Aussie quilters may recognise some of the faces in this photo from our Statler day. This group of machine quilters has been responsible for quilting an enormous number of quilts in total; some have been in business more than 10 years, and that's a lot of quilts in anybody's language. What a great group, we have such fun when we get together.

On Sunday Kaye took Dawn, Cheryl and I to Berrima Patchwork, where we managed to find a few scraps of fabric to add to the stash. Of course my batteries died, so all I have is a photo of the ouside of the shop. Inside it was warm, and full of fabric and quilters choosing material for their next project. It was a delicious way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Cheryl is very much like Mereth, organised and tidy and singleminded. For the last two days she chained herself to the sewing machine and as long as we kept cutting and ironing she didn't complain, but it was awful hard work keeping up with her. Dawn left yesterday, and within an hour I was moaning 'I miss Dawn already!!' because I couldn't work fast enough on my own. Which just goes to show, it's the cutting a pressing that take the time; sewing the pieces is really quick.

This is what 700+ nine-patches look like. I think we were a bit appalled when we added it all up. Each block takes 5 nine-patches. We are aiming for 42 blocks for each quilt, and we are about 10 blocks per quilt short of that; when we get home we will make up the rest from our own stashes, and send a set of our blocks to Kaye for her quilt.The quilt that inspired all this madness is from a book called The Quilter's Resource Book by Maggi McCormick Gorden, and it's a lovely book, about 2" thick and full of lovely photos. The scrappy border is wonderful, that will use up all the little leftovers nicely. My next task is to digitise the quilting design for Kaye, and come up with alternate ones for Cheryl and mine; Dawn is a designer herself, so I suppose she will invent her own. And next year we will have a little mini-show of the four quilts, finished. Should be fun.

Tomorrow we have plans to visit the Sydney quilt show, I'd better get the camera batteries charged for that. It promises to be a long day.