July 2015 Meeting

We met on July 28, 2015 at Helen's house with all Bees present. Rita made a delicious frittata, which was fresh from the oven. Margie made salad, and Dawn contributed gluten free zucchini bread for dessert.

Next Meeting

*** Tuesday, August 25 at Helen's house ***

Queen Bee: Helen

Main course: Tricia

Salad: Randi

Dessert: Linda

Business Meeting

Tricia was Queen Bee. There wasn't anything new to discuss about quilting events, but Tricia shared an interesting discovery she and Peggy made at Joann's. Apparently it's possible to return yardage to Joann's as long as it's in its original condition, i.e., it hasn't been washed or cut into. Who knew!? (Helen did!)

Tricia brought up the idea of having a workshop at the UNR Cooperative Extension again this year. Ideas included just working on our own projects or possibly making a tote bag, such as the feed sack bags shown by Linda, the mesh bags shown by Peggy and Tricia, or the folding bags given at our holiday party by Tricia. Another idea could be a Jelly Roll Race quilt, because it helps to have a large room and someone to stretch out the strips with.

Possible dates include October 3, November 14, or November 21. Linda will check on dates available for the meeting room.

Show and Tell

Randi's "hexies" quilt. (I have something in my notes about a special circle drawing ruler, but I don't have details. Randi, could you please fill me in?)

Rita finished her "ugly fabrics" quilt, and even though she used the ugliest of the ugly, somehow the quilt turned out beautiful!

Helen made a Jelly Roll Race quilt top for donation. 

Peggy made some cute bibs and she finished the adorable bird quilt for her soon-to-be-born grandniece. 

Demonstration

Tricia demonstrated a product from Floriani called "Heat N Shrink." (It is the same as another product called "Texture Magic" made by Superior Threads). It is used to sew a pattern onto a fabric (such as a grid or outline quilting) and then to shrivel up the fabric with steam to make a textured fabric. Here is a link to a whole bunch of videos about using these products.

June 2015 Meeting

We met as usual at Helen's house on June 30, 2015 with all the Bees attending. We had salad, salsa, and bread for dinner, and Linda made some really cute little desserts in a jar. I apologize that my notes for this meeting are sketchy, so I don't remember who made the other parts of our dinner.

Next Meeting

*** Tuesday, July 28 at Helen's house ***

Queen Bee: Tricia

Main course: Rita

Salad: Margie

Dessert: Dawn

Business Meeting

Peggy was Queen Bee for this meeting, and she discussed with us a couple of ongoing and upcoming events.

Row by Row Experience is an "event" is being offered by quilt shops around the country. Here is what their website says: "It's like a shop hop, but it's not... no fees, no cards to stamp, and all summer to play! Simply visit any of the participating shops and receive a free pattern for a row in a quilt. Combine your rows in any way to create a unique quilt that represents the fun you had traveling throughout the summer. Travel with friends, discover new quilt shops and have fun collecting rows!" It is being offered from June 21 to September 8, 2015 with quilts to be completed and turned in by October 31.

It turned out that Randi had already started collecting the quilt patterns and quilt kits, and she showed us some of them. Each shop also offers a fabric license plate for their state with a cute quilting phrase as the license plate number.

Carson Valley Quilt Guild Show will take place on June 4-5, 2016 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM at the Douglas County Senior and Community Center on 1329 Waterloo Lane in Gardnerville. Its theme is "Our World in Stitches." I'm sure much more information will become available as the event draws closer. Here is a link to their "official website."

Show and Tell

Peggy made a "Yellow Brick Road" quilt for her newest baby grandniece who will be born in August.

Randi showed a table runner made by little Helen, who picked out all the fabrics.

Peggy and Tricia took a class at the Quilt House to make these cute mesh tote bags. 

Helen showed us some cute little pouches. I don't remember the details, so if someone could fill me in, I will add it to them to the website. I believe it has to do with some easy folding instructions.  

Demonstration

Peggy demonstrated a product called Triangulations. This product is an aid for creating half-square triangles, quarter-square triangles, and flying geese of all sizes. It consists of a CD from which the quilter can print out her own paper-piecing sheets. Peggy, who doesn't care for Thangles, says that this product is easy to use and very accurate. She highly recommends it. Here is a link to their website and to a YouTube video demonstration.

