July pics



I had good intentions of blogging after our July meeting.  I can't believe that was three weeks ago! Actually, it all started at Friendship when Lynn brought her fabulous made fabric piece.  I think she plans to add more to it but I think it is pretty great just the way it is.

 

 

 

I also don't want to miss posting the Kilroy shot of Ruth's lovely Blitzen Jelly Roll quilt.

 

 

Aside from cramming in lots of summer activities, I've been trying to finish up a few things.  First, I got the binding finished on the checkerboard.  You can see I took the safe route when digging through Jan's stash but I think it is the right choice for this one.  I didn't take the time to crop the rest of the pics, as you will see.  Maybe next time.



 

 

Next, I finished the two I Spy's for our friends who adopted twin 4 year old boys from Bulgaria. I'm hoping they can use these for bonding and a little vocabulary.

 

 

After sending the Bernina to the spa, I needed a piecing fix so I started working on my Wildwood challenge. I decided I'd save time by using some leftover squares from the Subway quilt, not thinking that this would make the triangles 1 inch finished size.  Let's just say that my piece will be much closer to the minimum than the maximum dimensions.

 



We're on hiatus for August and it looks like our September get together will be 9/21.  I believe that we decided to discuss a Mary Ellen Hopkins challenge in more detail at that meeting.

 

Enjoy the last few weeks of summer!

July meeting

We were missing a few people today but that didn't stop us from having a fun filled productive day. None of us brought our machines though Lori had one set up to use.

Here is the front and back of Diane's Stack and Whack quilt. She started it at one of our meetings a few months back and has brought it along to the meetings since then to show the progress and for advice; someone is always willing to give advice.


At first glance Kathy thought the safety pins were bling but a second look told her that the quilt is layered and pinned and ready to quilt. There was some discussion about how to quilt it. Diane always does a wonderful job of quilting on her domestic machine and I am eager to see this one when it is finished.

Lori has been the "keeper of scraps" for all of the scraps and leftovers we brought to put in a communal scrap pool. She had sorted out some of Diane's left over pieces and parts that she thought could be put together for a group project.

 She started putting them up on her portable design wall and then Diane jumped in and started rearranging and everyone added their 2 cents some advice. Pieces were eliminated and others were rearranged and everyone agreed that those 4 pieces in the center should be sewed together and then we would go from there. Diane did the sewing on Lori's machine and all the points came together nicely. Those pieces were from Mary Ellen Hopkins' "Hidden Wells" pattern. We will work on this again another time.

Here we have Gwen, Maryann, and Suzie layering up Maryann's  Bullwinkle quilt for her husband, detail on the right. Maryann brought the c pieces the fabric pieces cut and ready to sew to the Friendship group the Friendship ladies put the 4 patch block together.  Maryann always makes it easy for us by giving us the fabric  all cut and ready to sew for her blocks.

 This is a baby  quilt that Gwen has ready to layer up. It is from a kit her guild put together and will be given to "Project Linus".

Sisters Maryann and Suzie are looking through the Mary Ellen Hopkins books and notebooks from the MEH Neighborhood Seminars that Kathy brought. Two local quilt shops used to sponsor the seminars in our area and several of the Divas attended all or most of them. I only attended one of the lectures and what fun that was.





 Suzie brought her "made fabric" piece (on the left) that she is going to cut up for positive and negative Churn Dash blocks. On the right are 4 paper pieced sections from her UFO that she committed to finish.





We won't be meeting in August but we will be seeing one another at other happenings before September. I am sure we will be talking about what we are going to do next. Maybe some people will even post some pictures here about what they are working on.

A different sort of Diva meeting

The day shone bright and after the weather that hit the area during Friday night/Sat early morning that was amazing. Judy and Jan were at the Willoughby Art Fair. Lynn, was in Cape Cod. I was in a daze after no sleep due to a flooding basement. Lori was working on her own birthday cake to take to a belated celebration in Pittsburgh tomorrow as well as a fantastic Star Wars sleeping bag for Brady to take on the trip. Fran had destroyed her back hauling sewing machines in for repair. Maryann, Sue and Ruth seemed pretty good.
There was quilt layering going on. Lori started a piece using stuff from Dianne's pieces parts. Between useless comments from the peanut gallery a nice piece was started. I  believe this will be another charity quilt. It is fascinating to watch the creative process and the problem solving. We should rent ourselves out.
In honor of the passing of one of our great mentors, Mary Ellen Hopkins we looked thorough her books and had lot of laughs about the workshops we had attended. Lori had her MEH t shirt on and we compared dates of our signed books. And there was some Chardonnay at lunch.
Lunch was fantastic. A perfect balance of dishes.
No real thought on what to do in Sept when we meet again but most of us see each other at other gatherings.
Give it some thought, Divas. And keep your powder dry.
Lori and Ruth took pictures that I expect will be posted at some point.

Diva's at Quilt Camp

This past week Diva's Kathy, Lori, Judy and honorary Diva Margie, and myself helped out at Quilt Camp for young people at my church.  The 9 camp participants were from 6th grade through college age. and with the Divas we were able to work almost one on one. That made a big difference in how smoothly the work progressed.

These 5 quilts are ones that were made by the girls who were assigned to the Divas.  Each participant was assigned to one adult as their primary teacher but actually everyone worked with anyone who needed help at any given time.


