The National Day of Mourning saw our Women’s Shed celebrate the life of an amazing women with a High Tea. Hats, handbags, pearls and marmalade sandwiches were just a few of the iconic items.
We’ve also been busy with market preparation, opening our Shed Shop. While we work on our individual projects each Thursday, often we do more craft work at home and bring our finished items in to show. See the range of finished items below. Some are for sale and some are not.
since there’s been any blogging on this page but rest assured the Women’s Shed Branxton is alive and well.
All posts have been on Facebook while our website has gone by the wayside.
We had one of our members kindly donate a brand-new Janome embroidery machine and Lynn visited us to provide some information about how we can use it. Lyn is a wealth and knowledge and has been embroidering on machine for many years. We are very grateful to have her support us.
Some of our ladies at the Women’s Shed like to make things to donate to others. A few ladies made beanies and scarves for the students in the special ed unit at Rutherford High School, but Ingrid went above and beyond went she showed us a table full of knitwear she had made over a three-week period, ready to be donated. We certainly have some kindhearted ladies.
In just under two hours, Hayley learned how to make a macrame lanyard under the amazing teaching skills of Kay, our macrame expert. As a first time macrame project these lanyards are practical and useful as well as being attractive.
I wonder what’s next?
If you are interested in learning something crafty, be it macrame, sewing, knitting, crochet or other, come and talk to us on a Thursday. We have a lovely group of friendly ladies with lots of expertise.
We have loads and loads of donated fabric that is perfect for anyone who is learning to sew or just wants to practice. There are three sewing machines and three overlockers available to use, all for free.
Come and see us on Thursday and ask how we can help you get sewing.
We’re open from 9am to 11:30am every Thursday (except school holidays) at the Branxton Uniting Church Hall, 9 Drinan St, Branxton.
Our first attempt at tye dyeing and we coloured our aprons. Esther cut out and made four white aprons, then Kay, Annette and I tied on all the elastics bands. Together, we used the equipment that we purchased through the Octapod Grant to create brightly coloured aprons to wear for our High Tea Luncheon.
You’ll notice a shopping bag in there too. We dyed it first to see how it went. It’s all about elastic band placement!
These are the donations of baby blankets we sent to Life’s Little Treasure’s Foundation.
During our break we posted some of our finished baby blankets to Life’s Little Treasures Foundation, an organisation that supports premature babies. They are quite prescriptive with their blankets for health and safety reasons. We are still making them and invite others to join us. See below for the instructions and just drop them into us when finished. We hope to post more next school holidays.
We return to our Thursday meetings on 21st July at 9am with some tye dyeing and preparations for our Second Birthday celebration. Our High Tea Luncheon tickets are almost sold out!
Some dates for your calendar include:
Saturday 23 July 2022 ………..High Tea Luncheon
Saturday 6th August 2022……..Shed Shop Open
Thursday 18th August 2022 ……. RSPCA Cupcake Day
Sunday 28th August 2022….. Millfield Public School P&C Fair
Our macrame experts have now been making decorative hat holders. They are the perfect solution for where to store you Akubra or straw sun hat without crushing and damaging them in a cupboard or on a shelf. They also look so beautiful you could mistake them as a piece of wall art.
They are very popular in mobile homes and caravans as your hat is less likely to fall off a hook while travelling in one of these holders.
They are making doubles that hold two hats and singles that hold just one and selling them in our Shed Shop. Come and see them on Thursday from 9:30am. I am sure the first to see them will buy them and there are only a few in stock.
We are often asked if we can make something special. This week we have been doing just that. Hanging towels are one of our best sellers and we recently sold out of our all our black ones. They are very popular for garages, workshops and male bathrooms. So we made five more this week for a customer.
We had another customer who asked us if we could make old fashioned jug covers, you know, the ones that look like round crocheted doilies with beads around the edge. We said, “Why not?”. Two have clear glass beads, one has coloured glass beads and one has coloured stone beads. We are looking to make more of these but find it hard to source nice glass beads. So if anyone has any hiding away in a cupboard, we are very grateful for donations.
Someone else asked us about a macrame hat holder. So out came Youtube for instructions and away we went. Notice how the wool spinner has now become a place to hold the macrame. We haven’t mastered the art of wool spinning just yet!
Today we were very fortunate to have Kay teach us two important knots in macrame, guiding us through the making of some keychains. With Annette as the support teacher, we enjoyed a lovely morning learning a new craft.
It’s quite amazing to see some of the things both Kay and Annette have made using their macrame skills.
Thank you to both Kay and Annette for today. We all enjoyed learning something new together.