May 2015 Meeting

We met on May 26 at Helen's house with Helen, Linda, Dawn, Randi, Peggy, and Tricia attending. For the main course, Dawn brought a fresh salad with beet greens and many fixings from her garden, and Tricia brought chicken salad. I know Randi brought dessert, but I think we ate it later during the meeting so I didn't write it down, and I'm sorry, but I just don't remember.

Next Meeting

*** Tuesday, June 30 at Helen's house ***
(Fifth Tuesday)
Queen Bee: Peggy
Food: Main salad - Peggy;  Bread - Helen;  Dessert - Linda

Business Meeting

Linda was Queen Bee for this meeting. No one had anything new to report in the world of quilting. 

Randi told us about a Facebook site she really likes called Folt Bolt. Its focus is the "Colourful Art Palette."

Ugly Fabric Projects

What a shame Margie and Rita couldn't come to the meeting. They would have enjoyed seeing our creative efforts; hopefully the photos will do our projects justice. Margie, Rita, and Helen -- we hope you will bring your "ugly projects" to the June meeting.

Dawn made a cute school house wall hanging, and Linda made a sweet and perky pin.

  

Randi made place mats, and notice how what we thought was the ugliest of the ugly fabrics actually looks really nice as a backing. Peggy made a cute Christmas wall hanging, which she is giving to Tricia to hang on her front porch.

   

Tricia made a table runner for a small table in her entry hall. She added few extra fabrics. 

Show & Tell

Peggy finished a beautiful Christmas redwork quilt done with machine embroidery. She isn't sure what she will do with it but might donate it for raffling to the Women's Society at St. Gall Church in Gardnerville.

Linda showed us some totes she made from feedsacks. What a great idea. Not only are these bags cute because of the colorful feedsack designs, they are an excellent way to "reduce, reuse, recycle."

Demonstration

Queen Bee Linda then did a demonstration of freezer-paper paper piecing. Linda says she enjoys paper piecing and likes the precision of the blocks, but she finds it tedious to remove all the paper. So, she demonstrated a folding method using freezer paper where you don't have to remove the paper and the freezer paper foundations are reusable for about 3-4 times.

Here are some photos. First the pattern gets copied onto the dull side of freezer paper. There is sheet-sized paper available that will run through a printer, but the kind of paper that comes on a roll is fine for hand tracing. It's not all that easy to see through freezer paper, so Linda recommends just making dots on the corners of the design and then drawing lines with a ruler.

Placement of fabric on the numbers is the same as for regular paper piecing. The main difference is that the paper gets folded back, and then the seam is stitched very close to the fold. Linda recommends using a stitch-in-the-ditch foot because the blade will run along the edge of the paper nicely. The seam will get trimmed later, so the size of the seam doesn't matter at this point.  

After placing, folding, trimming, and ironing, a finished block will emerge. Notice the perfect points!

 

For those of us who are spatially challenged, paper piecing can be hard to conceptualize, so I tried to find a YouTube video that would demonstrate this technique as succinctly and clearly as Linda did. Unfortunately, I was not able to find one that gets right to the point, but I did find a two-part series that covers the technique thoroughly: Freezer Paper Foundation Piecing - Part 1 and Part 2. Enjoy!

April 2015 Meeting

We met on Tuesday, April 28 at Helen's house with every Bee attending -- Margie, Peggy, Linda, Helen, Rita, Randi, Dawn, and Tricia. Rita brought delicious broccoli soup, Helen provided a yummy salad, and Linda brought home made lemon bars.

Next Meeting

*** Tuesday, May 26 at Helen's house ***

Queen Bee: Linda
Food: Main dish - Dawn;  Salad - Tricia;  Dessert - Randi

Business Meeting

Margie was Queen Bee, and she shared a few items of interest during the business meeting. 

• The Sewing Expo at the Grand Sierra in Reno will be on June 11-13. A $2.00 discount coupon is available on their website.
   
• The Sierra to Sage Shop Hop will be on September 10-12, Thursday through Saturday only. No Sundays this year.
   
• Quilting Tahoe is going to close permanently on August 2, 2015. Merchandise is currently marked down to 30% off through July 5. The shop will then be closed from July 6-July 23. It will reopen from July 24 to August 2 at 50% off. 

Show & Tell

Randi showed us her memory box quilt #2. She decided to make two quilts from the memory blocks because some of the squares just didn't seem to go together. That means she made a lot more squares herself from the left over fabrics. 

