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.

February 2026

 Februarys meeting was at Joan’s house.  I wasn’t able to be there because Larry and I caught the flu and were not able to get back from Hawaii in time.  We’re still stuck in paradise for another week.  Luckily Deanna took a lot of pictures and notes, so I’ll try to post something from those.  

Joan

Joan had two quilts to share.  The first is the unfinished quilt top from last meeting.  Looks like she has finished the quilting and it looks beautiful.  I love the blue colors.

The second quilt was made from the layer cakes and charm packs from Sandy. She has started in the middle and is free motion quilting it. The back shows the quilting better. Good job

Marty

Marty also made two quilts.  The first is a quilt top of a nice colorful four patch with two patches in a 9 patch. Made from Betsy’s fabric and Deanna’s pattern that uses a 20 fat quarter bundle and matching pink fabric. Unfortunately 4 of the fat quarters were so light, they fade away in the photo. clever use of simple blocks 

After participating in the monthly block challenge for 2 years the next step is to make a quilt top with the blocks.  The instruction for the blocks was to use black and white with a pop of color. A yard of black, white. And grey was used to piece the blocks together.

The third picture shows the backing fabric. Nice use of all the black and white fabric to tie it all together.

Deanna

Deanna’s first quilt was a partially sewn top given to her by Susan Dague at open quilting.  Deanna finished the top and quilted it.  The next two quilts have cute panels in the middle, Deanna added borders, did free motion quilting on the panels and walking foot quilting in the borders.  All 3 quilts will be donated to EBHQ Community Quilts

Deanna’s fourth quilt is from a Bento Box pattern, using leftover 5” squares cut from another quilt.  Surrounded by indigo rectangles. Most of the fabrics are Japanese.

Alice

Mary

Mary made 2 quilts.  The first one is a community quilt that I brought to show my quilting as we’ve been having lots of discussions about learning to free motion.

My second quilt is the back first and then the other photos are of the twin sized animal quilt I made for my friend’s grandson.  My granddaughter pointed out the majority of the backing fabric has a “Minecraft” feel.  Who knew?!

I brought the quilt back to the group so everyone could see the finished product.  Though I’d been thinking about having Hello Stitch quilt it for me, I went with the encouragement of our group in December and quilted it myself - lots of animals in the quilting.

 

I found the first quilt top hidden away in my quilt stash.  No idea I had it or when I made it but it must be mine as I recognize most of the fabrics, so I must have made it.

The final quilt I made from a photograph I took of the Alexander Calder sculpture “The Eagle”, which I took at the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. It generated lots of discussion about whether I needed the artists permission to co”copy” his art.  I had tried to create all the background sky, shoreline, Pugent Sound water and walkway by piecing together scraps.  Gave up on that and went with small squares to give the feel I wanted.

Mindy

Our next meeting will be at Marty’s house March 2 at 130.

December 2025

 We met at Mindy’s house for our Holiday December meeting.  Her house was filled with holiday decorations and the smell of apple cider and baking.  Unfortunately Deanna and Alice were not able to make it, but everyone else showed up for the holiday cheer.  Since January will be the same date as the Bishop Ranch get together, it was decided to cancel our Quilt Therapy meeting for January.  February will be at Joan’s house on February 3 at 1:30.

Sandy

Sandy was the first to go and she shared her projects from the Carol Soderlund workshop.  The first sample used the fabric that Deanna had given her which was half silk and half cotton.  It was silk screened with a paper mask using procion dye. Beautiful.

The next four samples were also silk screened with thickened dyes on soda ashed cotton fabric. I think she said she learned the technique from Kerr Grabowski and was hoping to learn “new” techniques.

The last sample is an unfinished top from from a class she took in Walnut Creek. It also includes some discharged fabric.

Marty

Marty had two projects to share.  The first is a quilt that has been hanging on her wall.  It is a favorite of hers and she realized that one of the black fabrics that she used had faded to a brown and threw off the whole black and white theme.  She decided to remove the 8 pieces and replace them with a true black and white.  It took a lot of unpicking and requilting,  but it was worth it.

The second quilt is her bird quilt.  Finished. Yeah.  She quilted it using a straight line walking foot. Nice job.

Joan

Joan showed the unfinished quilt top that Betsy started.  She appliquéd it onto a baby blue border fabric and then added another border.  Nicely done.  She didn’t say how she plans to quilt it.

Her second quilt is being quilted by Melissa Quilter.

Mindy

Mindy has been busy traveling, decorating and babysitting.  Busy

Arleen

I had three projects to show.  The first is a bed sized quilt made from 16 blocks of 12 inches left at the free table with a note asking someone to Please finish this.  I used a pretty owl fabric from Betsy’s stash and used it to border the blocks and make the border.

The second quilt used the 17th block as the center and the owl fabric as tiny borders.  I used some Michael James fabric that have been in my stash for a long time to circle the center.  It was going to be the back of the first project, but because it looks so good, I’m going to make this another quilt.

The third project is the Cherish quilt pattern that I bought from Tales of cloth.  I finished quilting it using both the walking foot and free motion quilting in the center hexagons.  So pretty.  I’m planning to give this to my friends who just moved to a new house.

Mary

Mary had 3 projects to share.  The first is a twin sized quilt that she is going to give to her friends grandson.  She is thinking of either having Hello Stitch quilt it or quilt it herself using some animal templates in the blank areas.  She designed it herself.  If the size of block didn’t fit, she would add a border.

The second and third quilts are her vanity square projects.  She quilted it herself with free motion quilting and is very happy to have used up all of her vanity square blocks.

I got to see one of Mary’s Shutterfly books that are a record of her quilts.  Impressive. Can you believe that she has made enough quilts to fill 5 books.  Wow.

We ended the festivities with a pot luck and a white elephant gift exchange.  Everyone was happy with the small gifts they received and our arms were full of fabrics and quilts.  Thank you all for a wonderful meeting and Happy Holidays.