I love my quilty gals!

 And not just because they send me awesome things ;)

Exhibit A:

F8ths of Far Far Away from the gorgeous Fiona of Finding Fifth. We did a mini swap. I picked up a half yard of the Owl and the Pussycat on a destash page for $3! Serious bargain! Knowing how much Fiona loves Heather Ross, I offered it to her. And she so sweetly offered me a sampling of other fabrics in return! Love!

Exhibit B:

This surprise little package arrived in my mail today from the lovely Alyce of Blossom Heart Quilts! A gorgeous little handmade pouch, filled with Japanese fabric goodies (which are available in her Etsy shop btw!).  So sweet! She sent these to thank me for letting her test my patterns…. oh dear Alyce, it should have been the other way around! I’m so appreciative of you testing my patterns for me!!

Those lovely packages arriving today have spurred me to declare today…

 Quilty Gal Appreciation Day.

At least on my blog But please, feel free to have your own Quilty Gal Appreciation Day. Nice to tell people that you think they are a bit fab! (You can even use my ridiculously amateur attempt at making a little quilty gal graphic! haha!)

So I was hanging out the washing this morning (boring), amusing myself by thinking about writing this blog post. I started thinking about all the quilty gals that I love and my list just kept getting longer and longer! That is pretty awesome. Okay, ready for some mush? These gals are totally mush-worthy.

I am fortunate enough to be part of a fantastic real life quilting group. I am so glad I plucked up my courage to go to the very first meeting. I don’t think the girls realise what a big deal that was for me to do! But Jane and Marieka made me feel so welcome and I have really enjoyed getting to know them – Jane with her quick wit, and Marieka with her bubbly personality. These gals are so encouraging and supportive and easy to talk to. They have helped me so many times with different projects and suggested ideas – they even volunteered to test paper piecing patterns for me. Seriously awesome.

Marieka’s version of Diamond Star

Quilt group is one of my favourite things to attend now (and yay for it being fortnightly now!). Through the group, I have started meeting other lovely gals, Lisa (who shares her teaching knowledge so freely and swapped patterns with me!) and Kelly who is always fun to chat to and who I have now roped into joint-buying fabric online.

Jane and Marieka introduced me to an online quilting group on Facebook – Quilt Club Australia. If you’re Aussie, and a quilter, look us up and request an invite! Such a lovely group of ladies! From that group, I have joined my first swaps, Bee groups, discovered fantastic designer fabric and been inspired by some amazingly talented ladies.

Bee Blocks

Then there’s my online quilting gals. Of which I have a lot! Some I chat to daily online, some we swap blog comments, and some we email back and forth at a crazy rate.

Alyce and Fiona (senders of the awesome packages above) are part of my favourite online bloggy/quilty gals circle. We chat pretty much daily (along with Jane and Marieka) from complaints about putting washing away, swapping toilet training stories, major fabric enabling and lots of encouragement on sewing and quilting. I love seeing that little “message” icon pop up on FB! We are talking about a little mini paper piecing bee (with some other paper piecing lovers – Lara and Gemma) so watch out for some fun stuff showing up on our blogs soon!

And I can’t not mention Erin from Missy Mac Creations. Mutual admiration society here. It’s thanks to Erin’s encouragement, critiquing (in the kindest way possible) and support that I started considering selling my paper pieced patterns online. She is made out of awesome. Here’s a little sneak peek of something I made for her – more will be revealed in Donktober!



I haven’t even started on the bloggy gals – the ones who regularly comment on my blog.  Their comments make me smile, laugh, and really enjoy getting to know them through little snippets of conversation! So a big thank you to you gals too – I hope you know who you are I’d list you but I’m terrified I might leave someone crucial out and then I’d feel dreadful!

I know this is becoming quite the essay on “Why I Love my Quilty Gals” so I’ll try to sum it up, but let me tell you, it doesn’t do justice to how glad I am to call these girls friends! Thank you to all you lovely quilty gals for your encouragement, support, kind words, helpful advice and just for being seven kinds of awesome.