Ugly Fabric Challenge

Prior to the meeting, Queen Bee Margie had asked the Bees each to bring at least one ugly fabric to the meeting, but she didn't tell us in advance what we were going to do with them. As we looked at all the fabrics, most of us decided the ones the other Bees brought weren't really all that ugly -- except for the one Linda brought (on the right, black with multicolor print -- yikes!)

Margie challenged us to select at least three fabrics and then to incorporate them into a project to complete by next month. At first, some of the Bees didn't feel as though they had time to take this on, but in the end, we had so much fun comparing and bargaining for the fabrics that everyone decided to join in. We can't wait to see what everyone will come up with!

March 2015 Meeting

The Bees met at Helen's house at our usual time and decided to have a quick meeting first and then go out to dinner at Applebee's. All the Bees except for Margie attended.

Next Meeting

*** Tuesday, May 26, 5:30 PM at Helen's ***
Food:  Rita - main;  Helen - salad;  Linda - dessert
Queen Bee: Margie

Demonstration 

We started the meeting with a demonstration from Helen on how to sash together quilt-as-you-go or any prequilted blocks. Last month Helen showed us a quilt in progress, which some of us Bees just didn't quite get, so the demonstration, complete with squares and sashing for us to play with, was very helpful for those of us who are a bit spatially challenged :) Linda has some quilt blocks she made a long time ago, which are individually quilted, and this is just the technique she needs to finally sew them together. We all agreed this will come in very handy and will allow us to make projects from some our practice squares, for example when doing some of the dense Leah Day-style quilting or zen doodling. Peggy and Tricia sometimes do quilting "in the hoop" on their embroidery machines, and this technique would allow for a nice quilt or wall-hanging from this quilting method as well.

Helen also provided samples and printed instructions for us to take home. Thank you, Helen!

Show and Tell

The only show and tell this month was a purse made by Tricia. She has been searching for the "perfect" purse pattern for a long time, and she thinks she finally found it. This compact purse has many pockets and compartments, and it closes securely with a zipper at the top.

Dinner

After the brief meeting, we drove to Applebee's and enjoyed dining together (but we missed you, Margie). Linda brought a book of photos from her trip to Germany and Italy, and we passed it around to get a taste of her family's travels. It looks as though they had a great time and created many special memories.

Business

During dinner, we confirmed that the schedule for our meetings will be on the last Tuesday of every month (rather than on the fourth Tuesday, which is usually the last Tuesday but  not always). That will simplify scheduling and minimize any confusion that could occur during those five-Tuesday months.

We also discussed the Queen Bee and food for the next month, and I thought it might be helpful to provide a list of the Queen Bee rotation over the past year. It has worked out really well sharing this responsibility, and it ends up not being very much work for any one person. We have had some really awesome demos and discussions because of the varying interests, knowledge, and skills among the Bees.

Queen Bees

April 2015 -- Margie (Peggy will do it if Margie can't)
March 2015 -- Helen
Feb 2015 -- Rita
Jan 2015 -- Dawn
Dec 2014 -- No Queen -- holiday dinner
Nov 2014 -- Helen
Oct 2014 -- Tricia
Sept 2014 -- Margie (but Linda did it instead)
August 2014 -- No Queen -- weekend sandwiching day
July 2014 -- No Queen -- weekend sew day instead of meeting
June 2014 -- Peggy
May 2014 -- Tricia
April 2014 -- Linda
March 2014 -- Dawn

February 2015 Meeting

The Bees met on Tuesday, February 24 at Helen's house with Peggy, Margie, Rita, Randi, Helen, and Tricia attending. We missed Dawn and Linda very much! Peggy and Tricia brought dinner, which consisted of delicious but healthy turkey chili and salad with special peanut cilantro dressing from the Cheesecake Factory.

Next Meeting (please note change from fourth Tuesday to last Tuesday)

*** Tuesday, March 31 at Helen's house ***

Queen Bee: Helen
Food: TBD

Show and Tell

There was no business to discuss, so we launched right into Show and Tell. Peggy made a beautiful project bag featuring machine embroidery, which was an embroidery club project. 

Helen made a very cute and unusual tote bag. She cleverly added several zipper compartments on the inside to make it even more versatile. The name of the pattern is "Shopping Pretty" by KD Creations. I believe Helen got the pattern and made the purse in a class at Cagey Quilter in Carson City. Helen also showed us the start of a quilt-as-you-go quilt she is working on. The quilt is put together by folding and sewing sashing in a unique way, which I believe she is going to demonstrate at our next meeting. 

