Written by Anne Carter with additional photos and Comments
Two April meetings were sewing evenings when members made thread catchers from kits provided by Chris Flatman and also name badges in several different designs, materials provided by the committee.
After Beartown’s prestigious win in the group category at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in 2025, our next quilt was entered into the British Quilt & Stitch Village 2026 in Uttoxter, again in the group category and we achieved another 1st place. All members of Beartown P’s & Q’s appliqued bright shapes onto black background blocks and quilted them. Several members then stitched all the blocks together. See the post “Shape, rattle, roll and win!”
On 12th May, Christine Green was the speaker with her talk “Bust the Rules and Get Creative”. Christine recycles, repairs and reimagines textiles to give them a new purpose. Christine was amusing and entertaining and had several scrappy quilts to share. She started with a slide show to explain her unique no measuring method, sharing a planning sheet and provided an example of her hand sewn topper.
She had brought along the quilt she exhibited at the 2025 Festival of Quilts ,
along with a selection made from old shirts and denim material, all assembled in her unique way. Plus a variety of denim bags sewn in her style of sashiko!
Her stall of hand printed cards was a draw for quite a few of us!
More quilts were donated to Quilts for Care Leavers (Q4CL) making a total of 141 so far made by Beartown P’s & Q’s members.
The annual coach trip to Quilts U.K. at Malvern was on 17th May, starting in Congleton and picking up in Sandbach. The 48 seater coach was full and a good day was had by all. Thanks to Val and Christine who organised the coach and tickets. Photos and thoughts from this trip are in the post “Off to the Malvern Quilt show!”
On 26th May, the Malpas Fabric Art Group visited as part of the Meet the Neighbours exchange. Beartown had visited Malpas a few months ago and they were returning the favour.
Gill, Kate, Penny and Jeanette brought dozens of quilts to show – here’s a sample –
as well as their current Q4CL,
and group projects ( fascinating to see how the same pattern looked in different colours),
along with workshop pieces ( they’d had Lizzie Wall too!) and mystery quilt projects.
At both the June meetings there will be speakers and visitors are welcome. On Tuesday, 9th June, Rachel Davies’ talk will be “Textiles Tell Stories” and on 23rd June, the subject will be “Whole Cloth Quilts” with Anne Jeeter.
