January 2024

 Today we met at Joan’s house on a clear and brisk afternoon.  Unfortunately Sandy and Alice were not able to join us.  Hopefully we’ll have good news for Alice and her daughter.  Joan’s house still had all of her Christmas decorations including her Christmas quilts which made the room so festive.

Marty

Marty started us off with two beautiful quilts that she made while at Bishop Ranch.  She also completed two kits from the children’s project, but didn’t bring those. I love the fabric she used.  The second is a strip pieced squares from 1 jelly roll.  The size is big enough for the foster youth.

Deanna

Deanna brought two projects. The first is made from a half yard bundle of fabrics from Tildas World.  The fabric is soft and has a good feel to it.  She has free patterns to look at on her website tildasworld.com.  Deanna quilted it in diagonal lines. The second project was started at Bishop Ranch and is made from two jelly rolls, one bright and one pastel made into a Trip Around the world pattern that she saw from Donna Hunters Quiltville Many Trips around the world.

Mary

Mary had five projects that she shared with us. The first is a top from Betsy that she finished by quilting.  It is a very abstract and modern pattern and she did a great job in quilting it.  The second is the Bishop Ranch project that she is working on putting the blocks together.  The third are three photo books that she made and passed around for everyone to see. Beautiful.  The fourth project is a quilt she is going to put in VIC and has finished the quilting but needs to work on the loose threads.  She used Superior Bobs King Tut thread.  The 5th is the penguin quilt that only needs the binding done.

Bobbie

Bobbie is working on her bedspread.  She made the top in one day and is planning on using a beautiful Tula Pink soft satin finish fabric as a back.

Arleen

I made a baby quilt in the bow tie pattern.  It’s an easy pattern that I was reminded of when I saw an old quilt that I made.  The block is made of four 5 inch blocks. Two blocks have a triangle sewn at the corner to make the bow tie.

Mindy

Mindy received a Design Works pattern of a stocking.  She showed us her completed stocking for Takeo and the hexagons that she made at Bishops Ranch.

Joan

Joan started us off by showing her two Christmas quilts. The first was made in a McCalls pattern and has hand quilted partridge in a pear tree.  The second Christmas quilt was machine pieced and has April Sproule stencils on it.  The third is a huge trapezoid quilt that she had quilted at Hello Stitch.  The fourth quilt is a panel of beautiful fabric that she surrounded by trapezoids and a grunge border.  The trapezoids were made from fabric napkins from her different trips stenciled with metallic fabric paints.  The backing has a beautiful panel of an orchid surrounded by the trapezoids. Wow.

Joan served a yummy flan custard with fresh raspberries and blueberries. The next meeting will be at Deanna’s house on February 14, Valentine’s Day at 130.

December 2023

 We met today at Bobbie’s house for our holiday potluck and gift exchange.  The meeting was changed from Mindy’s house due to a new grandson’s birth which has occupied Mindy’s full attention. Congratulations Grandma Mindy👵.  Great Grandma Bobbie was happy to have the festivities at her place with hopes to see her new great grandson soon.

The next meeting will be held at Joan’s house on Wednesday, January 17, 2024 at 130.  This is.a week later than usual to allow for the Bishop Ranch meeting.  Deanna was not able to make it to this meeting and was missed.  

Mary

Mary started us off with her new baby blanket of penguins.  It is for a girl but she went with the blue and yellow fabrics because it went so well with the penguins.  They are nine patch blocks and penguin blocks that measure 6 inches.  She just arranged the blocks as she saw fit, added some extra blocks and it all came together quite well. Good job.

Sandy was next but did not bring anything to share.  She will be taking a dyeing class from Carol Soderlund and Sarah Nishiura next month so she’ll be busy next month.  I’m so impressed with the classes that she’s taking.