Randi was busy making Great Britain sashes for her troop for the Girl Scouts' World Thinking Day. 

Art Project

Rita was Queen Bee, and like a true art teacher, she didn't want us just watching, she wanted us doing, so then the fun began. Rita brought with all the supplies, including blank cards, glue sticks, scissors, and discarded painting projects from her art class for us to use to make greeting cards. She also used the opportunity to teach us a bit about compositional layout techniques, such as use of placement and negative space. We all sat around the kitchen table tearing, cutting, coloring, and gluing to come up with completely unique designs for our cards. 

Rita then demonstrated how to embellish our designs, as well as hold them down, by stitching them on the sewing machine.  

Rita even provided us with envelopes and extra cards to take home to play with. Several Bees thought it would be fun to experiment with fabric scraps, ribbon, and yarn. This project was so creative and so much fun! Thank you, Rita!

January 2015 Meeting

We met on January 27 at Helen's house. It was a very small meeting with only Helen, Rita, Peggy, Dawn, and Tricia attending. But that doesn't mean we didn't have a fabulous dinner, and all the more for just the five of us. Helen made tamale pie, Dawn brought pasta salad, and Rita brought fresh squaw bread from Schatt's Bakery. It was a carb fest! While at Schatt's, Rita also picked up a stunning rum cake completely decorated with white fluffiness. It was a work of art; I wish we had taken a picture of it.

Next Meeting

*** Tuesday, February 24 at Helen's house ***
Food: Peggy and Tricia will bring everything
Queen Bee:  Rita

Business Meeting

Blue Line Kids HALOS program: Dawn was Queen Bee, and she shared with us a quilt donation project for children of fallen police officers. (HALOS stands for Helping Assist Lost Officers' Survivors.) We didn't discuss taking this on as a group project, so it's up to each Bee to decide whether or how she wants to contribute. Below is their flyer (click to enlarge). Dawn inquired by email and got a reply that they are most in need of lap- to twin-sized quilts, sewn not tied. They are not picky about gender or design, but because these children have just lost a parent, they ask that fabric not contain overly cheerful text ("super" and "terrific" were the examples given). Quilts can be mailed to Erin Edelen Kutter, who takes care of the needs in Nevada (mailing address is on the flyer).

Free Motion Project:  Leah Day is a young woman who came up with the idea for creating and demonstrating a new free motion quilting pattern every day for year, and she has become pretty well know on YouTube. Some of the Bees were already familiar with Leah Day, but Dawn took it to the next level. Leah has now collected her patterns into books, and Dawn supported Leah's project by purchasing the books, which she brought to the meeting. More than that, though, Dawn used patterns from the books to quilt two quilts, which she brought with to show us (see "Show & Tell," below). 

Leah Day's books can be purchased on her website (leahday.com), and 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs is also available on Amazon. (Although not show in the pictures, both books are nicely spiral bound.)

Workshop idea: Tricia has mentioned a few times the idea of collecting 2-1/2 inch strips and then having a workshop to make jelly roll quilts for donation. Everyone thinks this is a good idea, so I (Tricia) propose that we start bringing strips to our meetings, and Tricia will collect them. We can discuss this more, such as whether we want to ask each Bee to bring a certain number to every meeting, like we did with the 6-inch squares, or just to bring what they have each month. Here is a picture of a jelly roll quilt Tricia made for her daughter for Christmas. This pattern makes a good sized lap quilt.

Show & Tell

Here are the quilts Dawn used to sample some of Leah Day's patterns. Dawn described how she was able to enlarge some of the patterns, which tend to be small and dense. Dawn does all her quilting completely free motion without any marking. Dawn is now using unbleached muslin for all her quilt backings, both because it's cost-effective and to show off her quilting.

Peggy and Tricia made 20 small zipper pouches to donate to their church for a prayer retreat. These will be used as rosary bags. These bags are made "in-the-hoop" and can be made from charm squares. Peggy did a great job of modifying the pattern for a more masculine version.

Helen made a quilt for her daughter, and Tricia made a "Frozen" quilt for one of her granddaughters. (She was inspired by Helen's projects from November where she cut apart panels and reset them with sashing.)