November 2026

 Deanna

The November meeting was held at Deanna's home during a light rain. In attendance were Marty, Mary, Mindy, Joan and Deanna. On Google Meet were Sandy and Alice, although we found it a bit challenging to position Deanna's laptop so everyone could see and be seen, and also so that everyone could be heard. Perhaps it would have helped if the Meet had been cast onto the TV, although Deanna hadn't figured out how to do that. Deanna served vanilla ice cream with a chocolate torte that was supposed to be brownies but she didn't have a square 9" pan for the recipe she was making for the first time, so she made it in a 9" round springform pan.

Deanna's quilt top was made using Mary Ellen Hopkin's old pattern called Hidden Wells. There is a new version that you can find on the internet that is also called Hidden Wells, but it uses jelly rolls, has less fabric and is constructed differently, so it doesn't result in the "wells."

Deanna has also been working on a project requested by her son's mother-in-law: disassembling six Rajasthani Shaneel Razai (a type of Indian quilts) that she bought from India more than 30 years ago. The Shaneel fabric is made from cotton and feels like velvet. Each razai had a thin cotton backing and cotton wadding that had been tacked together. Over the years the razai had been torn in places and most of the wadding had disappeared. It is a laborious project to remove the backing, clean them up and reassemble them into three razai with Shaneel on both the front and back, and quilt them. Deanna hopes that this buys her some goodwill from the mother-in-law. Attached is a photo of the first razai Deanna put back together, before it was quilted, but it was delivered it to the mother-in-law at the grandkids' Halloween party.

The third quilt was just some cute yardage Deanna picked up at Open Quilting and put together with a yellow backing with red ladybugs and free motion quilted around the motifs. It was donated to Community Quilts.

Marty

Marty showed two quilts. The first is a Japanese Puzzle pattern that was very tricky to put together and on top of that she kept running out of fabric since she was using 'found fabric' and it took a lot more fabric than expected to cut the shapes. Hence, some unusual color choices. All the quilting is in-the-ditch.

The second quilt is for EBHQ's children's quilt project. The front and back are shown.

Mary

You’ve seen both of these quilts before but now both are quilted; one is bound and the other is faced. The blue and yellow one has butterflies and flowers quilted in it. It will go to my 8-year-old grandson’s school in the winter for their silent auction.

I decided to quilt the second one with straight lines down the middle of each ray: yellow down the yellow & orange sections, teal down those sections. I liked Sandy’s idea last month of facing it so that’s what I did.

Next month we will meet at Joan’s at our usual time. Then we will skip January since so many of us will be at the Bishop’s Ranch at our annual quilt retreat. 

Arleen

I wasn’t able to attend the meeting, but wanted to share what I am working on.

The first is another Bits quilt using up small pieces of scraps sewn onto 2.5 strips.

The second is a hawaiian fabric quilt using Sarah Nishiura pattern. Still working on the quilting. 

The local fabric store Kaimuki dry good is going out of business and had a 25% discount on their sewing machines. I started looking at the Jukis and baby locks, but ultimately decided to keep using my mom's 45 year old Bernina 830. 

 

Joan

My vision is slowly returning. Two months ago I was declared legally blind. Attached are three pictures from Deanna. The first one is a children's quilt. I was able to do this with help from Deanna and Rich, since I am still having trouble cutting accurately. My polka dot collection still exists, although it is considerably reduced. I even quilted it myself. The other two pictures are a large queen-sized bedspread. It was quilted by Hello Stitch. I'm calling it Blue Notes, since that's the quilting stitch I chose. Susan had used it and since some of the trapezoids are opera patterns I felt that it was appropriate. Still reducing my stash, but that will never really happen.  

Thank you for sharing your photos and stories. I love to hear from you. You are all so creative. 

The next meeting will be at Joan's house on December 1 at 130.