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