Meetings
BECKENHAM QUILTERS MONTHLY MEETINGS.
May 2011
To start our new programme this year we spent a wonderfully productive evening making small quilts for the prem baby unit at the
Princess Royal Hospital.
This idea began with Rita Shilling and Jill Harford who had us organised and working from the word go.
The result was a huge pile of brightly coloured quilts which Rita and Jill will deliver to the unit soon.
The quilts will go under
the babies in the incubators to soften the hard lines of such an intensive medical enviroment and, hopefully, cheer up mummy and daddy a bit.
They will take the quilts home with them as a first treasure.
Some of us also made beautiful, tiny white quilts and these are for still born babies.
It was a most successfull and rewarding evening, enjoyed by everyone and fantansically well directed by Rita and Jill
who really should be running the country!
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February 2011
Some of Alison's beautiful quilts which demonstrate how important colour is to her.
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2nd NOVEMBER 2010
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Bonnie opened the meeting by introducing our speaker, Neredah McCarthy, who was giving a talk entitled
" Touching the Past - a nostalgic journey".
The talk was based around a hexagon quilt top which had been given to Neredah in 1979. The quilt contained
the backing papers and was in need of repair and so was put on one side. Neredah returned to the quilt in
the late 1990's and began to research the history of the quilt.
It had been started in the 1990's and the papers told their own story about the social history of the time.
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In 2002 she joined Shirley Quilters and started many projects/experiments using the papers.
Neredah had
bought many examples of her work to show how she has used the papers along with silks and paper making techniques.
I am sure after this interesting and inspiring talk many of our members will be eager to sign up for
Neredah's Silk Paper Making workshop next April.
Over tea everyone enjoyed looking at Neredah's work and purchasing some of her lovely threads.
We were reminded of Dulwich Quilters Exhibition on Nov 6th and 7th.
5th OCTOBER. 2010
Polly opened the meeting by apologising for Bonnie's absence; she then went on to give notices about several
local exhibitions including Shirley Quilters on October 7th and Hometown Exhibition at Rochester on October 16th.
Two new members were welcomed to the group, Janet Crowther and Sheila Burley.
We were told about an exhibition at The Royal Festival Hall until November 14th. Art by Offenders is the 49th
annual show of the Koestler Awards and is curated by a group of victims of crime, recruited by Victim Support
and trained by Southbank Centre and the Koestler Trust.
There is also an exhibition at The Foundling Museum from October 14th until 6th March 2011. It is called
'Threads of Feeling' and it will showcase fabrics never shown before to illustrate the moment of parting
as mothers left their babies at the original Foundling Hospital.
Fine Cell Work are looking for fabrics and silk embroidery threads if you have any to spare.
After the
notices
Edith Norris showed some of her Kaleidoscope Quilts as she explained the fabrics to choose if attending her
workshops on November 3rd or 4th.
For the remainder of the evening members were involved in the three mini Christmas Workshops
led by Elise,
Danish Christmas Trees,
Jean, Stitched Christmas Trees and Jenni, Fabric Bottle Bags. They were very successful
and many beautiful creations were on view by the end of the evening.
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You can enlarge the images by clicking on them and hovering on the image tells you what they are making.
7TH SEPTEMBER 2010
BQ member Anna Mansi gave a talk on 'Canadian Red Cross Quilts' assisted by Maxine March.
Hundreds of thousands of these quilts were sent to us from Canada during WWII and were
distributed to families who had lost everything in the bombings.
It was poignant that we
were listening to this talk on the 60th anniversary of the start of the London Blitz.
Anna told us that whilst helping at a Petts Wood charity shop she found her first Red
Cross quilt. At this time little was known about them and it wasn't known how many had
survived. Each quilt had a label on saying that it was a gift from the Canadian Red
Cross and often the area it had come from but no names were included.
The quilts were
made from many different fabrics including old shirts, feed bags and upholstery fabric.