and the idea was that by the party day, we would have a 9-block quilt to be displayed. It was to be no bigger than 48" and to have the supplied challenge fabric in it somewhere.

(More on my quilt later.)

It was really exciting to receive the challenge quilts - they were all so different - isn't it always fun seeing how different people interpret (supposedly) the same thing?!

We hung the challenge quilts side-by side along two sides of the marquee. 

The themes for the challenge quilts all related to what makes The Country Yard special and were; Sewing, Friendship, Have a cuppa, Celebration, The Country Yard, A favourite block, The garden, Christmas, What's behind the shop doors.

This is the challenge fabric. We were all given a 5" x 20" piece of it.

Here are the challenge quilts; there were 21 in all.

Kerryn -  

Joanna - 

Wendy-

Carolyn - 

Suzanne. (Top only, as she doesn't make small quilts and this will be added to, in time!)-

Beryl - 

Diane - 

Melissa - 

Pam - 

Sheila - 

Nancy -

Julie -

Jenny - 

Alison - 

Bernice -

Judy - 

Liz - 

Maureen - 

Mary - 

Ruth - 

Sadly my challenge quilt was not finished for the big day. (I stupidly poisoned myself with gluten earlier in the week so that took me out when I had planned on sewing!) I hadn't finished the quilting and it was unbound. We had left a hanging spot for it but received a late entry, so mine was draped elsewhere for display!

I have since finished it (actually I did a better job of finishing it without the deadline so it worked ok in the end!).

My original inspiration was *this* block by Heather Briggs of My Sew Quilty Life. And then I had fun hunting out suitable blocks to carry on with the heart theme.

And just to clarify. Here is where I used one bit of my challenge fabric. And all my cornerstones are from this fabric.

Whew, congratulations if you have got to the end!! 

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Raewyn.