January at Joan's

Our First Meeting of 2016

We met at Joan's house for our first meeting of 2016 and all but Marty were in attendance.  Sandy announced that since she will be taking two classes this term she won't be able to attend our meetings.  We agreed to stick to the Thursday schedule.  The meeting ended with a delicious apple cake with a lemon sauce.

Our next meeting will be at Mary's house on February 11.

Betsy worked on UFOs the past couple of months and here are three of the ones that are finished.

Big Blue was an exercise in half square triangles and a two color quilt.  It is double batted (wool and a cotton/poly) to make it a warmer quilt.  Queen-sized makes it a hefty quilt.

Another finished quilt is twin sized and was begun over 10 years ago.  It was taken apart and put back together a couple of times.  Finally, it is quilted and bound and has a soft, warm flannel back.  Snail Trail.

The last quilt is the second Sticks and Stones quilt made with the "opposite" blocks left over from the first one.  Finally found the perfect backing fabric.

Arleen has retired and was given a gift by her co-workers similar to ones she has given to so many in her time at the Post Office.  This photo quilt contains very sharp photos of Arleen and her coworkers and even shows several of her quilt gifts.

Arleen also created a wonderful quilt from some Ikat fabrics Joan had found and combined them with some Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

The backing is a soft fabric.

Mary had just returned from a quilt retreat at Bishop's Ranch and had accomplished a lot.  Two baby quilts utilized the same pattern but different color ways and different sizes.

Mary also is working on an Art Quilt inspired by paintings by Kathy Barieau.  Love the lizard.

Bobbie also went to Bishop's Ranch and was very focused on making not one but two Avalon quilts.

Barbara had a question for the group on how to use blocks she had created in a Barbara Ramsey class.  She laid them out in a way that suggested a plain color fabric in between each block would work.

Deanna hopes to retire by the end of this year--we'll see.  In the meantime, she made a really soft flannel double sided blankent highlighted by giant pink rickrack on the edges.

And don't miss the owls on the yellow side.

Deanna also made a sea themed quilt using batiks from her stash for a color wheel type front and fish fabric for the back.

Looks like we are having a fun evening--and we were.

Joan spent time working on her large floral piece started as a group challenge with a different quilt group.  She has added great quilting with metallic thread and beading.

Here is a closeup of the embellishment.

We had a large group for November at Bobbi's house.  Everyone but Mary attended and we hope she is having fun with her grandsons.

We determined our December meeting will be at Mindy's as a dinner due to obligations some of us had on that day, and we will do our White Elephant gift exchange again with at $10 max.  Mindy will provide details.

What was shown tonight by person:

Joan

Her other group met to work with large florals and Joan's will be an art piece with hidden lizards and birds.  Can you find them?

Mindy
The holidays are a theme with a Halloween piece and a Christmas themed panel.  Also, Mindy has been busy making paper flowers.

Arleen

Using the creations from a class with Ana Lisa Hedstrom, Arleen has another unique quilt in the works.

She also pieced together panels to use for a backing fabric on a future project.

Marty
Marty showed some examples of Joomchi from a recent EBHQ workshop.

and a quilt she created out of pieces obtained at a recent drop-in. 

Deanna
Back from Houston, replete with many styles of needles offered to the group, Deanna has a new baby quilt that had to be finished this evening as it will be given away at the office on Friday.

Lovely quilting that shows up nicely on the back.

Bobbi
Bobbi has made progress on her panels (I think she plans on 5 now?).

With a question for this panel as to whether the black tassels enhance or not.  We liked them.

Barbara
Barbara showed photos of some of her paintings, but I only have one of them captured.  She has given Betsy permisson to try and create a hooked rug out this one.  Wonder if Betsy can do it.

October, 2015 meeting

We were only five but we made the most of the time we had to dive a bit deeper into topics.   Here's what Marty, Deanna, Sandy, Arleen, and Betsy are working on.

Deanna decided she needed to add more quilting to her Avalon quilt so she has been free motion quilted in leaves and vines.  See the second photo for the detail.

Deanna's Avalon Quilt

Quiltin detail for Deanna's Avalon Quilt

 Marty has been quilting her Dragon Wall Hanging and asked for opinions on adding beading embellishment.  We auditioned various styles using the gold beads Marty had with her and tried out some black beads from Betsy's stash (courtesy of Sandy).

Marty's Two Dragons Playing Ball quilt

Marty has also started joining the "footballs" for her wedding ring quilt and will experiment on whether she wants to make rows and join rows together or just add a "block" at a time.  All beautifully hand-pieced.

Sandy didn't make it down in time to enter her challenge quilt for the Alameda County show, so instead she expanded it to make a baby quilt.  You can see the center left panel that was the original challenge of Harmonic Convergence design.

Sandy's Harmonic Convergence baby quilt

Betsy had made a second Sticks and Stones Jelly Roll lap quilt to use up the blocks she had made with the stones going in the wrong direction.  She added more oranges and pinks in this version and distributed these new blocks evenly across the old purple blocks.

Betsy's second Sticks and Stones quilt

Betsy also made a Rail Fence style quilt for Lori, her daughter-in-law's mother.  Lori loves orange and this jelly roll quilt delivers on that color.

Modified Rail Fence Jelly Roll lap quilt

 Quilting was simple straight line.

July 2015

We met at Mary's house where paintings from Obie's Aunt Kathy Barieau were on display for viewing and selection.

Three new challenge tops were done and we had a discussion on borders with the conclusion to stick to the instructions which give a range for border size.

Mary's left, Joan's top right, Betsy's bottom right

Arleen and Marty brought work done in an EBHQ class on marbling.  Arleen had already cut and pieced her fabric into a quilt top!

Arleen's marbled fabric quilt

Marty had two other samples

Arleen had also quilted and bound her wool quilt which is entered into PIQF.  Check out the binding and see if you can tell why the Force is with her!

Betsy had been working with half square triangle quilts and has a baby quilt (auditioning the turquoise border)

a "nose to toes" quilt,

and Big Blue, a queen sized quilt.

Marty brought a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt that she hand quilted.  The quilt top was one her mother had and the setting is the Garden Path.

Here is a detail of the hand quilting.

Mary has been quilting the baby quilts and is now binding one that has lovely circles quilted into the border.