Kathy and Margie helped the girls who made these top 2 quilts. The one on the left chose the four patch option instead of focus fabric; on the right is the original pattern without any changes.  Both of these are going to be quilted by long arm quilters. These quilts on the bottom row are all different in some way. On the right Joanna chose one frame fabric; that and her dark background and raw edge applique give a completely different look to her quilt. The center quilt has an extra fabric as a background fabric and she raw edge appliqued ribbons in her focus squares, one of her frame fabrics blends with the background and though her quilt followed the pattern it also has a different look. The one on the bottom right is her own layout of the blocks that were all made according to the pattern. We are able to do some individual customizing this year because we had extra help.





Lori, Judy, Kathy and Margie demonstrated "made fabric" squares and got everyone started piecing on phone book paper foundation squares. It was a big hit and the squares will be used in a quilt that will be auctioned in the spring to benefit the youth group missions program at the church.
One of the girls said her mom wants to learn  how to make "made fabric" squares she is going to show her how. How great is that!






Below are quilts that the Divas brought for show and tell to give examples of the things that can be done that are different from the easy quilts that we use for beginning quilters. These quilts generated a lot of interest and many questions.




























Finally here is our group photo, though we are missing 3 teachers who had other commitments on Friday and one participant one participant who was sick. Our photographer Kim will patch in those people for the group photo which everyone will receive.

I was excited to hear

everyone talking

about "next year".

Kind of a roundup

Hi,

We were down a couple of Divas today. Ruth had her dreaded vertigo, Laura busy with taking care of someone. Gwen had to leave before lunch and Jan and I were late enough to worry people.

Everyone seemed industrious. Sue and Fran were working on their "commited
project, Mary Anne was working on something wonderful for Cottonpickers,Diane was binding away and there was a good bit of made fabric going on.

Gwen had the top of the Wildwood raffle quilt done and that will be passed on to Laura to quilt.

 Dianne made a lovely gift bag with the gift cards we got for Lori and Mike. There was also new fabric in it. And a bag of Pez for Brady.  I am pretty certain that am the only one in the group that stinks at presentation. I am always amazed and delighted to see what everyone does.  I am more the one piece of tissue and one piece of tape sort of wrapper.

 Lunch was beautiful. So many strawberries and lovely salads. And wine.

  The Diva's allowed Judy, Jan, Lori and myself to kick around our presentation for Wildwood in August. Divas will bring pieces for our show and tell. The subject is collaborative quilting. We will try to inspire every one to have their own group. It won't be the same as ours but it could still be good.

 We talked about thinking about ideas for challenges in the future but right now we are happy with fabric making and working on our "committed to finish" projects. We could get away with this sort of loose outline because Ruth wasn't there cracking the whip. We love you Ruth!

I will go and see if anyone got pictures on the blog.

Take care.

k

June photos

Kathy sent a great recap and I'm here to add in some photos.  I tried to fill Ruth's documentation shoes, although I missed getting a shot of Fran's project and Kathy's charity quilt made from Dianne's castoffs.  Ruth and Laura were missed but, rest assured, we talked about you.

Gwen had a picnic to go to but she found time to stop by and show us the Wildwood raffle quilt top that she'd put together.  It was no small task, I am sure.  At first, we thought maybe the light shining through would be distracting but everyone agreed that the stained glass look gave the quilt a special look. It is a beauty.

Judy was inspired at our last meeting to make made fabric triangles which she turned into this improve top.  She also found some lovely quilt back fabric in the communal pile.  Way to get in the spirit of things, Judy!




Susie was working on her UFO.  I didn't see the whole pattern but there were some beautiful paper pieced units.

Lynn enjoyed digging through the communal pile too and she was hard at work on her own made fabric units.

Mary Ann has several projects looming over her head and she chose to work on a shop sample.  It used a lovely grouping of batiks and a specialty curved ruler.  I read the pattern maker's blog and I was even more intrigued after hearing Mary Ann's positive review of the pattern and ruler. 

Here's a shot of some of the blocks and the pattern.

Syd was also working on made fabric blocks and it looks like a fast moving 5 year old is about to move in on them. Chalk it up to my bad photography and nonexistent editing.

Ms. D was hard at work on the binding for the blue and white tessellated pinwheel fundraiser quilt.

I didn't do any sewing or cutting but I showed two Wildwood charity quilts that I made with Dianne's castoff 2.5" squares.  Somehow I'd managed to pull red, white and  blue donated fabric and Dianne happened to have a large pile of the same colorway of squares.  I think I started with the skyline fabric that I thought no one would ever rescue from the pile.  Both quilts are pin-basted so they don't hang so well for these pics. 

 

Lunch was fabulous, as usual.  The meal ended with a presentation of the unexpected and most generous gifts to my family.  My fellow divas didn't need to reward us but it was a lovely surprise.  Brady used his Pez to make it all the way through fireworks at the Indians game later that night.  I will put the fabric to good use and the gift cards will likely finance Sherman's new fence.  Thank you all for the thoughtful surprise.  Until next time ...

 

 

UFO finished

Well, this isn't the UFO that I documented at our last meeting but I wonder if I can substitute it for the king size Quilters Fortune. After all, I did post a picture here of it in its unfinished state on my design wall. That should count as documentation.

6 inches x 9 inches

I am not getting into anything very big right now as I am working on details for Quilt Camp but little things satisfy my need to sew something. I put a border on it and layered it with 2 layers of fusible fleece and a backing with folded triangle  corners for hanging .  I stuck a piece of cardboard across the back in the triangles and put a thumbtack in the center top and stuck it up on my wall. It is above my desk where I can see it from my desk chair or my sewing chair.
I didn't want to  spend a lot of time doing this so I took my idea from Lori's Jellyroll Race Patches and used my pinking blade on the edges. thanks for the good idea Lori.