Western Branch

As part of Heritage Week, members of the Western Branch were in the Visitor Centre, Connemara National Park, Letterfrack, on Wednesday August 20^th, 2025,  from 10am -5pm. There was a great selection of colourful patchwork and quilting on display. The members present demonstrating various techniques used in creating patchwork and quilted items.

We had plenty of visitors, many from overseas. We even helped a lady to get started on quilting a quilt she had put together more than 30 years ago but never quilted.  Visitors were delighted at the work on display and in watching how we do what we do. They were very surprised at the variety and how :"these are art not bed-quilts".

Thanks to Agnes Warren, Ciara Wall, Anne Marie Horan and Róisín Miles who were our demonstrators on the day. 

In these last sunny weeks of August leaves are beginning to turn and we look ahead to getting back to our Branch meetings in September. It's no harm to remind ourselves of some the lovely work our members showed at our last meeting in May. This paper pieced hexagon quilt from Laura Camps features lots of hand-quilting. 

 Thanks to Western Branch member Jackie O'Toole for these beautiful blooms from her garden,

Hope  all our members who took up the Western Challenge progressing well on their items using the beautiful batik below.. Can't wait to see the creativity of all the "Something Useful" our members are making for the May 13th Branch meeting.

Martina Rea Teresa Donnellan

Claire Ó Tuathail Frances Shanahan

We were so impressed with Sharon Hughes colourwash work at our meeting in December 2021 that we asked her  to do a workshop to introduce us to the technique.  The pre meeting preparation notes from Sharon were excellent and we rocked up with our 2½” squares in a variety of palettes.

Sharon showed how she chose which fabric to place where…and made it look easy. It wasn’t so easy when we were faced with our own squares. However, we all helped each other with sharing fabrics and giving each other the benefit of a fresh pair of eyes (you know how it is, someone new looking at your work makes a suggestion which makes a huge difference).

Sharon then showed us how to “web-piece” the squares together, another step on from chain piecing. We might have some done for the March meeting. Sharon's web piecing steps.

We had great fun at our January meeting which continued into the afternoon when eight members did a Wonky Houses Workshop with Agnes Warren.

These were not as easy as we thought . We began with an exercise where our one fat quarter became cut and shared between all eight of us. By the end of the exercise each of us had pieces of eight different fabrics in varying shapes. The challenge was to create a pieced wonky house improvising with as many of these fabrics as we wished. Only the small details were appliquéd, windows and doors and walls were cut by scissors and pieced.

The houses are very wonky. We’ve decided to make another one each and put all the blocks into a quilt and perhaps donate it to a local housing charity. 

We are looking forward to seeing you all again at our November meeting. Lynn will be bringing her shop Seams Sew Simple and demonstrating a folded triangle table runner. 

Don't forget to bring your show and tell pieces. 

Especially important:  Any work for our Winter Wonderland Exhibition in the Hall of the Red Earl, at the beginning of  December should be brought to the November meeting.