Brigitte Giblin is a very well known quilt designer and teacher from Sydney. She cleverly combines a wide range of fabric styles from modern brights to reproductions to produce her unique style of quilts. Brigitte’s quilts are mainly hand pieced however she is also offering some machine piecing projects in her classes.

You may know Sue from her days at Timeless Threads in Mittagong - she has a unique style and covers a range of designs from very pretty soft traditional quilts to outrageous bright and quirky. She has the uncanny ability to combine wild, even ugly with more traditional fabrics to create amazing quilts. She uses her design skills to help her son Rowan design his fabric range, A Day in the Country. Sue also works with a combination of hand and machine piecing techniques along with applique.

Sue will offer two different groups of classes. Saturday will be a monthly club whereby you work on a selection of quilts at your own pace over the year. If you are not able to commit to a club then Sue’s Friday class will be a different quilt over 2 classes (1 per month for 2 months). You only commit to 2 classes at a time and a new quilt is offered in
each lot of classes.

After just returning from a trip to France and the UK, Karen has confirmed that her quilt designs have a predominately English influence. No brights for her!! She specialises in designing beautiful quilts that have an instantly soft, old look about them , mostly hand pieced and appliqued although she will offer an occasional “quickie” machine pieced project to her students.

Karen travels from her home in Blackheath and will have a Tuesday and Saturday Club for 2008. She has some great new quilts planned or choose any of her existing patterns
to work on.

Another of our sort after designers – she has moved from traditional oldworld quilts and coverlets to incorporating the new more modern, bright fabrics into her designs. Sue also travels from her home in Berrima to teach for us and as we had many disappointed ladies this year who could not fit into her class she has agreed to add another day a month to our list for 2008. She has some wonderful new and very different patterns planned for the new year so check out the dates for her 2 clubs.

Deborah hails from the South of Sydney and is one of the country’s best teachers of machine quilting and machine appliqué. After having quilted for clients on her domestic machine for many years and learning all the pitfalls along with techniques to make the job easier, she decided to teach them to others. This has become a full time job and she has won many awards for her machine quilting. Her classes are always extremely popular and as well as learning quilting techniques you will discover things your machine can do that you never knew before. Deb offers mid week and Saturday classes in quilting as well as a machine appliqué class.

Vicki Porter needs no introduction to those who love embroidery. She has been teaching for many years in the Southern Highlands and been featured in numerous magazines and we are happy to say she will now have a monthly Saturday class at The Cottage Quiltworks. For those who want to learn basic embroidery stitches you can start with a sampler pillow or choose one of the many projects Vicki will offer.

Judy lives in Canberra and is the face behind Hot Ginger Designs. You will have seen some of Judy’s great handbags in the shop using hand dyed wools, funky fabrics, buttons, beads etc. Judy will be conducting our Sue Spargo Block of the Month Quilt Class. You can choose Ginger Grove or Folklore (relevant book included) and work on your quilt month by month using either your own stash of fabrics and wools or a kit of hand dyed wools required for each month can be purchased for the project at a very reasonable price . If you want to make something completely different from the traditional this is the quilt for you.

Linda has designed her own version of the historic Sarah Evans Quilt. The quilt involves, hand appliqué and machine piecing techniques. There have been several versions of this quilt which uses simple shapes and reproduction fabrics to make a wonderful traditional style quilt. The first lot of classes have been filled however we are taking names for classes in the second half of the year.

No doubt you have seen Monica’s wonderful patterns for quilts and bags and we are delighted that she has found time in her very busy life to come and teach for us. She will be teaching a bag class for us in March so check the date and be quick.

We are very fortunate to have Sandy not only helping us out in the shop every Friday but she has also agreed to do a tips and techniques class following requests from students in other classes. She is a very accomplished quilter and has been featured recently in several magazines. The classes will cover such things as correct use of your equipment, cutter, board, ruler etc.; the correct way to pin; the correct tool for the job – what needles or thread to use - various appliqué techniques, how to attach borders, bindings etc. If you need to learn the basics or just refresh on technique this is the class for you.