Touchy Feely Monday

Wow, over 30 ladies present at our Monday meeting:  the place was abuzz with activity!

Touchy feely kits were being made up, which involves small pieces of lots of different textiles, other girls were busy cutting lengths of lace and ribbons etc.

This rather special example of touchy feeliness was made by Wendy.
Many lovely quilts came in today, too.  Here's a selection of them.  What a clever bunch!

A fabulous sampler

Lovely kid's quilts (and quilters!)

Snuggly baby quilts

These fairies will make a little girl's heart sing!

Lorraine was working diligently at making weighted vests.  These are used as a calming tool for the kids at special schools.

Lorraine almost stopped talking long enough to have her picture taken!

We also received 10 lovely crocheted rugs from Maxine O'Sullivan along with three gorgeous teddy bears, lots and lots of coloured pencils and activity books, and children's socks and babywear. (I'm sorry, but I forgot to take photos of them).  And we'd also like to thank Rowan Young for his kindness in paying for our liability insurance once again.

This month we've been able to send; to Lily House who look after single teenage mums and their babies we've given 8 adult and 10 toddler quilts, 3 bears and some babywear; to Nambour General Hospital we've sent 10 baby quilts, 15 baby jackets and 5 chemo caps;  to Sunshine Coast Children's Therapy Centre 6 touchy feelys; and another 6 to Compass Institute;  Mt Carmel Prep have received 1 touchy feely; to Premion Oncology in Brisbane 30 xray bags; 11 crocheted/knitted rugs to various nursing homes; warm knitted beanies and slipper socks to Lions Emergency Accommodation; and children's socks and coloured pencils and activity books to Gifts 4 Kids in Care.

Our next meeting is on June 25th and we'll be celebrating our 2nd birthday!  We're going to have a real party with cake and games and stuff!  We're also going to be working so don't get too excited!  We'll be having a cutting party, so bring along your rotary cutter and mat and ruler - we're going to cut some of the excess fabric that we have into kits.  All hands on deck, so see you then........

Sunshine Linus goes to Peachester

We took advantage of an invitation to have a display stand at Mountain Quilters Exhibition at Peachester this weekend, and over the two days we had the opportunity to speak to lots of people about what we do.  I even think we might have recruited a few of them!  And many thanks to the people who dropped off donations to us there, too.
The Quilt Show was terrific, the diversity and the standard of work fabulous, and the food - well, you just can't beat country hospitality, can you?
Thanks, Mountain Quilters, for having us, and for helping out as much as you do - we really appreciate it.

Weighted blankets and other things

Our meeting day on Monday was taken up learning how to sew weighted blankets.

This is Judy S, queen of the weighted blanket.

Weighted blanket - there are secret pockets inside to put small amounts of weight in.

Judy makes up the weighted blanket kits, and she demonstrated how they're put together. They're very useful for the calming of autistic children, and we are supplying many Special Schools with them.  You can click here for more information about them.

We also had some lovely finished quilts come in.

This quilt shows off some of the free style quilting learned at the last workshop

Pretty squares and rectangles

Yvonne's very proud of her first ever touchy feely!

Lots of prepared tops and backs ready to be quilted

We were able to give 26 quilts for children and babies, 3 pairs pyjamas and 3 cuddle bunnies to kids in foster care; 17 Xray bags and some baby things to Nambour Hospital; 16 sit-upons to Mitchelton Special School; and 5 pairs pyjamas and some ladies' beanies to Lions Emergency Accom. Centre.

There are a couple of events in the coming month, at which we will be represented.
May 16th, 10.00am - Kawana Quilters Show &Tell at Uniting Church, Thunderbird Drive, Kawana.
May 26th and 27th, 9.00am-4.00pm - Mountain Quilters Quilt Exhibition at Peachester Hall.
Please support these events if you can.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery to Judie B. and Margaret S., who both have been unwell, and we hope to see you all next time on May 28th, when we'll be have a demo/workshop on the making of touchy feely quilts.