Friday, March 3, 2017

Quilt Therapy, March 2017

March 2017 at Bobbie's House

We met at Bobbie's house and all were in attendance except Sandy who has a heavy course load this term.  Hopefully, we will see her next month.  We meet at Deanna's next month and in May at Betsy's.

Bobbie and Barbara were eager to show us their progress on their quilts inspired by Joan Mitchell paintings.  They each do parts of the painting, then merge the parts together to make the whole quilt.

Here is the first one and Bobbie is holding an image of the painting which inspired the quilt.
And here is the second work:
And the third.
There are more to be done with the goal of having them in a show in New York, perhaps.

Betsy continues to get distracted in the cleaning up of her studio space by finding things that she has to stop and make into quilts.  A precut packet of blue strips and white strips inspired a single Irish Chain quilt for her to use as a summer quilt.

And there were still scraps left from the last attempt to use up the Cherrywood Hand Dyes Scrap bags, so a second quilt was made.   Binding is on one side and the second side ready to be sewn down.   This one is reversible.  Here is the front.
And here is the back.

For hand piecing, Betsy started another hexi quilt with precuts found during the cleaning process.  We discussed how best to set this piece and the suggestion of having it on a background of a dotted fabric seems like a winner.

Arleen showed us the "fashionista" pieces she made in Kathryn Pellman's class at EBHQ.

And in true Arleen style, she is making a French braid style quilt.  There are about three more rows to add, but here is the progress so far.

 Mary is back from Cuba.  She has finished the quilting on this next baby quilt and used a lovely green for the binding.


Here is a quilting detail. She uses contact paper as a template to quilt around.

Marty brought her flower with a request for suggestions on how to quilt the background.  Frustration with her new sewing machine is making it difficult for her to want to tackle this next part.


Her intent is to have the top resemble rain and the bottom be floral in nature per the suggestion of the fabric she chose.

She also took the Kathryn Pellman class and her is her piece.  That's Marty gardening in her yard.  Love the shoes.

At a Christmas gathering a couple of years ago, Marty got a packet of fabric.  She has now crafted that packet into a marvelous modern style quilt.  With two types of gray polka dots, the quilt shines. 
 
The squares within squares are almost an optical illusion.

Deanna is still semi-retired, but learning to take more blocks of time off.  Here is her rooster with the most marvelous striped legs.


The background is shirting materials and includes pieces from one of her son's shirts that the dry cleaner had put a hole in.

 Rescued from a donation made at drop-in, Joan is putting together a set of Dresden style circles into a quilt top.  She has successfully found a fabric with the right color to use for sashing (at that great new quilt store, Bay Quilts).


Joan has been busy English Paper Piecing with fabric her daughter brought to her.  With a marvelous border fabric the "fell out of her closet" and was purchased in Hawaii, the top is now ready to be quilted.

And she has quilted the jelly roll quilt she showed us a few months ago by quilting from the back following the lines on the backing fabric.

Here is the quilting on the back:

And Mindy has gone bonkers for English Paper Piecing, She is now entertaining the idea of going  going even smaller than we thought possible.

Here is a close up of a smaller piece.  Note that container of so many hexis in waiting.


Mindy is also doing Mindy type needlework on these pieces she found in her studio from years ago.  Tiny stitches.

Arleen brought a Tile Quilt pattern and fabric and requested our help in making a block each as part of the gift to give Joan as outgoing President.  She did a brief demo showing where to join pieces and where the partial seams occur.  The directions also give the complete info.


Monday, February 6, 2017

January 2017 meeting at Marty's

The rain let up for our meeting at Marty's.  Mindy, Barbara, and Sandy could not join us this month.  We will meet next month at Bobbie's house.

We discussed our next challenge and it was changed from the black and white with a color option, to making a piece inspired by the word "Doors."  The piece can be no larger than 24 x 36 inches and we will have the pieces completed by our September meeting so that we can enter them as a group in the Alameda County Arts show.

Here's what we saw at this meeting.  Several people had been to a retreat at Bishop's Ranch recently and were very productive there.

Mary has completed her rooster from Ann Shaw's class.  The facing is pinned ready for completion.


She also worked on several other quilts at the retreat.  Playing with the quilting design was one goal for the quilt with the large gray squares below.  The quilting also enhances the back of the quilt nicely.

 The sashing on this one takes a quilt made with blocks of "created fabric" up to a new level.



Joan has been on a trip to New Zealand and Australia (I hope I got that right) recently and was knitting with some yarn she got on the trip.  It is made from the brushtail possum.  Very soft.



And she brought back a nice selection of fabrics from the trip.  Love the sheepdog in the middle of the sheep.



Joan also participated in the recent EBHQ workshop by Bobbie Berquist working with Tsukineko inks and Fabrico pens to color fabric.






And she continues on with her English Paper Piecing flowers.

Deanna also participated in the Bobbie Berquist workshop and brought her many class projects.

Another retreat attendee, her bear quilt is now quilted and almost ready to hang.


Arleen has created another magical quilt from a photo she saw in the Feb/March 2015 Quilter's Newsletter.




It has many partial seams and is a happy wonderful quilt.




And with fabrics for a community quilt, Arleen drafted her own hexagons to be the size needed to show off the fabric for this next quilt.



Betsy did not attend a retreat, and brought only one quilt to show.  Based on a quilt top that Lisa Doyen brought to Bay Quilts, Betsy used her Cherrywood Fabrics scrap bag and made a lap quilt for her to enjoy.  The sashing and backing are made with Marcus hand dyed muslin.

Bobbie showed an interesting piece that she called her scraps piece  Love the motion to this one.
And Marty has been struggling with the tension on her new Janome.  While identifying some spots that needed to be redone, she showed this great wallhanging that uses a variety of Asian fabrics.



Sunday, August 14, 2016

August 2016 at Betsy's

This is the month before our latest challenge quilts are due and many were shown at the meeting.  We all contributed 2-3 magazine pages and at the April meeting each person picked a page to use as inspiration for the challenge quilt.  We could use the colors or shapes, or a word on the page, as inspiration for our quilt.  The perimeter has to be 80 inches.  That's the challenge.  Here are a few of the results with their magazine pages that were the inspiration.



Joan's Strata






Mary holding first try

Mary's Two Choices
Deanna has completed the background


Betsy's applique top is made
We have already seen Arleen's challenge piece (Arleen, you were missed at this meeting.)

But wait, there is more!!

Joan has finished Pele!  And it is spectacular.  And the best news is that she now knows why her Bernina machine has been misbehaving. 
Detail of Pele
Bobbie has been at work on her art quilt and has this panel of four ladies done.

Sandy has finished the baby quilt she was working on and tried doing machine binding using one of the decorative stitches on her machine.  Looks great.
Binding all by machine
Mindy showed one of the dresses made for the dance competition.

Mary had finished a quilt top that had started out as an exercise in an Angie Woolman color class.


Marty was playing with raw edge applique and showed this bright and lively quilt!

Betsy entered the Cherrywood Lion King challenge, but did not get accepted.  Here is her lion.
It's All About the Lion
The stitching on the back was interesting
And Betsy had made another scrap quilt, this one called Diamond Squares using a Missouri Star Quilt Company tutorial and scraps from bindings and baby quilts.