Melbourne Meander

Yesterday Michelle led us on a meander round Melbourne city's arts and crafts lanes and shops. We saw lots of great laneway graffiti, Tessuti Fabrics, Craft Victoria, Morris and Sons wools, the Manchester Unity and Nicholas buildings with their interesting architecture, Melbourne's smallest cafe and smallest bar, L'Uccello's vintage fabrics and wares, Kimono House and lastly we caught the tram up to GJs to finish off our day.

We also poked our noses into the City Library and a couple of art galleries and managed a few coffees and lunch along the way. It was a great day!

Top notch knitting

When we met this week Michelle was looking very warm and cosy in her new knitted hat which matches her scarf and keeps her warm at the train station these cold winter mornings.

Our annual retreat

Most of the group was able to get away on our annual retreat to Vickery Quilt and Craft Retreat in Alexandra. We thoroughly enjoyed the long weekend full of laughs, chatter, good food, sewing and crafts, brisk morning walks, cosy wood fire, an excursion to the local Quilt Show and snippets of the annual biggest event in town - the Truck and Ute Show!

Anne's Tilda quilt basted for hand quilting:

A new item for Jennie's "Seasonal Treasures" menagerie:

Colleen whipped up some big hexie blocks in quick time:

Louise finished off her daughter's beautiful crocheted poncho:

 True to form, Karyn made a quilt top in 2 days, with many of our scraps incorporated into it:

Louise added extra rows to her top, added a white border and made up the binding:

After careful cutting, Anne sewed and sewed hexies for a "one block wonder" quilt from a Kaffe Fassett print, here are about a third of them:

Lisa did our heads in with the maths in her two projects and the use of wool crepe. The red and white segments wouldn't come together so she moved on to the black and white and put this together just before hitting the road. In fact she could often be heard saying "crepe" over the weekend, at least I think that's what she was saying ...

Leita and helpers sewed up all her remaining Amitie pattern kaleido blocks which look amazing:

Sue knitted away on a gorgeous jacket for a relative's baby: