July 2019

July 2019

We met at Mindy's house and Bobbie provided the luncheon as a celebration of Mindy's birthday.  Appetizers, a delicious Chinese chicken salad, and a lime cake for dessert.  Happy Birthday Mindy.

You will see a theme here this month with 3 different disappearing 9 patch quilts.

Next meeting is our first day time meeting, at Mary's house at 1:30 on August 16.

A sad note:  Bobbie let us know that Barbara Hazard has passed away in her sleep on July 29, 2019.  Bobbie notes that her daughter, Robin, was visiting her the day before and had a good evening together discussing all sorts of things.  Barbara will be missed.

Sandy has been sewing garments and showed off this pair of pants that she recently made from a pattern by 100 Acts of Sewing.

And, as part of her sewing guild activities, she had a creative jump start for that group.  Years ago she bought a box of pajama ties from a company in Berkeley that was having a sale.  For her challenge, she asked the sewing guild to make something out of the ties that she donated.  Here is what Sandy made.

Mary has completed her "pair, pear, pere" challenge piece early as she will be in New Zealand in September.

She has also finished a baby quilt featuring balloons.

Mary has finished quilting this disappearing 9 patch quilt for a baby boy.

And with some blocks that she made when she was having chemo a few years ago, she has assembled this quilt and had fun with the quilting design.  This quilt is faced.

Bobbie has continued to work on her India series.  She just got back from Tanglewood on a Roads Scholar trip. She has been visiting with Barbara who is back in Berkeley at the Belmont.

Deanna is back from Texas where she made a play ball for her grandchildren.  Since the ball is in Texas, here is a photo from Deanna's phone.

Deanna also brought samples from her workshop with Denise Labadie Snell where they did dyeing using clear glue resists, flour paste resists, and Setacolor paints.

 She also brought something for Joan.  A Mickey Lawler Skydye fabric that looks like Stonehenge style fabric.

Mindy finished the quilt she was making for some Cal football friends.

Mindy also showed us some fabrics that she will be doing some decorative long stitch on.  

She has already started on this Brassica fabric from the Kaffe Fassett Collective, but the detail of the stitching can really be seen on the back better.

Marty is back from a trip to Washington where she went to the museum in La Conner to see a Kitty Pippin exhibit.  She found this great Inuit t shirt of a sewing machine that she wore to show us.

Marty used some fabric from Kiss it Goodbye to make a disappearing 9 patch which she will donate to the Community Quilts of EBHQ.

Joan has finished her EPP quilt that matches her new living room colors.

Quilting detail

And she has finished another quilt in similar tones.

 
And Joan brought some sari fabric for Mindy.

Betsy continues to clean her studio and try to finish up the UFOs as she finds them.  Several of these quilts are now finished quilt tops or finished quilts!

A story line quilt top.

A flannel disappearing 9 patch baby quilt made mostly fabrics picked up at Kiss it Goodbye.

A Moon over the Mountain top now pieced together after being started years ago.

And finally, with leftover 2.5 inch scraps, another baby quilt.

June 2019

We met at Marty's house and this post will be a test of my memory since I have waited so long to make this post.  Joan had just returned from her trip to Italy, and we were surprised to see her able to make it to the meeting.  That's stamina.

We missed having Barbara there but send her our thoughts and good wishes on the East Coast.

Thanks to Deanna for taking and sending me photos to use on the blog.

We made a change to our meeting schedule.  Now that everyone is retired, we are going to meet during the day.  Our July meeting is our summer pot luck at Mindy's and is scheduled for Sunday, July 21.  Mary will host our first daytime meeting on Friday, August 16 at 1:30.  Betsy is tentatively scheduled to host the September meeting on Friday, September 20 at 1:30.


Joan has finished her Moncarapacho English Paper Pieced quilt in colors that complement her new living furniture.  She added a piano key border.  Next step--quilting.

 

Betsy is close to finishing her English Paper Pieced quilt using the Tula Nova pattern.  Colors to match her living room decor.  Notice a theme here?

Betsy also finished the top for a friend's sister who wanted gray, white, and raspberry colors.  

Bobbie brought the finished quilt for her grandson (at least I think that is who it is for).  She used the Jen Kingwell fabric for borders and had Hello Stitch quilt and bind the quilt for her.  Looks wonderful.

Sandy had finished piecing this quilt top and changed the design a bit from last month's meeting.  It shows off the large scale prints nicely and is much more interesting than the previous layout.

Mary has been playing with machine quilting on some of the EBHQ community quilts and it looks like she has been having a fun time.  Look at those circles!

And another community quilt....

And here is a quilt top Mary made that she has finished the quilting and binding on.  Colorful and lively.

Mary has also been quilting a wall hanging made from parts put together in a class or classes long ago.  Circles are the theme and the quilting adds to that nicely.

Mindy is making a memory type quilt using a bib and other pieces.  And her intricate hand quilting on the Sunbonnet Sue.

This next quilt made with the black and white squares and yellow border is Marty's.  She made this from start to finish and said that she was delighted to be able to give it to an actual baby, 7 month old Wai Mai who was visiting from Hawaii.  She is the daughter of Marty's daughter-in-law's sister.

Marty also finished quilting this lovely batik quilt for her son.  The color palette is wonderful with the lights and darks complementing each other nicely.

 Deanna has been enjoying her new Baby Lock machine.

 She is quilting this lovely flower, I think from a class long ago.  Look at the back too!

We took a tour upstairs to see Marty's new machine (same model as Deanna's) and got to see her finished quilt on the guest bed.  Lucky guests.  Look at all of that inspiration in the room.

 And finally, we had an apple cake for dessert with ice cream and an extra bonus of apricot jam (made by Deanna) if we wanted.  Of course, I put it all together and it was delicious!

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.