Marty

Marty told us of her Korea trip with Youngmin Lee and Japan trip with EBHQ members.  Her 23 day journey was long and tiring but full of adventure and discovering new things.  She learned a little bit of Korean bojagi, indigo dyeing, weaving, Korean embroidery, gift wrapping, making coasters or hanging bojagi and the importance of a good translator and tour guide.  Here are some of the things she made an indigo stenciled bag, 2 indigo silk scarves, 1 cotton indigo scarf, and a coaster.

Thank you for the gift of Korean chopsticks with holder from Koreancraft.com.

Mindy

Mindy showed her new grandsons stocking.  It is almost finished with just a few more details.  Her grandsons name is Takeo.

Arleen

Arleen got a new Sashiko Babylock sewing machine and has been experimenting with the stitch on baby blankets.  So far, I’ve noticed it doesn’t like Gutterman thread or Pellon 100 percent cotton batting.  It would skip stitches or get fussy and I would have to retread it.  The polyester thread from Superior Bob works okay, but I’m still trying out different battings.

I started a new quilt with the cut up 6.5 inch fabrics. I used scissors to cut out the triangle, so they are not perfect, which is what I like.

Bobbie has been working on her Pods quilt and asked us for help.  She asked that I don’t show the pictures, but it is fantastic.

Joan and Alice did not have anything to share but we were able to catch up.

The potluck as always turned out great with so many home made dishes, desserts, soda bread and Martinelli drinks.  Thank you Bobbie for hosting last minute.  Have a happy holiday and see you in the new year.

November 2023

 We met today at Alice’s purple house in Berkeley and were greeted by her purple poodle at the door.  Unfortunately Joan and Marty were not able to make it but we’ll hope to see them next month at Mindy’s house.  The December meeting will be on Saturday Dec 9 at 11:00.  The earlier time will be for the potluck lunch.  Deanna said she will be in Texas for December and won’t be able to make it, but everyone else should be there.

Sandy

Sandy started us off with her continuation of her inspiration photo of stripes.  She stopped by New Pieces the last time she was in town and found a lot of stripe fabrics.  She likes the Freeform way of the stripes and the colors.

Mary

Mary was inspired by the challenge to look through old projects.  She found a stack of old blocks that she put together with extra fabric to make this quilt.  I like the way she reimagined the original block to make a totally new design.

She finished the quilting on the Koala quilt.  She outlined the koalas to give it more definition and added more free motion quilting.

Mindy

Mindy showed us a picture on her phone that showed the Halloween decorations that she made for her friend that won a prize from the city.

She got her round robin quilt back and loves it. She loves the way the zigzag layer and the tumbling layers frame the middle and sets it off.

Alice

Alice has been busy this month taking care of her poodle.  She did have time to complete the 9 blocks needed for her puppy quilt for her daughter who is due in January.  She found the perfect fabric for her backing and sashing fabric.  She also showed her giraffe and zebra quilts that she made with paper piecing.

Arleen

Arleen has been busy taking a workshop with Uzoma Samuel and making baby quilts.  The workshop was a 1 day class at PIQF to collage a portrait quilt by using Roxanne’s glue.  Uzoma provided the portrait of a girl with a bun bun hairdo drawn on a canvas fabric.  We cut and glued small scraps of fabric to make the eyes, eyebrows, nose, etc.  when I got it home, I ended up free motion quilting the raw edges.

Since I had pulled out all my scraps for the workshop, I made 6 baby quilts.

Deanna

Deanna finished an old project that started off as a background for dragonflies and ended up as a baby quilt.  Pretty fabric with pretty dense quilting.  Se started off quilting each leaf and it turned out to be pretty dense which is good for a baby quilt.

The second quilt was also finished.  The freehand quilting was “By guess and by gosh”.  She has three to go motifs when quilting. A leaf, a daisy and a curly flower.

Bobble 

Bobbie made a new pattern for her next quilt.  She wants to make a bed sized quilt for her new apartment.

We ended with cheese puffs from Fat Apples and fresh fruit from Monterey Market.  Alice is so lucky to be so close to these two fabulous Berkeley stores.  It’s what makes living in the Bay Area so special.  Thank you everyone for a lovely meeting.