May 2019

We met at Joan's house this month and were a small group.  Barbara is in Massachusetts with her daughter for a while, Mindy was out to dinner with George celebrating his birthday, Sandy was attending an art show where she had two of her paintings, and Arleen is in Hawaii.

We had a very light and delicious angel food cake with fresh strawberries for refreshments and were able to sit around her dining room table.

Next meeting is at Marty's house on June 6.

Bobbie has made progress on her India piece of dancing women and asked for input on whether or not to have each piece the same length by adding borders.  There was a wide range of conflicting opinions so Bobbie had the benefit of the variety of perspectives and will have to decide on her own.  We did agree that she needs to separate the pieces out with with a sashing strip between to let each piece stand on its own.

Without borders

Borders added at bottom of left and right pieces

Border top left and bottom right

Mary has been working on community quilts and brought the latest one she has quilted.

Quilting detail

Betsy has her quilting mojo back.  At 5 pm today, she picked up the quilt from Sue Fox and was able to trim and add the binding before the meeting.  The rounded scroll quilting offsets the linear lines of the quilt very nicely.  Once bound, it will be sent off as a gift for a friend's sister.

Betsy also has been trying out different quilting stitches on a log cabin style quilt (with owls in the center).

And Betsy has finished her English Paper Piecing stars quilt with a border.  She asked for suggestions on how to quilt this piece and Joan suggested treating each start like a flower and quilting in petals.

Now that Betsy likes EPP, she has started another piece using the Tula Pink Nova pattern.  It will be an owl themed quilt to use up collected owl fabrics.  The next round of the medallion are shown and the input from the group was that the quilt might get too dark and to audition a lighter fabric.

Deanna went on a quilt tour trip to the show in Paducah and had a wonderful time.  She brought some of the goodies she got on the trip, pulling them out from her bottomless bad, including a wool pressing mat.

She was able to benefit from big discounts and got Aurifil thread, a book, Superior titanium needles, a Havel's seam ripper and many other goodies.

Deanna and Marty both now own a Baby Lock Crescendo machine and have partnered to learn how to use it's many functions.  Deanna tried out some of the pre-programmed stitches to quilt this cute little number.

Detail quilting

Preprogrammed spiral

Marty has finished the quilt top using some of the freebie batik squares she picked up and has now decided this will be a quilt to go to her son.  She is in search of a backing fabric to go with this lovely earth-toned quilt.

Marty also put together some strips to make this cute little preemie quilt which she finished in the pillowcase method. (Apologies for the blurry photo.)

Joan has been adding units to her English Paper Pieced quilt top using the Moncarapacho pattern.  The colors are perfect to go with her new living room furniture and the tiny pieces make for a very complex quilt top.