March 2026

 We met at Marty’s house today at the top of the hill on a beautiful day.  There were only 6 of us with a new member Susan Roach and Mindy, Sandra and Deanna missing.  Susan is a longtime friend of Mindy and got to meet some of us at Bishops Ranch.  The next meeting will be at Alice’s house on April 7 at 130.  Mays meeting will be at Mary’s house on May 5 at 130.

Marty

Marty started us off with two quilts.  The first showed a backing that she got from Sandy’s fabric.  The front is a pieced top of 4 patch and 1 patch children’s quilt.

The second quilt uses Betsy’s fabric and Deanna’s Toothless twofer pattern.  She paired floral 5 inch squares and green 3 inch blocks to make the top.  She arranged the layout to make it offset.  I like it.  It looks very different from Deanna’s quilt.

Susan

Susan was next.she talked about taking classes at Mt Diablo. Her 4 patch Posey of 6 1/2 inch blocks are on her design wall at home so she couldn’t bring that.  She brought her finished color study of pink and green scraps.  Marty said it is a broken dishes pattern.  This will be a dolls blanket with  with a border and kittens. Sounds so cute.

Alice

Alice had one quilt and her ruler work sampler.  The quilt is a nice sized FPP dog in the center with little doggy portraits surrounding it.  Her use of bright cheerful fabrics just makes you want to smile.  You can see her rulerwork on the quilt.  She showed the book by Amanda Murphy Rulerwork Quilting.  She brought two rulers bought from Angela Walters.  She is following the online quilt university classes on rulerwork quilting.  I’ve tried this and was frustrated with the process.  She said you have to drop the feed dogs and go slow, holding the ruler with your left and quilt with your right hand. Hmm maybe I should try it again.

Mary

Mary made two quilts for Obies teacher.  She pulled out all the fabric she could find on tools and crafts, and made vanity square blocks.  The first quilt used purple fabric.  The second had more colors of vanity squares with a green and orange border. She’s going to love the quilts.

Joan

Joan bought a backing fabric named Parade by Annabel Wrighley from Bay qQuilts.  Unfortunately the photo of the backing was lost but it goes perfectly with the front. The EPP project uses crayon basic colors from Marty.  She hand appliquéd them onto a black background.  She cut up 1 inch squares and made a border of the small squares.  This is surrounded by another border of colorful squares than a red orange grunge fabric. Perfect.  I think it came out to 60 x 80.

Arleen

I brought 3 projects.  The first is a quilt made from the Hawaiian fabric that Marty gave me.  It is made from Hawaiian fabric that her sons mother in law gave her.  I cut it into half square triangles and tried to make it into a pleasing layout.  Hopefully she’ll like it.  

The second quilt top is a hand piecing project that I worked on during my trip in Hawaii.  It uses Kaffe Fassett stars surrounded by cream colored fabric and triangles.  

The last is a new grid pattern that I am making with Japanese fabrics. I bought the 2026 fukubukuro fabric packs from kimonomomo on Etsy and used most of the scraps to make the quilt top.  This is a picture of the top that I made in Hawaii.

It is so nice to be in the Bay Area.  You don’t realize how perfect the weather is here until you travel.  I am planning to spend more time in Hawaii and live in my parents house.  I realized when we got sick in Hawaii how nice it was to have family support us while we recovered from the flu and bronchitis.  So like Deanna, Larry and I will be going back and forth.

Marty made us a lovely Bundt cake of blueberries and frosting.  With the sliced strawberries, it was perfect. Thank you Marty for hosting us.