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About us - current news                       

Shirley Quilters meets from 7.30 p.m. until 9.30 p.m. on the third Tuesday of every month at Shirley Methodist Church, Eldon Avenue, Shirley, Croydon, Surrey, where we always welcome new members and visitors who would like to come and join us.  

Saturday workshops are held on a regular basis.  Guest speakers present talks and demonstrations on various aspects of patchwork and quilting,  Mini workshops are part of the annual programme and are often held during the evening meetings.  

This year has seen Shirley Quilters celebrate their tenth anniversary and we all enjoyed a slice of birthday cake decorated with a "quilted tablecloth" skilfully
made from sugarpaste by one of our original members.  We are busy planning our biennial Exhibition which will be held on Saturday, 9th October 2010.  The Group are in the process of making a raffle quilt, tickets for which will be sold at the Exhibition.   Further to the success of our support for the local Baby Cafe, we will be continuing to support them through 2010 with profits from the Exhibition.

                                                                                      AGM 2010 Chair's Report  

The first thing I would like to say in my 2010 report is how much I appreciate the hard work and support of the committee and also the contributions made by members and visitors over the past year. I have really tried to involve as many people as possible in the meetings as it is your group and everyone has an important role in making it a success.

Since the last AGM we have had a varied selection of speakers. Anna Mansi updated us on the Red Cross quilts, Wendy Dolan demonstrated her stitched textiles and Marion Haslam showed us quilts that illustrated her life. Sadly the volcano ash meant that we were denied the talk by Carolyn Forster that was entitled ‘How I got here’ – rather ironic, I think!

We are a talented bunch and have enjoyed several evenings led by members, including the wonderful Christmas Tree design taught by Jean, landscape ideas from lots of members and some mini makes. Neredah and Barbara led a workshop day on fabric dyeing which was great fun and produced many delicious results.

I have been delighted at the way you have all risen to the variety of challenges that were put your way during the year. Firstly our charity project for Addiscombe Baby Café had a tremendous response, both in making the animal alphabet quilt and also the floor quilts and then again with the cushions donated for the tombola. The visitor turnout for the mini exhibition in November was fantastic and the evening was a great success. Well done to all of you who completed your mystery quilt in time for the exhibition or who had other items of work on display. For our December meeting the challenge was to make and exchange a Christmas cracker – rather more difficult than the card challenge last year, but there were some very inventive crackers on display.

The raffle quilt is progressing well and I hope you are now thinking what you can do with your block from last month’s block exchange.

2010 is our tenth aniversay year and we began by sharing the birthday cake baked and beautifully decorated for us by Jan.  We have some exciting things planned for the remainder of the year, not least being the exhibition in October.

The year has also seen us make some international connections via our website.  One lady in America joined in the block exchange last month and will be visitng the UK in July, so we may get to meet her.  Another lady from Australia will be in the UK at the time of our exhibition and is interested in visiting.  The website gets regular hits from many countries including a good number from Vietnam, so you never know who may be viewing pictures of our work or reading of our acitivites.

Finally, we have welcomed some new members this year and lots of visitors and I hope that the group will continue to go from strength to strength.

About us - how we began              

Shirley Quilters was born out of an idea of like-minded ladies who, having taken beginner and intermediate evening classes for patchwork and quilting, then found there was no advanced course.  They enjoyed sewing and chatting and decided to hold a meeting to discuss the way forward.  On forming Shirley Quilters it was decided our aims would be to:  promote, encourage and increase ability, skill and appreciation of patchwork and quilting and to organise teaching events and bi-annual exhibitions.  Advertisements were put in a local residents association magazine and local libraries in the hope of attracting people to come and find out more about the Group. 

The first meeting of Shirley Quilters was held on 18th January 2000, when 45 people turned up, a very large percentage of them having no experience of quilting at all!  In that first year absolute beginners were taught a block a month, which was a heavy burden for those leading the group.  In the first two years numbers fluctuated and at one point dropped to 16 people.  We now have a steady membership of 30, plus a few who come as and when they can.

2001 saw us settling down as a Group and we began to invite well-known quilters to come along and share their ideas and show us different aspects of patchwork and quilting.  At the same time we started to organise workshops:  some led by outside teachers, others by members of our Group.  We have learnt we can be self-reliant and do not always need to look outside our group to have a fun and productive day.

2002 saw us put our name on the quilt map with our own exhibition.  We were able to demonstrate to quilters and non-quilters alike what a creative and productive bunch of people we are!

Please come back and visit our site again, we plan to change our Quilt Show on a regular basis.