a lovely weekend.....

A lovely weekend was had here with good friends and some sewing just for fun.

On Saturday, Patch and Quilt here in Gisborne held a book launch for Irene Blanck and her new book 'Focus on Applique', published by Quiltmania.

Last year Irene had an exhibition of her quilts here at Mary's shop, and they are truly exquisite.  You can see some photos here.

Irene's new book is beautiful, with many gorgeous projects within its pages.

Tracee, Marg and I meet up with some of our 'City Girl' friends, Elyte, Marina and Anne, and as always, it was a fun day filled with much laughter.

Elyte, Marg, Irene and Tracee

Tracee, Anne and Marg in deep quilty discussion.....

Hmmmm, is this fabric going to work.....

Three lovely ladies... Elyte, Marina and Irene

Irene ready to sign her books, with Mary and Ashleigh working hard behind.....

We ended up making a day of it, meeting at 10.30 for coffee, then

off to the book signing, then out for lunch.  I really had the most enjoyable and fun day, it was wonderful.

Elyte, Anne, Marina and myself have signed up for a 'Clamshells' class in August with Irene, and I am really looking forward to it.

Some sewing just for fun was also done.  I have been wanting to make some small fabric baskets for awhile now to hold the million and one scraps accumulating around the house, with each basket colour matching the scraps it will hold.  During the week I searched out some patterns, and decided to give this one a go, by Rachel Griffiths of PS I Quilt.  This was obviously quite a small basket, but I made it in its original size to practice the construction, and then played with the size to make a bigger basket. 

Two baskets later.....

I was really happy with these, and they are really quick and easy to make - the qulting of the fabric takes the most time.  You can see that the first one is quite small compared with my rotary cutter. I was really happy with the second one, but I think some more pattern tweaking is in order, to end up with a size about half way between the two.

I really enjoyed making these, and the pattern also has an option for handles, so they also make a cute little gift bag.  More of these little baskets are now definitely on the to do list.

Hope your weekend was as much fun as mine! xx